Re: New Regs to kill DIY HA?

["mark_harrison_uk2" <mph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, Stuart Grimshaw <stuart.grimshaw@g...>
wrote:
> I very much doubt you'll be able to find any sparky who would certify
> any DIY HA installations, as they wouldn't want to risk the liability,
> should anything go wrong, and that's what signals the end of DIY HA in
> the UK to me.

Assuming (and this is big assumption) the electrician knows how to
install X10 DIN rail modules, I'm not sure that certiying an X10
installation is any harder than certifying a non-X10 DIY installation,
and there are plenty of those out there.

I agree that there aren't many electricians who understand X10, let
alone the wider aspects of HA, but about half the people to have gone
through our X10 training course this year were already qualified as
electricians.

In an ideal world, we'd run two courses "X10 for DIYers" and
"X10 for
eletricians", with the former concentrating far more on integration
and computer control (in our case, obviously, with Harmony), and the
latter far more on the eletrical aspects. However, course attendee
numbers aren't quite high enough to make that cost-effective.

With my consultancy hat on, we've only ever used qualified
electricians to run cables and put things together anyway. The way we
make our money is by adding value through specification and
commissioning. It's been our experience that electricians will pick up
how to do X10 installs very quickly once there's a paying customer!

Mark