To get a professional rather than let my brother

[pennyprincess]

rewire my new house.

Ok so the story, sorry it is a long one! I have just moved into a new house that needs a full rewire.

Years ago my brother trained as an industrail electrician, but he has been out the game for years doing other types of work. With the economic downturn he has lost his job and is trying to set up as a electrician doing small jobs (fitting showers, new sockets etc).

He is down on his luck and needs a break. And he really wants to do this rewire for us and will charge a fraction of market price.

BUT I am just not sure he is up to the job. I dont think he would do anything unsafe but it is a period house and I am just worried about the mess he will make. He also has a tendency to make everything about himself.
(An example would be I asked him to babysit when I was ill. He came round with his dog. His wet dog. The house therefore stunk of the dog. He then cooked the most disgusting smelling curry in my kitchen. He was only babysitting for a couple in the afternoon, I cant understand why he had to cook a curry at my house. I had bread etc in - he could have just had a sandwich if hungry. He then left all the dishes for sick me to do.

He makes a mess wherever he goes and is also very slap dash with things. BUT he WILL take major offence if I dont have him to do the job. His feeling will be hurt and he will sulk.

[bamboobutton]

YANBU

using friends/family to do any kind of building work is a recipe for disaster, especially in your case where DB sounds a bit unreliable.

can you say your insurance requires you to use a registered electrician, corgi or whatever the electical equivilant is?

[rewardgirl]

I agree with bamboo. Putting up a shelf is one thing (for example), but rewiring a house is a whole other kettle of chips.

It's going to take some diplomatic handling though by the sounds of it. Can you get him to do something small so that he still feels like he's involved?

Deffo use the insurance excuse as bamboo suggest. Genius.

[pennyprincess]

Yes the insurance excuse is one I thought up in the middle of the night - toying with that one. Dh has said he will say to him - that the insurance is through the police federation (he is a policeman)and it specifies something like all tradesman must have there own indeminity insurance. He is less likely to argue with my dh than he would with me. Still think he will take a major huff though.

[CMOTdibbler]

For someone to rewire your house they now need to be Part P registered. So, unless he is registered, he can't do it. Easy !

[pennyprincess]

He does have some electrical qualifications did some when an apprectice 20 years ago and has been to night school recently to brush up- not sure if he has Part P though.

But not having the correct qualification is not something my brother will think is a problem. And he is so unreasonable he will sulk if I even question him on it.

The more I think about having to break it to him the more sick I feel.

[Malkuth]

Does he have his 17th Edition? If he is not up to date on all his qualifications he will have to get someone who is a qualified inspector to sign off his work or you will have problems when you want to sell, and possibly before then with insurance should you have an electrical fault leading to a fire.

[CMOTdibbler]

Yes, but when you sell your house, you might have problems if you can't produce the correct documentation.

Don't get drawn into an arguement - book someone qualified/insured/certificated and then just tell him that you are required to use someone with all these things by your insurers (after all, if you had an electrical fire, they prob wouldn't pay out if you had breached building regs), and so have booked x to do it. Or get DH to tell him, and don't worry about him being huffy - not your problem

[pennyprincess]

Well it will be my problem if he refuses to speak to me after it- causing upset with our parent etc. He can be really immature and tantrumy.

But dh is of the opinion we have invested everything in the new house - so we should not have to let him do the electrics just to stop him having a childish tantrum. And as much as we would like to help him get establiched with his own business we cant be the guina pigs.

Btw this same brother currently harasses me everytime I see him to get his van insured in my name with him as a named driver as he has no 'no claims'. He makes me feel really terrible that I wont help him with it. But he has no 'no claims' for a reason - why should I risk mine. Plus my dh is in the police we really dont want to get involved in anything dodgey.

[EldritchCleavage]

Your DH is right-you're being manipulated. Your DB sounds like a bit of a user, in which case you'd be better off letting him know straightaway it's not going to work.

It's going to end in tears, so you may as well plump for his tears now and no financial loss rather than your tears later and some massive electrical or car insurance disaster.