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Sounds great, Mervyn – any chance of some pics of the new lady in your life?
@Mervyn all sounds great and I’m really interested in the real world range you are getting as the dash readout seems nice and generous. Perhaps the warmer weather is helping.
@Trevor perhaps a real world range thread would be a great addition to the site.
@Mervyn Good stuff!
British Gas arrived on Monday whilst I was away on work, and fobbed off the missus by telling her our previous survey was done by ‘the battery people’ and not British Gas, which is of course utter tosh. They did another survey and then left without installing the charger or telling her when they’d be back or what would happen next.
I’ve since been chasing up with the BG EV charger installation team. They’re also telling me that I’ll have to pay extra because the fusebox is on the ‘wrong’ side of the house… The engineer estimated 35m of cabling would be needed, my architect other half estimated 15m 😛
I’ve got mine being installed today so we’ll see how it goes. I’m expecting to pay for some extras but I’ll be keeping a close eye on the cable length. I’d estimate the need for 23m of cable to get to my garage and then to the point where I want the charger. I know armoured cable is available in the rating I’d need for ~ £45 + vat for 20m so I’ll be interested to see what they try and charge me!
I’m going to ask for an RCD box in the garage with the space to also run lighting / socket ring as we’ve no power in the garage at the moment. I’d expect it to cost no more than £150 extra.
Anyone else asked for extras? what did you ask for and how much was it?
Having had no contact and with the engineer not turning up at 9am I rang BG and asked what was going on at 10:15am. I was told the engineer had an emergency callout and I should have been phoned but that they would still be coming today.
I then got a call at 11am saying when the engineer picked up the charger it was damaged and so would like to cancel the appointment and re-organise for another day. As I’ve organised a day at home for this I didn’t agree and suggested the engineer come and do the majority of the work today and then the final part another day – possibly without needing me to be in. The lady on the phone also suggested that last part could be a saturday. After checking with the engineer and then calling back, it was agreed and the engineer should be here ‘before lunch’.
I’m going to assume at this point that either the engineer knew it would take a whole day to do the install and, having been called elsewhere (emergency Zoe charger install, maybe…), didn’t want to try and fit in my job as well or, more likely, the emergency callout was allocated my charger from stock.
Either way, I still intend to get them to do the majority of the wiring today. As I want an RCD in the garage when they come another day they shouldn’t need further access to the house and I won’t need to take time at home to wait for them again.
Today is our British Gas Charging Point installation day. Our engineers turned up this morning at about 8:30am. We are all good for the O2 data signal and given the all clear to have the charger installed inside our garage. The install is now about half way through and hopefully going well. Since the charger is at the back of our integral garage we don’t have to worry about an earth rod luckily. We are hoping that our ZOE will be delivered within the next few weeks (no later than early August). So far so good (all being well!)
Ok, so, update from my visit from BG. Firstly they didn’t even bother pretending they’d install it today which is fair. They agreed they could install it another day without me needing to be in, which is good 🙂 They mentioned about the ground rod and how sometimes they’ve needed up to 4 to get the required earth (and also that there are rumours that requirement will be scrapped and the normal house earth will be used). Looks like they can run the earth inside the garage to the back garden though, so that looks like it will be ok.
The problem comes with the need for the cable to run over a neighbour’s garage roof in order to get from the front of the house to the back. Suddenly we are talking 2 people, not 1, and a scissor lift at a cost of £500 for the day. So it goes from ‘free’ to what I suspect will be £800 just for the install of the EV charger.
I’m going to have a word with my neighbour about taking the cable through their garage rather than over which will hopefully remove the need for the lift and the second person. Apparently, having a 13amp socket and a light fitted in the garage will also take too long for 1 person in 1 day so I’d have to have 2 people just for that additional work so I’ll prob. drop that from the quote and
do it myselfget an installer another time 🙂Now I just need to see the quote!
Regarding the pics Trevor I am not very techie as I mentioned before perhaps if I downloaded to Facebook I can get them transferred from there?
Appmacguy. Regarding range I had my first good test today off to the dealer to have a software upgrade 70 miles return journey. Started with 108 miles this morning returned with 27 the journey on dual carriageway for most of the way travelling at 55-60 in Eco mode probably a little disappointing but as I have only 250 miles on the clock perhaps this will improve.
The R Link has still many issues and speaking to the salesman today he said for the first 5 months of Clio sales they were not allowed to sell R Link. He did however today authorise the sim card on my car which was unknown to him until last week so hopefully now some of the on-line functions should work. I will keep you posted on this.mervyn, there are lots of online sites that can host your pictures for free such as Photobucket.com and flickr.com, both of which I use. One of the simplest is TinyPic.com, though I haven’t used it myself. Once uploaded, each image will get a URL that you can paste into your posts.
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