Oil safe? Should there be a scheme similar to gas safe for oil techs?

[WHPES]

All I can see from my village is fields and woods. Lived in a town briefly as a student and hated it. We do go to York for days out but wouldn't like to live there.

 

[on31ll]

Mad isnt it ! So £1500 quid for training, registration and pieces of kit for somthing you dont legally need ! All for that badge on your van

 

[SimonG]

I don't even have the badge on the van

 

[Dannypipe]

I'm liking a lot of these posts. Country folk allegiance!!

If I want to visit the big smoke, I can walk to a station from my house in about 5 minutes, and within an hour I'm up there.....and within an hour I'm ready to leave again!!

 

[lame plumber]

there seems to be 2 totally different threads going on here and I like the countryside one best

 

[peteheat]

I believe OFTEC is all of the registered members because without us it wouldn't exist, that said we must take some ownership of it by promoting the standards OFTEC stands to enforce by promoting OFTEC.

For example on this web site we can have a badge that says we are Gas safe (in my case RGII) hence promoting Gas Safe, when asked about the badge I did not see much response from the administrators.

If we don't play our part in educating the consumwer we are just making the job in the OFTEC office harder, we can cry and whinge or we can try to make the OFTEC brand as well known as Gas Safe.

Worst case the consumers will start asking "What's this OFTEC I kept seeing"?

 

[Whl4852]

I believe OFTEC is all of the registered members because without us it wouldn't exist, that said we must take some ownership of it by promoting the standards OFTEC stands to enforce by promoting OFTEC.

For example on this web site we can have a badge that says we are Gas safe (in my case RGII) hence promoting Gas Safe, when asked about the badge I did not see much response from the administrators.

If we don't play our part in educating the consumwer we are just making the job in the OFTEC office harder, we can cry and whinge or we can try to make the OFTEC brand as well known as Gas Safe.

Worst case the consumers will start asking "What's this OFTEC I kept seeing"?

Here here, I second that!

 

[peteheat]

Looks good on paper and I agree with what you are saying, but when the prospective customer is looking at an estimate from an oftec installer and somebody who isn't going to bother they'll expect it to work and one will be cheaper.

Now if oftec was going to be more proactive in weeding out the dangerous non registered people then all well and good. But they don't give a monkeys and that's official.

As I understand it the law is in place in the UK so the job falls to Building Control & maybe the Department of Environment to enforce them, consider yourselves very lucky in Ireland we have Building Control Departments in the local County Councils but nobody there to enforce anything except collect fees for building new houses and the laws / standards which are usually copy and paste of UK legislation for Part J etc weren't even updated to include oil.

We (OFTEC Members) can report bad workmanship etc but where will that get us? A bit like driving on the Motorway and calling the Police to report what appears to be a drunk driver speeding at 100 MPH, first question will be are you using a hands free kit? or how do you know it's 100 are you doing 95?

In my case the Council would have to search for a Building Control Officer as they don't know what they should be controlling (not joking) then of course the word would spread don't call him or your the Council may visit and you have to apply for retention for the extension you built (fees for the council).

What OFTEC could / should far as I know are doing is telling the Councils and Government agencies they have a system in place with proven competent trades persons throughout the UK and Ireland who can and will install the systems properly and there is no longer a need for the unregulated installers or turning a blind eye to poor quality oil installations.

Maybe we should be more pro-active in telling OFTEC what we want them to do, they appear to have responded very well to the boiler manufacturers (Founders?) where boiler passports are concerned.

As for competition if a consumer wants to have a boiler fitted and void a significant part of the warranty and have an oil tank badly installed which could void their insurance cover then they were never my type of customer to start with.

 

[jim1916woo]

I have just got a quot for the Training and assessment with oftec with manuals 1,2,3,4,& domestic heating guide Total of £872 +vat and after reading this is it a big con, but does anyone know were i can get these manuals on pdf cheers guys

 

[Dannypipe]

That's the going rate. The manuals come in A4 binders, and you can only get the updates in PDF format not the entire books.