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Tenement Lighting (OT-ish)

(38 posts)
  • Started 8 years ago by kaputnik
  • Latest reply from threefromleith

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  1. kaputnik
    Moderator

    It's Off Topic because it's about tenements, but it's on topic because it's about Edinburgh where most of us dwell and about tenements where some of us dwell.

    Anyway, the council have withdrawn maintenance of stair lighting, placing the onus on the residents to organise any repairs and maintenance. Given that most modern developments are factored (so someone else deals with it and has a legal responsibility to) and most tenements are not, and given that tenement stairs are generally narrower and darker than modern developments, there's a responsibility here for all the stair dwellers to make sure the lighting works.

    There are a few options open;

    1 - DIY. Neither I or anyone in my stair is a qualified electrician, so I'm personally unwilling to go with this line.

    2 - Appoint an electrical contractor to do the work required. Either just fixing what is broken or also performing regular maintenance / safety checks.

    3 - Appoint a stair factor. This is the most costly option and probably the most difficult to organise if you have a number of rented properties in the stair and may even have implications for the title deeds which you may have to change to oblige owners to pay their factoring dues.

    Our stair is looking to go with option 2 and appoint a trusted local electrician to do an annual safety check and provide an on-call service if anything goes wrong and needs fixing. Repairs e.g. changing bulbs can be covered and larger jobs they can quote for and we can organise payment.

    So what am I getting at? Well in order to pay for such a service we want to set up an unincorporated bodies bank account with a few of the residents as signatories. Each stair will pay a monthly due into the stair account and this will pay our annual charge to the electrician. It could also be used to collect money for other R&M jobs needing done on the stair.

    But the bank application form wants some for of constitution or rules for the unincorported body. Does anyone have experience of setting up a stair committee (or perhaps a residents association) and examples of a basic constitution or whatever we could rejig to our purposes?

    I did have a quick gander on the Shelter website but couldn't find anything handy.

    Any other thoughts on the topic are welcome.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  2. Morningsider
    Member

    kaputnik - The Council have some useful stuff on common repairs and establishing an owners association, including a sample constitution, at:

    http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/download/68/working_together_-_shared_repairs_guides

    If you want a detailed guide to dealing with common repairs, then it might be worth having a look at the attached Consumer Focus document:

    http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0042/00422341.pdf

    Posted 8 years ago #

  3. kaputnik
    Moderator

    That's perfect Morningsider, thanks.

    Had already been familiarising myself with the other stuff regarding common repairs as we had a problem with damp in the party wall between the close and a ground floor main-door flat that the title deeds left a rather ambiguous burden of ownership over.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  4. kaputnik
    Moderator

    P.S. if anyone needs the application form for an unincorporated association bank account with a major (dis)*reputable high street bank I have located this

    *delete as appropriate

    Posted 8 years ago #

  5. ih
    Member

    As always, the Broughton Spurtle is an invaluable source of information

    http://www.broughtonspurtle.org.uk/news/get-grips-stair-lighting

    We have decided to go along the diy route for light tube changes (I've bought the special screwdriver and opened the light fittings but an actual change has still to be put to the test) but use an electrician for more serious issues.

    So I would be interested to learn what periodic maintenance used to be done by the Council. Anybody know?

    Posted 8 years ago #

  6. algo
    Member

    Somewhat off-topic again.. some stair entry systems are illegally powered off the stair lighting system. In order to do this, I'm pretty sure electricians do the wiring up live to the 20V DC transformer usually used to do the intercom and stair entry. In theory you should use a dedicated meter and supply to do this. The problem is that there are almost no electricity accounts possible now with no standing charge - with a standing charge it is stupidly expensive. I found one with Scottish Hydro for ours, who regularly don't believe the meter reading I give them as it never goes up... for pretty obvious reasons. If I hadn't found that I would have been tempted to go rogue on the stair lighting....

    Posted 8 years ago #

  7. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Link to a "Treasurer's Account" with Bank of Scotland below;

    http://business.bankofscotland.co.uk/0-1m-turnover/business-accounts/treasurers-account/

    Or a "Community Account" with RBS;

    http://www.business.rbs.co.uk/business/start-ups/accounts/current-accounts/community_account.html

    Posted 8 years ago #

  8. kaputnik
    Moderator

    some stair entry systems are illegally powered off the stair lighting system

    Some? I'd imagine in tenement land it might be most or all!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  9. crowriver
    Member

    "So I would be interested to learn what periodic maintenance used to be done by the Council. Anybody know?"

    Precious little as far as I recall. They were pretty prompt to do repairs when a fault was reported, however.

    Most common faults in my experience:

    - fluorescent tube failure
    - timer/light sensor switch behaving oddly i.e.. lights not coming on when dark outside

    I'm really not looking forward to the next fault as sorting anything out to do with repairs in our stair is a total nightmare...

