Home charge points (purchase/problems/questions) (See mod note post#1)

Exactly. It’s actually over 5 years was fine with the previous charge point in my case. 6 years now with the same circuit. No explosions so far.

I appreciate the dangers of DIY, but logic is out the window with the regs now. Try to make an improvement and add a safety measure and you get ridden.

By trying to everything by the book and to the regs, I have since been told that because my consumer unit is under the stairs where I have a sink, I can’t get solar. This was after spending €600 getting an earthrod and bonding done last week.

I will now likely do DIY solar and have a friendly electrician make the grid connection. I’d have preferred to get everything done by professional installers, but so far, they’ve cost me money I didn’t have to spend. I’m well capable of doing the bonding myself, but wouldn’t make the final connection.

I assume you meant to say that installing a priority switch means that a that a tails upgrade is/was required. Otherwise your first sentence is self cancelling. In any case, the 10sq has been sufficient up until now. The purpose of the priority switch is to prevent too much juice being pulled from 2 high power units.

There are 2 reasons I wanted the tails upgraded. To have a second charger installed for convenience (with load sensing for extra peace of mind) and for the planned solar installation.

My electrics are old, but they are perfectly fine. I have had an earth rod and bonding done and plan on further improvements.

You are wrong about the grants....it has everything to do with grants. Electricians are busy sucking up all the grant money, which makes everything more expensive. To avail of grants, the customer needs to jump through hoops unless they have a home built recently, but not too recently. I had 2 Electricians tell me they don't do tails or CU replacements because SAFE ELECTRIC have made the work not worth the hassle. Why bother moving or upgrading a CU which could take a whole day and cost as little as €350 according to leccy websites when you can do 3 EV charger installs and charge 1k for labour on each of them?

The grants do nothing but pad the pockets of the tradesman and make it so much harder and more expensive to get them to do any other work. This is why more people will give the middle finger to the regs and will do the work themselves.

In my house, it certainly feels that way 😂

I reckon a good 90 minutes per day on average for the T90. I do intend to get rid of this in time in favour of a pumped shower with solar hot water.

Im in the same boat. Teenage girls and long hair and fake tan 😬

You would need to check the perimeter of the house. It's not always a green box. It could be a galvanised lid, or other colour (black/grey often). With no earth rod, the installer may cancel the job, or go ahead, but you won't be able to get the grant unless proof of earth rod is supplied afaik. This is partly why I opted against the grant route.

Yes, as long as the plug has 16A rated written on it everything will automatically look after itself. The only issue that would ever arise there would be if someone incorrectly wired a 32A plug onto a 16A cable.

The 3G2,5 means it's a 2.5mm2 cross sectional area cable so rated for 20A (16A in EV terms). IIRC you're after a 32A cable which would be 6mm2 with something like 3G6,0 written on it. The 32A cable is also noticeably thicker than a 16A. 👍️

I’ve got a Plug In Hybrid and now I need to have the charger installed.

The garage has a deal with Energia and told me they would install the charger, which they do, but first we need to get the house up to safe electric Ireland standards. So, I tried to get in touch with at least 5 local electricians - because Energia does not have any local ones (!!!) - and we were told by the only one who replied that it will cost at least 3000 euro to bring the house up to safe electric Ireland standards. This is not what we expected!

We are now considering cancelling Energia and going back to electric Ireland and just forget about the home charger. But, before that, we are wondering if maybe the electrician gave us a wrong amount?

He needs to bring the house up to safe electric Ireland standards… whatever that means… all we want is to put the charger outside, which energia is supposed to do for free…

The house was built in 1960. So the electric system here is old. When we got our car, we were told Energia would install the charger. Now energia tell me they need the house to be up to safe electric Ireland standards and they say it’s not. So we need to get a local electrician to do it and the only electrician who came back to us said it would cost 3,000 euro at least to bring the house to safe electric Ireland standards - whatever that means!!

thanks. I didn’t know they existed but I just checked online… I wonder if I could get one inside the house and then charge the car through the window… otherwise I’d be waiting another eternity for an electrician to install it outside…

We’re based in north Kerry