Electricians – does this look right in our kitchen?

So were checking around our new kitchen and finding lots of problems and shoddy work, we’re dealing with it at the moment, but also saw this the other day which is under the sink unit, pretty sure this shouldn’t be left like this? Would appreciate some advice on what should be done, should this be boxed in or sealed up in some way? Just doesn’t look good or right to me. I’ve googled it but can’t really find anything that refers to something like this, ended up looking at lots of regulations etc but nothing specific and this place has been great for getting answers quickly and advice. Thanks.

Cupboard under the sink

Cables under the cupboard

Close up of the cables

Also, if this is insuffient who can I contact about this, Trading Standards seem to be a waste of time as you can’t even contact them directly anymore, you have to go through some citizens advice service and they pass it on, I’ve already complained about the kitchen fitters but as far as I know nothing will get done. The electrician who did this is supposed to be issuing us with an installation certificate … 😐

The mice are sneaking off your electric to run their homes with….

DrP

😀

Actually, I can’t understand why there’s a join there anyway?

also noticed there’s some blue/brown cables visible under the socket in the cupboard, this is for the washing machine, surely the outer (grey) part of the cable should go into the socket? … It’s all just so poorly done!

Well if that’s not technically ‘off’, it certainly looks shit. :-/

What is the socket for? and where do the cables that its connected to go to/come from?

Certainly wouldnt want a socket directly under the sink and jammed under pipes that could drip condensation, and not that shoddy connection under the floor (needs a junction box).

If the sparky is giving you a cert, get the cert then get someone else to check/fix odd things and make sure its safe.

Yep, shoddy, that join should be in a junction box.

Not compliant as is but easily fixed. If it were mine I’d drill a hole in the base of the cabinet below the socket so the cable runs straight down. Run some mini trunking to a junction box vertically below. Put the joint inside the box. Replace the poorly fitted crimps with a wago or similar and properly sleeve the earth. Rest of the cable should be clipped to the wall as well but that is less critical IMO.

I’m no sparky but that bottom pic shows a bit of exposed live core very close to the unsheathed earth – might upset your rcd’s , rcbo thingywhatsits..

is stevie wonder your sparkie ?

That looks like the sort of thing you find in a foreign hotel bathroom[shudders]

Wouldn’t it be better to have the socket at the back of the washing machine aperture rather than under the sink? WM cables tend not to be very long.

I’d have your electrician back to rectify properly. If I pay for a job I expect it to be done properly and to a better standard than I could achieve.

Was it Bodgeit and Scarper? 😀

at the back of the washing machine aperture rather than under the sink?

Except you’d need to pull machine out to access it and it would affect how far you could push the machine back under the worktop.

On our one the sockets are in the same cupboard but, looking at your picture they’d be on the left hand ‘wall’ and above the level of any joints in the pipes.

Not to standard…unsheathed earth, visible conductor on the live, and if it were in an enclosure with the cable secured there would be less risk of pulling the joint apart when you pull the cable.

I would have thought those crimp on connectors are not suitable for solid core cable anyway…they are the sort of thing I have used on my vans 12v electrics which uses braided cable.

I think if the washing machine socket is inaccessible they should fit one of those neon indicator switches above the worktop so you can turn it off, like you would with an electric cooker or immersion heater.

Previous occupant fitted one for the washing machine in our place, but then put the boiler in front of it, so you can only turn it off with a wooden spoon poked down the gap 🙄

I would have thought those crimp on connectors are not suitable for solid core cable anyway.

They’re not rated / suitable for mains solid core, you get very little friction (as the solid core doesn’t deform unlike multi-core) and they pull apart really easily.

Need to use one of these

IANAE but if I was to correct that I’d be doing what nickjb said, plus moving the socket to the top right of the cupboard.

But that’s not really the point, you’re paying for a professional job so that is what you should get.

Very shonky. As t’others have said , any join needs to be in a suitably rated ,accessible junction box. Plus the location of the socket!!! Crikey.

Is that a bleed point right above the really badly connected exposed cables?

Has that been done by a kitchen fitter or a bloke from the pub?
I very much doubt he’ll be getting an EICR with that install…

If by some chance the installer is a member of NICEIC, NAPIT or more likely ELECSA there are complaint lines you can call to report the work.

The spark will need to be a member of a professional body to be able to certify the work. Find out who that body is and report to them. They should come and inspect, your local building control officer should be interested as well.

Horrible job.
Confused over some things.
The yellow crimps are for 4-6mm cable.
The crimped cable seems to go into that 13A unswitched socket.
So is that a 4mm or 6mm T&E coming off that socket, and feeding what.
If the cable is 2.5mm then get the wrong crimps off and wire into a 30A JB.
If it’s 6mm and feeding a cooker? connect into a 60A JB and that 13A socket shouldn’t be in the circuit.

That’s pretty god damn terrible to be honest. I’m not a Sparkie and sub my electrics out on my kitchen fits but….

I put appliance sockets in cupboards but certainly not under water supplies. The term for sockets is accessible. In an adjacent cupboard is accessible, an FCU above the worktop with outlet behind appliance is accessible, plug and socket only behind appliance isn’t accessible. Some sparkies ‘interpret’ the rules slightly differently but it should be safe.