    Posted 8 years ago #

  10. threefromleith
    Member

    I feel your pain, Crowriver. I've been trying for 18 years now to get the neighbours in the stair to get stair cleaning organised, and some basic repairs carried out.

    Total failure. Parts of the stair are about a half-inch deep in stour, and there are dropped bits of rubbish, abandoned bikes and dumped bits of furniture. One wall has paint peeling off due to a damp issue, and the big paint chunks that fall just lie there too.

    Environmental Health were unable to force a stair cleaning order, as they gave up trying to catch everyone in to physically hand them the enforcement notices. Told me there was no more they could do.

    The closest I and another neighbour got to gaining agreement was when we got responses back from only the odd numbered flats in the stair.

    I'm dreading when the stair lighting bulbs start failing or the timer gets out of synch with daylight/darkness. Some folk would rather break their necks falling down the stairs in the dark than agree to organise maintenance of the lighting....

    Posted 8 years ago #

  11. kaputnik
    Moderator

    @Three / Crow

    Do you have a high proportion of landlord/tenant flats? Or just reclusive / recalcitrant neighbours?

    We're fairly blessed that 2/3 of the flats are owner occupied and of those the most recent new owners apart from us have been there 24 years. So they are all well established and have a good history of dealing with things and paying when it's required. I think they're just happy though that there's someone new to help organise things.

    I don't think the council have done anything in our stair of late other than replace a broken bulb. Apparently the timer is playing up through and switching the lights off on random floors through the night, so we are probably due a proper test and inspect.

    It's possible to buy a key for the timer lighting box and change the timer settings yourself. Also the relevant bulbs are easily replaced (assuming you have a ladder to reach) if you have access to the box to turn the supply off. For some stairs where it's not possible to organise things and you're unwilling to go down the legal route with the Tenement Management Scheme and Title Deeds behind you to force other owners/occupiers to pay up, the DIY approach might be a minimum to keep you from dangerous dark stairs.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  12. chdot
    Admin

    "and switching the lights off on random floors through the night"

    Yeah we get that sometimes, which I can't understand as I can't think why (or where) a second timer would be!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  13. crowriver
    Member

    Just a slight majority 5 to 4 of owner occupied on the actual stair. This is complicated by main door and rear facing ground floor flats which are part of the tenement but don't face onto the stair.

    Folk only rarely take their "turn" to sweep the stair; maintenance issues are a real drag to sort out and the Statutory Repairs scandal means folk are very reticent to comply with any council directives on this matter. Apparently our communal roof repair was overcharged about 7 years ago, council investigated and reduced the bill but some folk are never happy.

    To top it all I managed to alienate most of the owner occupiers by daring to carry out building work last year, so I'm in no position to take the lead on any communal repairs at this point...

    That said, living in a tenement is fine really! :-)

    Posted 8 years ago #

  14. jdanielp
    Member

    Friends of mine in the Colinton area have apparently been informed that if they want their whole area to have stair lighting again, they will need to find an electrician and a locksmith to break open electricity cupboards (and then fit a new lock...) to sort this out, but they are somehow supposed to figure out which cupboard to break open, too.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  15. kaputnik
    Moderator

    I would have thought the locks would be one of the standard meter cupboard lock types in the Spurtle link above, a key for which can be purchased from suppliers to the electrical trades.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  16. jdanielp
    Member

    @kaputnik I'll feed the link back on the off-chance that it helps, but what I was getting is that it is more of a mystery as to where the cupboard is located given that it sounds like it is for a whole area so is probably outside somewhere... I may have the wrong end of the stick though.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  17. threefromleith
    Member

    @kaputnik Just recalcitrant neighbours. Only one landlord-owned flat amongst the 8 in the stair.

    Annoyingly, one will go out and support the WoL cleanups each time they happen, but won't get involved in cleaning up our filthy stair! *sigh*

    Posted 8 years ago #

  18. kaputnik
    Moderator

    I've just taken a look in our meter cupboard. It was "locked" using a screw through the door and case.

    It's all fairly modern inside, with a digital "latitude aware" clock control; i.e. the timer is set to the given latitude and date and adjusts the on/off times of the lights relative to sunrise and sundown. I even found the instructions for our programmer!

    The catch seems to be it has a 2-digit security code, i.e. 99 possible combinations. I wonder if the council were thinking of supplying these codes to each stair to allow them to adjust to suit stair requirements.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  19. kaputnik
    Moderator

    @jdanielP on reflection I can't think of many tenements in Colinton, it sounds more like a private lighting system for a housing state/scheme rather than a stairwell lighting system? If it's a modern flat, the development is more than likely to be factored.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  20. neddie
    Member

    A weird thing happened in our close, just after the council ended their maintenance.

    All the lamps have 2 short fluorescent tubes in them. But someone seems to have removed or disabled one of the 2 tubes in every lamp! The stair is now quite dim.

    I wonder if one of the residents has done it, in a bid to save the planet? Or maybe the council themselves have done it, in an attempt to half their electric bill?

    Thoughts?

    Posted 8 years ago #

  21. dougal
    Member

    Maybe someone trying to "create" spare bulbs so if one dies it can be replaced without purchasing a new one? :-)

    Posted 8 years ago #

  22. kaputnik
    Moderator

    @edd1e_h apparently there are 2 tubes in each lamp and they are on independent circuits. Check the circuit breakers (in the timer cabinet) to see if one side has tripped?

    Posted 8 years ago #

  23. jdanielp
    Member

    @kaputnik I still don't fully understand what is going on because, as you say, there aren't that many tenements in that area (although I believe that there may be a degree of lighting being providing to exterior stairs accessing some flats), but apparently "it is problem of finding out what's wrong - it happened after a power cut, and basically the whole area (think a few hundred flats) are without stair lighting" and the council haven't made any real effort to help. She is contacting her councillers.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  24. LivM
    Member

    @edd1e_h I realised after many years that one of the circuits is designed to go off in the wee small hours, so the stair is dimmer through the night but well lit in the evenings. So if one of the "always on" bulbs blows then the light is "on" in the evening (but dim because there's only one working) and "off" through the night when the "night" bulb is meant to be providing light but isn't.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  25. neddie
    Member

    @kapt. @livd. Thanks.

    I don't think our system is on any kind of timer. It is permanently on, day & night, both bulbs. At least that's what I remember. I'll double check it though.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  26. chdot
    Admin

    "

    Hi I run a small electrical repair business that specialises in stair lighting repair and I was reading the posts on your site with regards to tenement lighting and would clarify the following for you.

    1. Council maintenance routine :- Basically non existent the council only did reactive maintenance or in other words when they got a call to a property then they fixed the problem.

    2. How the lighting works:- There is 2 circuits in each light fitting but there is 3 circuits that can be in use one is a 24 hour circuit for stairwell with no or little daylight. The other 2 circuits are switched from a astro clock that is set to Edinburghs sunset and sunrise times. At midnight the clock switches one circuit off for a energy saving mode then switches the other circuit off the following night so that the tubes get an even wear.

    3. Broughton Spurtle site. They show a new astro clock that has been fitted these clocks are not common in fact half the clocks are the old 1950s-1960s electro mechanical models see pics

    4. EDC were meant to maintain the lights till 01-07-16 But I have surveyed a few where the timeclock was broken so the lights were put on manual 6-12 months previously to save the cost of replacing the clock.

    5. Intercom yes the majority are connected into the stair lighting box.

    6. DIY not a good idea but yes I would say that but seriously take care and make sure your insured for personal injury.

    7. Change a tube as and when required Not a good idea as its not cost effective its better to relamp the whole stair every 2-3 years. EDC changed them as and when required hence why most stair lighting are dull due to worn tubes.

    8. Organising the work It’s a whole lot cheaper for the residents to do rather than get a Factor involved. I have created help sheets that can be downloaded from my site.

    Andy White
    http://www.aew-electrical.co.uk

    "

    Posted 8 years ago #

  27. kaputnik
    Moderator

    We have a local electrician (not the above one) round today to fix the timer clocks (modern type) which have been completely b******d by 2 recent power cuts (suggesting the backup battery for the clock has also failed). He is also going to replace all the duff tubes.

    We were told by said electrician that if you have no natural light in the stair it should be inspected and tested every year or if you get natural light (e.g. there's window and/or cupola) then it's every 3 years.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  28. neddie
    Member

    Update on our stair:

    But I have surveyed a few where the timeclock was broken so the lights were put on manual 6-12 months previously to save the cost of replacing the clock.

    This is what happened to us. The timeclock looked like it been deliberately broken - pins bent, broken off etc. The system is now wired bypassing the timeclock - lights are on 24/7.

    Also, I went and replaced all the tubes. They have a life of 15000 hours, so around 18 months when on constantly. The stair is much brighter now.

    The lamp fittings we have allow the tubes & starter to be replaced live. When you unscrew one side of fitting it hinges down and a clever contacts system isolates the bulbs & starter.

    That said, I would still isolate the system at the breaker in the control box.

    You can easily change the tubes yourself if you are confident with technical things.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  29. neddie
    Member

    Pretty sure this is the timeclock we had in our stair:

    https://www.sparksdirect.co.uk/sangamo-rpts-q55013-solar-time-switch-quartz-commercial-solar-dial-switch-3-pin

    Posted 8 years ago #

  30. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Ours is one of these;

    Note that if you have one of these they require a 2-digit PIN to change the settings. I imagine that the council has no idea what the codes are and probably shredded any records when they stopped supporting stair lighting.

    Posted 8 years ago #

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