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

Fair point re solar but our house with its hipped roof and north facing rear garden is probably never going to be a great candidate.

Id be totally on board with what you’re saying re keeping the house safe, but I guess im a bit peeved that when I shelled out a heap of money to a builder 10 years ago to include a rewire, the cables from the meter box to the (new!) distribution board weren’t done. It’s less than 3 metres as the crow flies from the meter to the board, but I don’t know if the cables are run through the downstairs ceiling or up through the attic or down underneath the floor.

Will mull over it a bit more & probably get an electrician to quote for the upgrade- if I can get one! 😀

Thanks to everyone for your input- sometimes Boards is great!

Many in the same boat with regards rewires. You probably always have to have a 2nd person that knows their stuff to check it over and make sure your not being had.

Hi all,

I'm about to purchase my first EV, a Tesla M3.

Can anyone recommend a suitable charger and installer (for the County Louth area)? I'm approved for the grant last December but know very little about the chargers other than I see Zappi mentioned a lot.

I'm a rural property so no access issues.

Thanks for any replies!

Some of the chargers don't require an earth rod if I'm not mistaken, the zappi being one of them.

Not sure if they cover Louth or not but someone posted an image of a deal from Forkearn Engineering that I can't find for the life of me! But their prices looked like they would be close to €200 cheaper than the standard price I was quoted from EV ready, which was €1549 before grant (I had to pay an additional €100 for "Additional cabling", but I assume that was actually for the additional mini consumer unit they needed to install, cause the cable run seemed fairly short to me!)

I was generally happy with the EV ready install, they made a small bit of a dogs dinner of install of the isolation switch on a pebble dash wall (I heard the presumably more senior of the two people shouting at some stage "There wont be any wall left if you keep going!"), but its fine.

The admin side of things was basically all ran through whatsapp which I thought was convenient. Probably should have gotten a few more quotes but EV ready seemed well recommended and it was definitely convenient.

It's probably in and around 6m without measuring it. And they certainly didn't measure it before quoting the extra charge.

The consumer unit is the opposite corner of a single car garage, through an attic, hard to imagine they have many shorter/simpler runs than that! But I was expecting an extra charge for the mini consumer unit

All of that a fair point. We weren’t long in the house, surveyor had recommended a rewire when we bought the house, so we just asked the electrician to quote for rewiring & the installation of a new distribution board (to replace ceramic fuses) and a ton of new sockets in all the rooms.

then we went to work and let the electrician get on with it, and a week or so later we’d sockets where we wanted them & a nice neat row of what I’d call MCBs to replace the old fuse board. I don’t ever remember being asked anything about meter tails, and electric charging was science fiction at the time.

On the ESB side, I got a note in the door a few years ago to say they were sending someone around to install a smart meter. I forgot about it & then a month or so later when I got a text from Energia to remind me to read the meter, I went out to the meter board and discovered a shiny new smart meter had been installed. So I assume someone took a look at the time and agreed the mains cable coming to the meter was ok, because my drive wasn’t dug up…

Yep, I know that. But afaik the story with the smart meter installations was that ESBN or their subs would check and ensure the mains cable to the meter board was ok- which I think is under the drive. Given they didn’t dig it up when the smart meter was installed and send me a big bill for the privilege, I’m assuming the mains cable is ok 😀

I get that the cable between the meter and the distribution board is my responsibility. It’s been explained to me that it wouldn’t necessarily have been included in a “rewire” 10 years ago, so I’ve to go get it checked by an electrician before I install a charger, since I’m getting conflicting info on whether they’ve got sufficient CSA or not.

Personally I'd be inclined to go with the opinion of the installer who actually visited site and inspected the system/tails rather than others who are only viewing photos of it, if they said it's 16mm and OK to install then I'm not sure what the issue is? I'd be very happy finding out I already have 16mm there and will be saving a good few quid on tail upgrades.

It’s unlikely that esbn are charging to repair their work in fairness (post a picture of meter cabinet)

as pointed out,the company that reports this has a legal responsibility to do so

the log cabin is not permitted to be connected to your outside meter box

id be concerned that the electrician that arrived this morning was not up to speed on the regulations

was he an rec

post a picture of the meter box

if esbn call out then they can disconnect any unauthorised cables from their system. There’s a thread about it

What was actually wrong? What did the latest electrician do? Did the problems stem from when the log cabin was wired in or from when the smart meter was installed?