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Ordered electric car and 3 days later I received a text message from Easee charger installation team
Informing me that I would soon receive another text asking me to send specific pics and details reguarding the upcoming installation
Received this text the next day and after following its link I was led through a few questions and asked to supply my Customer Electric supplier ID number along with a few photos of my meter/where I wanted the charger/distance and route sketch from meter to the area I wanted the box to be installed.
All straight forward
Asked if I needed or had landlord permission to proceed with installation
I said at this stage no as I first needed more detailed info before I approach the landlord
I already knew that once the details of liability insurance/competence certificates/specific install description was given to my landlord then things could proceed
I was @ all Docs needed in a zip file which I printed off and handed to the landlord
Just waiting on landlords permission confirmation
Meanwhile things still plough ahead and in my case a site survey was deemed necessary
And this will happen on the 23rd May
Just to note the Easee home charger cover comes in I think 5 different colour options
I chose black otherwise it is £50 extra
Was asked if wanted tethered or untethered cable
After I @ them back and after asking a few questions
I now know that even if you say untehered you will still get a 7.5m charging cable that locks and releases as you need
In practise I didn’t want to have 7.5 m of cable looped /hanging from the front of my home so may well store that cable away and pull the cars designated cable out of the boot when needed
Which will be I guess be about every 10 days on Average.
I see they will drill one inclusive cable hole for free and thereafter there is a cost for additional holes
Not too sure but assume if the details you initially give them are vague or not clear they then set up a site survey prior to installation
This suits me as I can then prempt and easily drill any additional holes that may be needed to get the cable to its final destination of which I think should only be one more hole
I am not going to have the box (size approx 9x9x4 inch so very small) too high on the wall
So as to keep it cosmetically discrete as possible
Just to add the box cover can be easily removed with a small inc key and removal of a small single locking screw
Quick blast with can using your colour of choice and £50 saved ( personally may not bother )
I will update once installed if there is anything worth noting
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I would seriously consider the tethered option. You say you will charge every 10 days, but that is using the old ICE fill up thinking. If you switch onto an EV tariff, you will get around 4/5 hours of charging, this may not give you a full charge in one go. With the the tethered one, I plug in almost every day, takes around 10 seconds to plug in/unplug each day. You know it is fully charged for when you need it. When it is raining, is a pain to deal with removing a non-tethered cable. Just give it a thought before you commit.
I am sure you could paint the colour of the box whatever colour you wanted once installed.
I’m some years off getting an EV, but can I ask a question about the practicalities of charger installation?
We have an attached garage that we park the car in, so I would want a wall box charger installed inside there, rather than on an outside wall. The garage has power (wall sockets) but is some distance from the main electric meter.
Do you have to have a new hard wired connection all the way from the wall charger to the electric meter? This would be a major problem in my house, as that would mean going through 4 rooms, some of which have 2ft thick stone walls, and I wouldn’t want unsightly trunking on the walls throughout the house. I have two separate fuse boxes and one is a much shorter distance from the garage. Would they be able to connect to that, rather then the main meter?
If your garage has a consumer unit and the potential to have a 32amp fuse, it’ll be fine in there.
I’m glad you’ve had few problems getting your charger organised burgerman.
My son lives in a new flat but can’t get an EV charger fitted as 100% of 120 occupants must agree to get EVs fitted. The management team circulated an email to the occupants suggesting it would cost £2000 each just to get the cabling to the parking spots with a further cost to get a charger fitted. As many of the tenants have no wish to get an EV it was denied.
Im not sure about down south but in Scotland there is an infrastructure grant, which might come be from the U.K. government, of upto £30,000 to install wiring etc so there is help if you live in a flat but it can be very difficult depending on your own situation.
Jim appreciate the input
Untethered will look better than having a 7.5 m cable permantly hanging from the wall imo
Pulling the cable from the boot even if its weekly is quite easy for me to do plus I will be handling a clean dry cable
Although I can see and appreciate why a tethered set up may well benefit others
I was being conservative in my consumption estimates as the cars mileage will equates to just 15/18 miles of urban driving a day.
