British Expats - Electrician

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Electrician - help please??

Hi there

Is there are a sparky, or anyone who may be able to help...?

We want to put up some dimmer switches in our Auckland house, after searching we've found some dimmer switches in hardware stores but they are expensive at around $100 each :ohmy: !!

We were wondering if it would be cheaper to get family to buy and ship over from B&Q or Homebase in the UK - however does anyone know if we can simply wire up the UK dimmer switch to an NZ electrical system??

Any advice or knowledge would be much appreciated.

Re: Electrician - help please??

There are some on Trademe from this guy for $58.50 if that helps. UK dimmers would work too but may not meet NZ wiring regulations.

Re: Electrician - help please??

Thanks for the info, I've currently got a watch on this item on trademe, but even at that price I'm sure they're much cheaper in the uk (we've got about 6 switches to purchase and some are doubles).

Do you know if UK ones would not meet regs because they've not been suitably tested by the NZ authorities or is it something to do with them not being safe/compatible with NZ wiring??

Re: Electrician - help please??

The Trademe guy looks like a dealer, so you could ask him to do another auction for a bulk lot at a lower price. You could also try Australian websites as they use the same standards as NZ.

Quote:

Originally Posted by P18PPS (Post 4720793)

Do you know if UK ones would not meet regs because they've not been suitably tested by the NZ authorities or is it something to do with them not being safe/compatible with NZ wiring??

There's a set of AS/NZS standards that installed equipment has to meet and unless they've been certified against those standards they aren't technically legal to install, though they would work. As we were discussing on another thread this could become an insurance issue if there was a fire as it gives the insurance company an excuse not to pay out.

Re: Electrician - help please??

Quote:

Originally Posted by cypherpunk (Post 4720894)

The Trademe guy looks like a dealer, so you could ask him to do another auction for a bulk lot at a lower price. You could also try Australian websites as they use the same standards as NZ.

There's a set of AS/NZS standards that installed equipment has to meet and unless they've been certified against those standards they aren't technically legal to install, though they would work. As we were discussing on another thread this could become an insurance issue if there was a fire as it gives the insurance company an excuse not to pay out.

Yeah about to convinve my boss that we need a copy for work ;)
In fact many of the manufacturers (eg MK) fittings that are sold in Uk are also sold by RSComponents in Oz, eg a dimmer MK model no. K1521 WHILV which is on both the UK and Oz/NZ website.....you pays your money..... :thumbup: see:
http://www.rsaustralia.com/cgi-bin/b...auie&Nr=avl:au
out of stock in Oz but available in the UK!
In fact the Oz website refers to the British Standards, BSEN 60669-2-1; BSEN 55015 for these dimmers !!