A periodic inspection is a full electrical health check up of the house, apartment you live in or an office or workplace.
This inspection can only be carried out by a RECI certified electrician who is registered on the Safe Electric website.
As a general rule the electrician contracted will start at the fuse board. He will conduct a megger test, this is testing the integrity of all of the wiring circuits in the property. They will then go round the property checking switches, sockets, lights and earth bonding. They will note down their findings as they go.
Issues that they may find are rated on a scale of one to four, one being a failed inspection and four being just a recommendation. If you have a failure on your inspection, it is the electrician’s legal requirement to issue you a failure notice. They will also be required to issue a copy the failure notice to safe electric. Please note that if whatever this issue identified is not resolved and subsequently leads to damage to the property your insurance is likely to be invalid.
If you are a landlord/lady you are legally required to have a periodic inspection on your rented property veery 5 years. If a property has been unoccupied for over 6 months the likelihood is that the ESB have cut off the power. A periodic inspection then must be carried out to ensure the ESB are safe to reconnect the power.
Definitely if you are considering buying a house that is over 20 years old. This will often be money well spent as if you find major issues then you can negotiate a price reduction with the vendor.
A recent client of ours purchased a house. In the surveyors report it said the electrics looked fine. When she called us in for a periodic inspection it immediately failed the megger test. The wiring behind the walls had degraded and the whole property needed to be rewired. She went back to the estate agents who denied any liability saying it was general observance and it was her choice if she wanted an electrician to inspect the property prior to purchase.
It really varies on the size of the property or business it can take 2-3 hours upwards including the associated paper work. The best thing to do is give us a call on 01-554 3625 or fill in our contact form with the information on the property and we can provide a free quote.
We are ‘Safe Electric’ certified and located in Dublin, we travel all over Ireland but primarily work in Dublin and the surrounding areas.