My tarriff is standard so will just keep the official 280 range ( realistic 200 avg ) topped up as and when
I’ve the Easee and have found it great so far. I went untethered because, as you say, you can lock it using the app anyway, thus turning it into tethered. I appreciate being willing to leave the cable in place (even locked) will depend on where people live. I’m lucky enough to live in a quiet rural village and it’s been just coiled on the box (locked in) since I got it. I’ll probably put the cable indoors when we go on hols etc.
If your garage has a consumer unit and the potential to have a 32amp fuse, it’ll be fine in there.
Thanks Jim. No consumer unit in the garage, but there’s one fairly close. No idea whether it can accommodate a 32 amp fuse but I guess that’s fixable. Unfortunately the entire language around EVs is completely alien to me!
I had a similar issue with my install, Glos Guy, my main meter/consumer unit is some 30m from the back of the house where the charger was to be fitted. 1 floor lower than the rear of the building and 2 x 1m stone walls (and a few lathe and plaster walls) to navigate.
We were also on a looped supply, so I had the DNO unloop us and fit a 100a incoming fuse,
I used a secondary consumer unit we have on the top floor to feed the charger, it needed changed anyway as it was the old glass fuse type, so a new larger metal one was installed giving plenty of space for the new RCB the charger needed. The cable was then run from the rear of the consumer unit up into the attic then over all of the rooms, through the stone wall where the rest of the electrical cables were run and then down into the rear basement, back up to the wall where the charger was to go. A 25m cable run. No visible cables, no trunking. We couldn’t get any of the large national installers to do this, they just ignored our applications, so we used our local electrician, cost inc. the consumables of 50m of cable, 2 RCBs (the EV one is about £30) and the outside double socket was £250. The consumer unit changeover was £200 odds, but it needed done anyway as the old unit was approaching 60+ years old & several of the fuse holders were crumbling/cracked. We did that about 6 months before the EV install, and changed the main consumer unit at the same time.
I asked the electrician about running the charger off the consumer unit with regard to wiring and he was adamant that it was not an issue, the cable thickness from the main unit to that one was more than capable of handing the extra 32a.
The charger I selected offered all of the latest protection/PEN fault, so nothing else was required. I had the electrician run another cable beside it and fitted an outside socket, so I could upgrade to two chargers later if I needed it without running cables again. The charger is from Viridian and is not smart – so it was only £300 delivered. Their advice and service was excellent.
I tried using Motability’s free service, at the time it was BP Chargemaster – truly awful and never heard from them after their initial confirmation. Same from SSE, our electricity supplier at the time. Podpoint also ignored us, so I gave up on the big installers and called Viridian, ordered the charger and sorted the rest myself.
In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.
All this was in 2021, the charger has worked flawlessly over the last 18 months and 18,000 miles (car is at 22,000 mile, I did the first 4000 miles using rapid chargers).
In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.
Thanks Abercol. That all sounds overwhelming and I’m not sure that a) I understand it all, or b) could be bothered with all the disruption. I think I shall have to stick with petrol until forced to change, by which time hopefully things will be a lot more straightforward (I guess they will have to be, as it will be a major deterrent to many).
I’m some years off getting an EV, but can I ask a question about the practicalities of charger installation? We have an attached garage that we park the car in, so I would want a wall box charger installed inside there, rather than on an outside wall. The garage has power (wall sockets) but is some distance from the main electric meter. Do you have to have a new hard wired connection all the way from the wall charger to the electric meter? This would be a major problem in my house, as that would mean going through 4 rooms, some of which have 2ft thick stone walls, and I wouldn’t want unsightly trunking on the walls throughout the house. I have two separate fuse boxes and one is a much shorter distance from the garage. Would they be able to connect to that, rather then the main meter?
It would depend on the quality of the connection between the first and second fuse boxes. To safely carry such high current it’ll need to be a pretty substantial cable.
The best advice would be to get an electrician to come in and have a look, it might cost you for an hour of their time but it’d give you a definitive view on what can or can’t be done.
