Electrical Installation Work

Purchased as an update to my trusty 4th edition.Just the best theory of electricity book. Look no further.Start at the beginning, even if you are a time-served sparky- there’s stuff in here you will have forgotten. Enlightening.A few typos but nothing you can’t cope with.

Book does a great job of explaining concepts and is thorough with its contents. But... Basic maths has the wrong formulas everywhere e.g. area of a circle as πd^2 not πr^2. Doing my head in a little and can be quite confusing. May also set some people on the wrong track who aren't familiar with the maths.

That problem is that, once you have read through this book you will then gladly spend your money on the whole series of 6 or 7 books written by Brian Scaddan.This 9th Edition of Electrical Installation Work (totally updated for 18th Edition BS7671:2018) as well as being the most up to date book of its kind has also been greatly expanded to include some extensive basic electrical theory sections (including power factor improvement).No student or apprentice of Electrical installation/Electrical engineering should be without this book!As I said at the beginning of this review though, be prepared to suddenly find yourself happily prepared to part with your hard earned money on his other electrical publications.As you can tell I'm an extremely happy customer and the apprentices I teach are more than greatful for the extra information and clearly worded explanations from this book.Well worth any students or professionals money!

Have bought the last 4 editions over the years and are the perfect book for beginners and experienced electricians. Helped me out back in the day of my apprenticeship.

I don't normally leave bad reviews and certainly don't enjoy writing this, but I'm just really annoyed at having paid a premium price for a book which it's obvious the publishers and presumably the author literally couldn't care less about.The 9th edition of Brian Scaddan's "Electrical Installation Work" is an utterly shoddy thing.Virtually every page is riddled with errors and lazy attempts at updating an obviously out of date text. It's as if the publishers gave the task of updating it to someone on a Friday afternoon, who just couldn't be bothered and whose whole attitude was one of "will this do?"It's not just typos on virtually every page, which are horrible and distracting enough in a book with such a premium price, but a lot of the maths is wrong - answers in the back of the book are wrong, because whoever updated the questions has for example changed 240V to 230V in the question but not bothered to work out the new answer to the maths for 230V. (Bear in mind the change from 240V to 230V as the nominal UK mains voltage happened in 1993 and this is supposed to be a book that's up to date in 2020!!)And it's not just those things; there are mistakes and a total lack of care everywhere - things everywhere like:- Old content has been adapted to new page layouts so badly that they're often so hard to follow it's like whoever put the layouts together was drunk.- Complex formulas involving symbols I (capital I for current) and l (lower case l for length) are presented in a font where the capital I and lower-case l are literally identical, making the formulas unintelligible to anyone who doesn't already understand them!- Key terms like current and resistance, and current and voltage are actually mixed up with each other on occasions!- So many things are left ridiculously out of date. For example, we're told "gas-fired [power] stations are rare" - which is literally nonsense as the UK today actually gets half its electricity from gas-powered stations. This gets really serious when it's not just on trivial matters but in ways that can seriously mislead the reader, for example with the seriously out of date information the book has about the Building Regulations.(- Also apparently you'll need three or four instruments (not to mention a "test lamp"!) when you do inspection and testing. Apparently Brian Scaddan hasn't heard of the existence of a multi-function tester (or a an approved voltage indicator). He needs an introduction to what electricians do in the 21st century!!)- Illustrations are often printed in an utterly shoddy lo-res quality.- There are missing captions to illustrations.- There are references to figures that don't exist.- There are incorrect page references everywhere.- There are illustrations that contradict the text adjacent to them.- There are illustrations with nonsensical errors in them.- There are multiple references to the 16th or 17th edition as current when the cover proclaims the book has been "updated in line with the 18th edition of the wiring regulations".I could go on, but the bottom line is it's obvious the publishers don't care about the book, so why should you part with £30 or £40 for it?The answer is simply that you shouldn't.

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