That crimped cable is nasty too. It’s probably been crimped because the original wire wasn’t long enough to reach the desired socket position but it could have been done a lot neater than that. It should be double insulated so the crimps or wago blocks should be in an enclosure really. The conductors shouldn’t be visible and the earth should be sleeved. You shouldn’t be able to see the coloured cores outside of the enclosure either (patress and socket in this case)

Blazin – do you mind if I ask your advice as I’m currently kitting my own kitchen? Question with Pics at the bottom of this thread:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/new-kitchen-install-tips-please

joints need to be in an enclosure. wago or similar would be my preference. crimps are fine if the correct size and a propper ratchet crimper is used. earth needs to be sleeved and no conductor (copper) exposed outside the crimps or inner sleeve (blue, brown or earth) exposed outside of the junction box/ wagobox/ socket. cable needs to be clipped to wall.
fitting in under sink cabinet is allowed but is not the best idea unless no other accessible cabinet close by.
as said by others the electricians body (NICEIC/ ELECSA etc) are the people to call although they will ask if you have discussed it with the electrician first.

IANA sparkie, but, that looks poor.

As above, re: large size of cable – has he tapped into the cooker feed? The mains looks big. Our cooker isn’t RCD’d (our electric install is 10yrs+ old, regs may have changed, everything might be RCD now) so my first thought is, has that socket even got the right protection on it.

Let alone the mechanical aspects of the socket install. Socket under sink, no; bare earth, no; sheathing not fully into socket, no; drain point ready and waiting to dribble all over the exposed copper… could go on.

Interested in this as we have just had a kitchen installed and the quality of the work has been generally pretty good, however we have a switched plug in the sink cupboard (as it is adjacent to the dishwasher).

Before I sign it off as being completed to my satisfaction should I ask them to move it or is it really very unlikely to be an issue? (ie, I don’t want to make work for the sake of it, but at the same time I want it to be compliant and pass the relevant regs and receive my certificate).

A socket is fine under the cupboard, ok, not ideal but nearly every kitchen design these days has a dishwasher or washing machine next to a sink cupboard and nowhere else to site a socket. I try to put them in a corner well out the way of any potential leak.

Thanks all, 😆 at some of the comments.

The electrcians website has an ELECSA logo on it so I’ll be emailing them. Looks shoddy to me but so do a lot of things in the kitchen. I could’ve done it better myself but I can say the same with most of the kitchen.

work like this pisses me off, I bust my balls to give as good a finished product as possible, meanwhile Cowboys seem to get away with it whilst taking people’s hard earned and giving the rest of us a bad name.

Blazin-saddles, it infuriates me too, trouble is until we have some kind of official body that actually deals with this, straight away, they’ll just keep getting away with it.

Me partners sister lives in Australia and she can’t believe Trading Standards won’t do anything, she said if you make a complaint there they go and see the company immediately asking why they’re not doing work correctly.

It seems here everyone buries their head in the sand. I was told once, by trading standards, that they can’t do anything unless they receive a lot of complaints about a company/person. So all someone needs to do is keep changing their trading name. But how many people actually complain? Some people don’t know how to, are scared to or just put up with a bad job.

That’s as impressive as the B&Q fitted kitchen , which was fitted a year before we moved into the current house. It fell apart soon after, so I ripped it out and started again. This is what we found behind the tiles. No proper termination, no protection trunking and the ring main had a single cable running off it to a washing machine and the cable thrown over the cabinets and the plasterboard just smashed off and the cable dumped in and slapped over with tiles.

Connection point

Cable heading south to the washing machine with precision plasterboard trimming

Luckily our kitchen redesign meant nothing was going to be reused and was all stripped out. But was a shocking mess.

Kojaklollipop – Member
The electrcians website has an ELECSA logo on it

Not surprised from what I’ve heard of ELECSA…

Worked in a block of flats the electrician had wired the cooker up to an 13 amp plug socket, and cooker didnt then work, blew fuse, and when i washed my hands in the sink heard running water and the sink trap hadnt been connected to the soil pipe resulting sinks contents running down the outide of the pipe run through 3 floors.

Then a bathroom with a jacuzzi bath all the wiring exposed under the bath,and no earths to anything.

best to get the whole kitchen checked out if done by same person

The thing is, as a good trademan once told me, it can be just as much work to do a job badly as it can be to do a good job. I just don’t understand how some of these people think it’s ok to do work like this.

lerk – is ELECSA no good then, I’m I likely to get nowhere or no joy with them?

We’re not using the kitchen and don’t intend to until we know it’s ok, we can use the hob but not keen on using the electric oven.

Exactly, it takes nearly as much time to do the job badly, so why not just do it right?!?

From what I’ve heard (I’m an industrial spark, not domestic – so not directly involved with any of them) they are gathering the bottom end of the market by offering lower membership fees and having lower entry requirements in addition to fewer verification activities.
Your install certainly seems to validate that opinion!

Probably didn’t have a junction box in the van, so just cut a few corners to save the hassle of driving to Screwfix to spend £1.50.

Surely he could have at least used 30A screw clamp chocoblocks, who doesn’t have some of those lying around?
At least they would be screwed then rather than just relying on compression.

As far as I am aware, there’s nothing wrong with crimps, as long as they’re done properly with a ratchet tool and the correct size. They should however be in an enclosure or double insulated, wrapped or heat shrink.

The screw type blocks are actually worse as in theory the screws can come loose, Wago blocks seem to be the current preferred method. Both options should be also in an enclosure so a junction box may as well be used.

Yes, he probably didn’t have a JB on van at the time, doesn’t make it right though.

Nothing wrong with crimps if fitted correctly, classed as a permanent connection that can be buried in walls or floors.

From what I’ve heard (I’m an industrial spark, not domestic – so not directly involved with any of them) they are gathering the bottom end of the market by offering lower membership fees and having lower entry requirements in addition to fewer verification activities.
Your install certainly seems to validate that opinion!

ELECSA – I have emailed them the same images and more as the work under the cooker wasn’t great, we had bare connections there too but saw them earlier so he put a plastic box around them like this …

Is there another professional or regulartory body that I can contact to get this assessed? Rlectrical Safety Register? Although a quick google shows this is now ‘electrical competent person’ website He is listed on this.