I'm Autistic, if I say something you find offensive, please let me know, I can guarantee it was unintentional.
I'll try to give my honest opinion but am always open to learning.Mark
Thanks MFillingham. That’s good advice. There’s an electrician in the village that I use often, and whilst he doesn’t do EV charge points he will certainly understand the language that you guys talk, all of which goes completely over my head ?
Thanks MFillingham. That’s good advice. There’s an electrician in the village that I use often, and whilst he doesn’t do EV charge points he will certainly understand the language that you guys talk, all of which goes completely over my head ?
Tell the electrician it’ll be a 7.4kW draw over an extended time, that the installer will require a spare 32 amp fuse holder, or the space to fit one, and they’d need confidence that the power will not cause problems elsewhere within the house (like the cable between the fuse boxes or the cable to the house).
Is there outdoor space between the garage and the second fuse box? Is there a safe way to get the power cable from the house to the garage without digging a trench?
Before any installation company will put a charger in any house they’ll need pictures of certain things and may require a specific survey to ensure they fully understand what needs to be done.
Just a thought, if it looks like it could be difficult to get the charger installed under a ‘standard’ installation, it might prove cheaper to get the electrician to run a proper power cable from the main fuse box outside the home (if possible) or the second box, if not possible, through to the garage so that all the installation needs is a short run from that new fuse and the box attached to a wall.
I'm Autistic, if I say something you find offensive, please let me know, I can guarantee it was unintentional.
I'll try to give my honest opinion but am always open to learning.Mark
Given that our house was originally two 1850s cottages knocked together, then has had two extensions in the 1960s and 1980s, plus a big double garage built alongside, it’s all a bit Heath Robinson (if you know what I mean by that), so I can almost guarantee that any installation will be both problematic and cause other issues ? Best I stick to petrol until we decide to downsize to something more manageable as the years advance! Might compromise with a PHEV (using a normal plug socket) but I’m no longer convinced that they are worth the price premium. Thankfully no decision needs to be made until next year.
Given that our house was originally two 1850s cottages knocked together, then has had two extensions in the 1960s and 1980s, plus a big double garage built alongside, it’s all a bit Heath Robinson (if you know what I mean by that), so I can almost guarantee that any installation will be both problematic and cause other issues
Best I stick to petrol until we decide to downsize to something more manageable as the years advance! Might compromise with a PHEV (using a normal plug socket) but I’m no longer convinced that they are worth the price premium. Thankfully no decision needs to be made until next year.What I will say as a member of the NICEIC and qualified EVCP installer upto and including currentl regulations, is the regs around charge points are forever changing fast. Since the indroduction of BS7671 18th edition in 2018, there have been 2 amendments in 2020/22. The current 4th edition of the Code of Practive for Electric vehicle charging equipment installation, will be replaced to the 5th edition later this year. So unless your looking now or within the next couple of years don’t worry about it, as the likely hood regs will change again after that.
However if you want some advice based on the current regs including the 5th edition of the code of practice Id be happy to oblige more in depth on your 1850’s cottage/s 🙂
The maximum length of 15meters for 3 core 6mm2 SWA or T+E can be used supplying a 7Kw wall charger.
Since the introduction of the not so Smart chargers regulation were signed into law in December 2021 and mandatory use in June2022, you would need to have a decent WiFi signal at the point your charger is fitted….
Thanks kezo, but that’s all a foreign language to me! The one bit that I did understand was that it will all be changing, so I will put it out of my mind for a few years!
Thanks kezo, but that’s all a foreign language to me! The one bit that I did understand was that it will all be changing, so I will put it out of my mind for a few years!
Perhaps Ishould have just said “dont worry about it till the time comes your having one, as regs are changing” ?
Anyhow you got the main point!
Best I stick to petrol until we decide to downsize to something more manageable as the years advance! Might compromise with a PHEV (using a normal plug socket) but I’m no longer convinced that they are worth the price premium. Thankfully no decision needs to be made until next year.- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.