i find a house today which has recently been purchased...so of course there is a "vailid coc"

all the light circuits are wired with twin flex (speaker wire) and plugged into the wall socket...i dont have a problem with that...according to the regulations anything plugged in does not form part of the electrical installtion.

so talking today to other sparkies about the issue...one says that the regs say you cant have a cord longer than 1.5 m for a fix appliances...i would find this extremely difficult to police...

however i draw the line when the twin flex feeding the light is chased into the wall...making it a permanent feature...it is no longer an extention cord loose appliance call it what you want...

i do believe the sabs people need to move away from the nec codes...which work overseas in first world countries...we need to make up our own codes which are relevant for this 3 rd world country we live in...we also need to make the code clear...so that everyone interprets the code the same...because this seems to be a scape goat in the industry...miss interpretation of the code...

and even more important than policing the code...there should a call centre to assisit the many electricains who have taken the plunge into becoming an inspector...

there should also be course available to all inspectors including master electricians...and there should be a credit system which like the engineers you need to keep up your credits otherwise your inspector status be temp. removed until you get enough credit from courses and seminars to keep you up to date with the code which keeps changing.

the coc document should be computerised and a strict log of every single coc issued should be kept on record...and the dol should have a team of inspectors to do random check on cocs

i have found from numerous checks on coc that just by reading the coc i can tell you if the inspector was on site...sad but true.

now to make it even more interesting the dol have anounced that if you the customer requires an aia or dol enquiry it will be at the customers cost...i think this is going to make it even more interesting trying to get payment...

so now an dol od AIA inspector goes to site and tells the customer he not only has to spend R10 000 to get his installtion up to date...they now also have to pay the AIA inspector fee to do this...come on people which joker came up with this decision....maybe you need to get out your office a bit face the public and start making a positive impact on the electrical industry.. time to .