Part P or ACS

[markadams]

Well I have a dilemma, I need to decide which way to go, I have been a water plumber for many years and almost 95% of the calls I get are for straight water plumbing, I pass the gas work to a mate. I have recently been asked to do a few electrical jobs and electrics have always interested me.

I need to decide if I would be better gaining Part P or ACS/gas safe. I have a load of info/photos for the gas portfolio but do not know which would be more profitable as I cant really afford the cost of training for both.

 

[jtsplumbing]

Well I've never known an electrician to be short of work, Check out your area, compare the number of sparks to gas fitters, If electrics is your passion then that's your answer.

 

[stratplus]

Part p would be cheaper around £600 but I think would give you limited scope as to what you could do. Acs and your looking at alot more money with renewal every 5yrs but the obvious progression from plumbing.
I personally have the acs with full scope electrical but have yet to register with an electrical body as I work for a company and only have the time for plumbing and gas as am always busy.
I do plan to do all 3 for myself eventually.

 

[IDCHAPPY]

I'd like to do more electrics...mainly cause I'm gash at it :lol:

 

[cr0ft]

Since I've qualified as a sparky I've not had a quiet day to be honest. Did have a fair few when just doing plumbing.

Personally I think it's the way to go. It's added probably £25k a year to my turnover and I don't really hugely push the electrical side. As soon as you get chatting to customers and you drop into conversation you are a sparky too you end up getting a lot more work from them usually.

 

[stratplus]

Since I've qualified as a sparky I've not had a quiet day to be honest. Did have a fair few when just doing plumbing.

Personally I think it's the way to go. It's added probably £25k a year to my turnover and I don't really hugely push the electrical side. As soon as you get chatting to customers and you drop into conversation you are a sparky too you end up getting a lot more work from them usually.

Thats a good turnover for electrical as a sideline!

 

[markadams]

Croft, are you a fully signed up Sparky or did you just study 17th edition and Part P?

How long did it take you to get qualified in electrics?

 

[Leo21]

I honestly thing being a sparky is going to be easier. With gas, rules change all the time and new appliances are always being released. Meaning breakdowns are more difficult. With your knowledge of house construction being a sparks should be a lot easier. If you qualify for gas you'll find breakdowns a really steep learning curve.

 

[stratplus]

I honestly thing being a sparky is going to be easier. With gas, rules change all the time and new appliances are always being released. Meaning breakdowns are more difficult. With your knowledge of house construction being a sparks should be a lot easier. If you qualify for gas you'll find breakdowns a really steep learning curve.

I agree. There is all the info for electrical easily available bookwise including inspection and testing and design. I do mainly newbuilds and recently been using 10mm hep for rad drops. An absolute doddle! Is that not very similar to running cables!! The sparks I know first fix in a day. We plumbers still have the copper gas runs, the soils and wastes, copper discharge if unvented, testing, the list goes on....and then theres the tools and materials......sockets and switches for a spark....theres us humping baths, sanitary, boilers and rads. They also get paid same if not more
No renewing quals either!!
Breakdowns is another beast altogether!!

 

[GasmanxxxR1]

Having both gas safe and part p, I would choose part p. Sad but true. Bizarrely people seem to want to pay better rates for sparks than gas fitters

 

[Linkyplumb]

I am the same as Keiran. Did my full sparks thingy, and now it is pretty much fifty fifty.
They have changed the way you can get on to competent persons scheme. You now need to have an NVQ as well as level 3 cert.

 

[markadams]

Would you recommend going for the Full sparky qualification or just as a Domestic installer?

 

[cr0ft]

Looks like you need an NVQ3 now to register with a competent person scheme. I just slipped in before this change with the C&G 2391-10 Inspection & Testing course. Good timing for once!!

Full sparky qualification is worth it's weight in gold imo. Much easier on the back and knees! Don't enjoy it as much as plumbing though. You need to get used to chewing on building dust though with all that chasing out!

 

[iain85]

Interesting thread this. Everyone who became sparks qualified after there gas ticket, what route did you take to get qualified? College or independent training?

 

[cr0ft]

I didn't and still don't have a gas ticket! I used this company. Yes, they might be a fast track course company but I can thoroughly recommend them. They actually enforced stuff like closed book tests properly. Lots of extra homework each evening and around half of the course didn't pass first time round.

Everything was explained in detail and thoroughly, the tutor was actually Steve Willis himself (it's a largish company) and he encouraged questions so you could learn as much as possible. It's also just round the corner from Ray Stafford and his mates so you can pop in and annoy them too, what more could you ask for?

New to the Electrical Industry - training & courses ? Steve Willis Training Centres

This is a slightly different course to the one I did. I believe this is due to you now needing an NVQ3, i.e. workplace experience, to register with NICEIC, ELECSA etc to carry out electrical work.

I presume this requirement is just for full scope electricians. If so, I expect electrician's labour rates to slowly rise now as a result of this requirement. I'm not grumbling!

 

[cr0ft]

I didn't and still don't have a gas ticket! I used this company. Yes, they might be a fast track course company but I can thoroughly recommend them. They actually enforced stuff like closed book tests properly. Lots of extra homework each evening and around half of the course didn't pass first time round.

New to the Electrical Industry - training & courses ? Steve Willis Training Centres

This is a slightly different course to the one I did. I believe this is due to you now needing an NVQ3, i.e. workplace experience, to register with NICEIC, ELECSA etc to carry out electrical work.

I presume this requirement is just for full scope electricians. If so, I expect electrician's labour rates to slowly rise now as a result of this requirement. I'm not grumbling!

