I Want To Be An Electrician

August 18, 2005

Hi all,

As you may know I am going to start my day job soon but to keep me out of mischief I want to do a job on the side such as electrician or plumbing.

I have just rewired my mate's house and to be honest we did a much better job than the NICEIC registered plank who rewired it 7 years ago. He left

1. a 10,7kW shower plugged into a wall socket in the bathroom :eek:

2. wire going at 45 degrees up the wall in the kitchen :censor:

3. holes in floorboards for the wire at a depth of 2mm :censor:

and for all this gave him a safety certificate! Anyway the council is coming round to check out my handywork because they said I was not competent! :censor:

digressing aside, I was just wondering how easy it was to become a spark? What qualifications do I need and how much am I roughly looking at for insurance and registration and all that stuff? also does anyone know how long it takes?

thanks in advance

sanj

August 18, 2005

Try here for starters:

http://money.guardian.co.uk/work/drwork/st...1152768,00.html

August 18, 2005

I think to get a electrical/plumbing NVQ qualifaction you need to be working in the industry as they just changed the course just after i qualified as a plumber where now you work is assessed at your work place and then you spend 1 day a week in class doing theory.

But if you can get into these trades you will always have work as there is a shortage of skilled/qualified tradesmen.

Even in my new job i will have to do a course on the 16th edition of wireing regulations

id say the best way to find out though is to ring your local tech college and ask

HTH

August 18, 2005

thanks for the replies.

I have surfed round my local college's website and found a city and guilds nvq electrical installation, 2 nights a week. £268 + £133 exam fees.

But get this even with a degree in aeronautical engineering, a research paper and an award from the smallpiece trust I have to sit an intelligence test (ala 11+)! :eek:

I hope this course is good, bit worried I may get bored because I imagine it can't be as hard as what i'm used to - might sound arrogant but its not meant to.

oh well we'll see how it goes. :thumbsup:

August 18, 2005

Well we just had a electrican round to quote for some work on the house and he was talking about the fact that hes got a severe staff shortage right now....

So there seems to be a definite shortage of skilled electricians about, so like Steve says, there'll be no shortage of work for you....

Good luck! :group-cuddles: