The Ultimate Guide to Portable Appliance Testing

The biggest risk of working with electrical equipment is, without a doubt, getting electrocuted.

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This can happen due to a lot of reasons. If the shock is a bit more powerful, you could end up losing your life. Someone could put themselves in danger, but when all of the equipment is tested with a PAT tester all of the risk disappears and everyone can work with the equipment without the fear of being electrocuted.

The biggest benefit of having PAT testers is that they are going to reduce the risk of someone getting electrocuted. A PAT test checks for any kind of problems inside of the electrical equipment. The tester will tell you if there is an issue so that you can fix it and avoid much larger problems. If the problems inside cause the equipment to break the company might have to pay large sums of money in order to repair it or buy a new one.

This way you lose a lot of business and profit. The person doing testing work needs to competent to do it. In many low-risk environments, a sensible competent member of staff can undertake visual inspections if they have enough knowledge and training. However, when undertaking combined inspection and testing, a greater level of knowledge and experience is needed, and the person will need:.

Information is also available in: Work using electrically powered equipment. It is strongly recommended that equipment suppliers formally inspect and test the equipment before each hire, in order to ensure it is safe to use.

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The person hiring the equipment should also take appropriate steps to ensure it remains safe to use throughout the hire period. The question 'What is portable appliance testing? A high street travel agency thought about what it needed to do to maintain its portable electrical equipment. As their work generally included office work and dealing with customers the manager considered that health and safety risks would be generally low.

The portable electrical equipment was used in a clean and dry shop by a small number of employees.

• A history of Portable Appliance Testing.
• Explaining the Benefits of PAT Testing.
• Invisible Women of Prehistory: Three Million Years of Peace, Six Thousand Years of War!
• The Essential Guide To PAT Testing DVD - And Test;

In deciding what action was needed:. In , the HSE reviewed its approach to portable appliance maintenance in its own offices. Thinking about the type of equipment in use, and how it was used, the HSE looked back at the results from its annual testing of portable appliances across its estate over the last five years.

Using the results of the previous tests, the HSE decided that further portable appliance tests are not needed within the foreseeable future or at all for certain types of portable equipment. Also, they decided to continue to monitor any faults reported as a result of user checks and visual inspections and review its maintenance system if evidence suggests that it needs revising.

Electrical equipment will continue to be maintained by a series of user checks and visual inspections by staff that have had some training. It does not say how this should be done or how often. Employers should take a risk-based approach, considering the type of equipment and what it is being used for.

Subscribe to HSE's electrical safety eBulletin - includes email notifications when this page is updated. There are 2 tests that must be carried out, once a careful visual inspection has been conducted, and the equipment has been deemed fit for electrical testing. The value of the resistance is shown on the tester. When selecting a test point on the case, bear in mind than many decorative finishes are also poor conductors.

In the case of a failure, the earth return should present a lower resistance path to earth than that offered by the human body. Where long cables are being tested, the Inspector will need to make an adjustment to the value returned by the test to allow for the resistance in the cable itself, before they can be sure that the nett resistance value is low enough to be considered safe.

How this adjustment is calculated is outside the scope of this document. A high test current is used so that should an earth conductor be too flimsy to provide protection under fault conditions, it will fail melt under test. This will allow the fault to be remedied before re-testing, and its eventual return to service. How do you recognise Class 2 equipment? It should be marked with the symbol below. The double box — symbolising the 2 levels of insulation — should be found on the outside of the equipment. There is just one test that must be carried out, once a careful visual inspection has been conducted, and the equipment has been deemed fit for electrical testing.

This probe is moved over the exterior of the case, paying particular attention to any openings for cooling etc.

• Velia y El Emperador Tiberius (Spanish Edition);
• A Thousand Veils;
• A Guide to Portable Appliance Testing.

There are other tests that may be undertaken at this stage. Often the choice of these extra tests is governed by the PAT tester in use.

This test is similar to the Insulation Test for Class 1 and Class 2 but uses a much higher voltage. It can damage insulation on some equipment, and equipment using sensitive electronics, as in computer controlled devices, can suffer catastrophic failures. Monitoring the current draw can be particularly useful to check that lanterns are using lamps of the anticipated rating.