The £25k increase in turnover for me is basically 5 domestic rewires a year. For some reason I tend to keep getting large, old houses to do! You need 2 people to do the job really so after paying for materials for a rewire (circa £800 ish for a large house) and an apprentice's wages/fuel etc you are looking at earning £3,500 pre-tax ish after fuel and other expenses etc for 2 weeks of work. It pays quite well I think.

 

[MOSSEP]

Well, given that you don’t actually need any qualifications to be an electrician, and that Part P has had most of the notifiable work removed from it, and that it’s actually the home owners job to notify the work and not yours, I would get ACS.

I’m pretty sure you can now also just pay someone to come around and sign off your electrical work – another way of dumbing down the whole point of Part P.

If its domestic work you want to do I can’t imagine that you would learn enough on a fast track course to make you competent enough to do it if you had no previous knowledge. If you already have some basic knowledge, then you would be best doing work for a decent electrical company until you know how to do it properly – like an apprenticeship.

Here’s a rhyme that our tutor taught us when we were doing our electrical apprenticeship, if you remember this you can go far wrong with domestic wiring:

One and half for the lighting two and half for the power, six for the cooker ten for the shower, red to red, black to black to black blue to f**k!

Now, if on the other hand you want to do commercial and industrial work, then qualifications and a good mentor are essential.

 

[markadams]

Mossep,

I have done a far amount of electrical work In the past and I have a good knowledge of installing, rings, radials, lighting 1, 2 and 3 way. I can do testing but currently dont have a multi tester for RCD trip testing, loop tests, insulation testing etc.

I thought that since Part P I was not allowed to do electrical work any more. I have recently been asked to replace the power circuit (2 rings) in a house and wire a remote garage with one ring and one radial using SWA from the house.

 

[MOSSEP]

You have 4 options now:

Become registered at whatever cost per year (around 500 ish if I remember correctly) and pay £1.50 - £3 per notification.

Don't become registered and get the homeowner to notify the work under building regs.

Don't become registered and get a 3rd party tester in to do it for you.

Do the work to high standard, don't register it in either of the above methods and don't lose any sleep, after all, its the home owners problem if they have work carried out and don't notify it.

For the record, I'm registered with elecsa / ECA, but I carry out large amounts of electrical work every year. But, to be honest, I see no real evidence of Part P being enforced and sometimes wonder why I bother with that part of it for the little amount of notifiable domestic work I do each year.

 

[cr0ft]

In practise option 2 and 3 are not going to work. A homeowner (rightly or wrongly) sees registration and competence as one and the same thing. I can't imagine someone getting work as an electrician on that basis.

Electrician's are not supposed to issue EICs for other organisation's work either. How can you confirm for example that all cables are correctly installed because by the time you test the installation the walls will (or should be) plastered over.

My understanding is that in the case of non-registered electricians the legal requirement is on them to contact building control prior to controlled work commencing. If this is still the case then option 4 would be illegal. I will go and check just now..

I hate the idea of a competent person scheme scamming me for £600 ish a year but I don't think either of the other two options are realistic alternatives, certainly not if you want to do it as a second trade. By this I mean rewires, consumer unit swaps etc. Tell the homeowner they will have to pay £100 ish plus to register this with building control and you have priced yourself out of the job.

 

[MOSSEP]

In practise option 2 and 3 are not going to work. A homeowner (rightly or wrongly) sees registration and competence as one and the same thing. I can't imagine someone getting work as an electrician on that basis.




Electrician's are not supposed to issue EICs for other organisation's work either. How can you confirm for example that all cables are correctly installed because by the time you test the installation the walls will (or should be) plastered over.


A first fix and second visit would solve this, I do this on jobs for electricians that I know who are not registered. Its no different in practice to you employing an electrician and getting them to re-wire a house for you.


My understanding is that in the case of non-registered electricians the legal requirement is on them to contact building control prior to controlled work commencing. If this is still the case then option 4 would be illegal. I will go and check just now..


Option 4 would always be ‘illegal’, but in practice, a large amount of very good un registered electricians still do this with no harmful effects to anyone. In the 9 years of Part P being in place I have only heard of a handful of people being picked up on it. Building control do not generally go after unregistered electricians. If they did it would probably be due to poor workmanship, and being registered wont make your work any better.


I hate the idea of a competent person scheme scamming me for £600 ish a year but I don't think either of the other two options are realistic alternatives, certainly not if you want to do it as a second trade. By this I mean rewires, consumer unit swaps etc. Tell the homeowner they will have to pay £100 ish plus to register this with building control and you have priced yourself out of the job.


£100 added to the cost of a re-wire is a pretty small amount, on a fuse box then yes its too much. But back to his original post, I would still go with ACS, which I do not have, as I would imagine that the revenue produced from it is higher than registering with Part P. If wanted to do electrical work as well I would just stick to non domestic work and work that does not require any notification.

 

[cr0ft]

To be honest I think we share the same frustrations with the Competent Person Schemes. We could probably debate all day on the what can and should be done but as you say, let's keep the thread to ACS or qualifying as a sparky!

 

[markadams]

I agree Croft, it seems from what I read that most people on here are suggesting that doing the sparky qualification would be best. Funny thing is when I asked a similar question on the Sparks forums they said I should go for Gas as most customers will tackle there own electrics but cant or wont touch gas and plumbing. Funny really.

 

[markadams]

Have the rules changed as I understand that all but the simplest of jobs were notifiable to BC since the introduction of Part P. Want roughly cant a non registered sparky do legally?

 

[cr0ft]

The rules have changed and much less work is now notifiable. Have a gander at Part P, was revised last year.

Have a gander at the online document, makes it all fairly clear.