House we bought in Nov had an EV charger in it.
Great but at the moment we had no use for it, because we don’t own EV yet.
But, had two electricians in to quote for a/c electrical work, both saw this and were swearing profusely about the install. Apparently it was installed “without an RCD”, which is dangerous and shouldn’t be signed off, and something with the connection was done piss poorly, so you can see the plastic around cable has melted.
Of course we don’t know who did the install but I have emailed charger company so they know. But will get my sparky to fix.
Seems like getting a trusted electrician to take a look, might be worth it!
I’m not an electrician either but you have an RCD for your regular sockets that only carry 240V. EV charging can be up to 1000V, no wonder the electrician was swearing. That seems so shoddy. No one seems to know how to do anything anymore. I had a drivers side window replaced on my car and 3 auto glass technicians couldn’t get it to work, said it was the wrong glass. It was referred to the AA and a grumpy old geezer fixed it in 20 minutes. It just needed recalibrating.
I’m curious to see what the charger company replies… if anything.
In my email I’ve left them off the hook as the charger was installed with previous house owner so it would be impossible to say who did what for sure. But, in theory, they would have done the install and the electrical work.
The thing is that the electrician was raving about them as being the best in the market, and then he saw the electrical work…
I’m thinking its a cable selection issue, difficult to tell from the photo but…
There appear to be 4 or 5 different size cables 16 mm, 6 mm, 2.5 mm and 1.5 mm which is normal. However, if the (singed) cable is 1.5 mm and supplying the EV charger that could be the issue, I’d expect an EV charger to be supplied from a 2.5 mm or 6 mm cable. Also the singed cable, that looks like it might be 1.5 mm is wired into a 32A breaker, the correct rating for a 1.5 mm cable should be 16A.
I’m surprised the electrician didn’t make a temporary fix by way of disconnecting the faulty cable, I’m. not an electrician just commenting on what I see in a photograph.
Jesus, that’s horrific. It is a house fire waiting to happen. Good job you had it looked at before further use.
Good idea speaking to the charger company, as they should have a log of which sparky the installation was outsourced too, and will hopefully take action to get his other works checked.
When we had ours installed, a regular independent sparky installed it. He did a great job as we had a non-standard install due to the switchboard being in the middle of the house, so additional trunking had to be installed along one wall of a room to get to the outside wall where it went through.
Yes you are correct, the 1.5mm cable is the one for the EV charger. I don’t know the details of the cable widths and what is / isn’t required in terms of amps - it’s way above my knowledge but I trust my electrician.
The fix at the moment is to turn it off at the switch (you can just about read the ‘off’ on the blue toggle.) Then he will come back and fix it when he comes to do the a/c work.
I always thought the EV charger company installed these but they’ve since told me it’s not down to them but they will keep a log. It could have been done 3-4 years ago so good luck in sourcing names but I’ve done all I can.
Every bloody thing these previous owners have done (windows, doors etc) all looked good and high spec, but the installs have been piss poor… and this is from someone who was more or less in the trades.
You could assume the charger was installed in the past 5years
Ask the previous owners, that instal is dangerous and the electrician needs a good beating
Oh I know it was definitely in the past 5 years as the house was finished in 2018 and streetview photo from under five years ago shows house without it.
We don’t really have communications with previous owners and I’d rather not open them up. If it had been just this, I would have said they just had a bad experience but everything they’ve done to this house seems like they’ve used cut rate traders to do it.
And some other stuff we found in discovery suggests they weren’t exactly the most diligent at paying bills etc (had to deal with some HMRC fines that came in their name). So I want nothing to do with them.
I’d be asking whoever did your buyers survey why they didn’t pick it up.
Although you wouldn’t expect a proper full test of the electrical system unless you paid extra for it, they should have done a visual inspection of the consumer unit & spotted that.
So the reason for this is that this installation was done to the external fuse box (where the meter is and the power supply comes in). To reveal this image, one has to remove a screwed in panel and the survey doesn’t cover removal of panels. This isn’t the main fuse box in the property
They had one for three months or so and no it’s not that substantial, just for late filling of tax self assessment.
These folks have just bought a £1m house (serious upgrade to where they were) so I just don’t understand how they can be so crap with things… Anyway, no serious harm done and no real major issues so we proceed. Looking forward to cool evenings with a/c running
The one thing I have learnt from buying my first house, is if I do it again, the first thing I will be doing is getting in an electrician and gas safe engineer to check everything!
You just cannot trust someone else’s work!
I’m also no electrician but even I can tell looking at the picture it is shocking! Also, the thinner the wire the lower the voltage/amps it can take, so given this is a car charger I’m shocked it has used such a small cable!
I have seen some trades just use what is on the van at the end of the day rather than doing a proper job, might be the case here.
Surveyors aren’t electricians and can’t be held responsible for electrics
They are allowed to visually inspect faceplates and fittings but aren’t allowed to expose anything
I feel your pain, moved into a house a couple of years ago, and the last tenant was a “DIYer”, luckily not too horrific, but its taken a while to sort out the various bodges.
Yes same here. I had a painter come and do an estimate and he said, “Well I’d give them an A for errort, F for execution.” I’ve had all sorts of debt letters turn up here too. And they left loads of crap behind, like tins of solodified paint. They had an interior designer apparently. A few tins of white emulsion addressed that. Their DIY was abysmal.
