Electrical Installation Condition Reports in Llanishen — interwar and post-war housing, most of it updated in part rather than all at once.
An Electrical Installation Condition Report is a periodic inspection of an installation that already exists. It is not a certificate for new work — that is a different document — and it does not make anything safe on its own. What it does is tell you, circuit by circuit, the condition of the wiring in the property and what if anything needs attention.
Findings are coded. C1 means danger present, C2 means potentially dangerous, and FI means further investigation is required. Any of those three make the report unsatisfactory. C3 is an improvement recommendation — it does not make a report unsatisfactory, and a perfectly sound installation can carry several.
If you are letting a property in Wales, an EICR is the report you need on a recurring cycle. The rules on what needs inspecting, certifying and notifying are genuinely different here from England, and most advice online is written for England — we set out the Welsh position in what electrical work needs signing off in Wales.
Llanishen housing runs from interwar semis through substantial post-war estate building. The installations here have very often been updated in stages rather than rewired in one go — a new consumer unit fitted at some point, a kitchen redone at another, the rest left as it was.
That is the pattern that produces the most confusing reports. A modern board on the wall gives the impression of a modern installation, when behind it there may still be circuits from decades earlier. A new consumer unit protects circuits; it does not improve them. Testing is the only thing that tells you what is actually there.
Garages are the other Llanishen staple. A lot of them have a supply, and a good number of those supplies were added by somebody handy rather than by somebody registered. It gets inspected either way, and where it is sound the report says so.
Kitchens and bathrooms are where part-updated houses most often come unstuck, and not for the reason people expect. When a kitchen or bathroom is refitted, the main protective bonding to the incoming gas and water services should be checked and brought up to standard. It frequently is not, because it is out of sight and nobody thought to look. It is one of the more common C2 findings in houses of this age.
An inspection is not someone glancing at the fuse box. It is a physical inspection of the installation followed by a set of electrical tests, and the tests are the part that takes the time, because they are done circuit by circuit rather than all at once.
We need access to the consumer unit, to the meter and cut-out where the supply comes in, and to every room — including the loft if circuits run through it. The power goes off for parts of the day, usually in stages rather than all at once, so if anyone is working from home or there is a freezer that matters, tell us at the start and we will plan around it.
What you get at the end is the report itself plus the schedule of circuit details and test results that sits behind it. Those results are the evidence; a report without them is not worth much. If anything coded C1 is found we will make it safe before we leave, because leaving a known danger in place is not an option regardless of what you decide to do about the rest.
If remedial work is needed you are under no obligation to have us do it. We would rather quote for it and be compared than have the inspection double as a sales visit.
Yes, and they answer different questions. Replacing a board is notifiable work and should have produced its own certificate for that job. An EICR looks at the condition of the whole installation, which is mostly the bits the new board is protecting.
Circuit by circuit. The report records what was found on each, so a part-updated installation shows exactly that — some circuits clean, others carrying observations. That is far more useful than a single pass or fail.
If it was installed as new work it was notifiable in Wales and should have a certificate. If nobody can find one, the EICR will at least tell you the condition it is in now.
If the report turns up work that needs doing, we can quote for it — but an EICR and the remedial work are separate decisions and you are under no obligation to have us do both. Related services: consumer unit upgrades, rewiring, EV charge point installation and emergency call-outs. You can also see everything we cover in Llanishen.
EICR Cardiff · EICR Roath · EICR Caerphilly · EICR Pontypridd · EICR Barry · EICR Newport · EICR Heath · EICR Lisvane · EICR Whitchurch