How to compensate for damage due to a power surge: legal help

It happens that such a nuisance occurs that due to a power surge, electrical appliances, household appliances at home or office burn out, or even more negative consequences. What to do in such a situation? There is only one answer: demand compensation for the damage caused. Let's look at how to do this and what to pay attention to in more detail.

ATTENTION : our lawyer for compensation for damage due to a power surge in a residential building, office, warehouse or other real estate: professionally, in Yekaterinburg and remotely, on favorable terms and on time. Call today!

Procedure for compensation for damage due to power surges

It is not always possible to immediately determine that household appliances have stopped working at home due to a power surge, so if you suspect that the appliances have failed due to poor-quality power supply, use the following instructions:

Contact your neighbors and find out if their electrical appliances connected to the network have been damaged due to a possible power surge. This action will allow you to make sure that there was a power surge and not only your equipment was affected.
then call the emergency team , which will record the fact of a power surge by drawing up a report on the voltage change that has occurred, indicating the date and exact time. When calling the emergency team, you must report the incident to the emergency dispatch service. This can be done in writing or orally, but in any case it is necessary to record the fact of the appeal. When making an oral complaint, check with the dispatcher for the registration number of your complaint in the log. When conducting an inspection, an inspection report is drawn up, which records the damage caused to the citizen’s property.

ATTENTION: the act must be drawn up and signed no later than 12 hours from the moment the consumer contacted the emergency dispatch service, in 2 copies, one of which must be given to the consumer.

identify the person responsible for the power surge . This could be a resource supply organization, a management organization, a homeowners' association, a contracting organization for the maintenance of common property, or a third party, for example, a neighbor carrying out repairs at his place. It is necessary to contact the specified organizations so that they give written opinions on who is to blame for the voltage surge that occurred. It should be taken into account that the responsibility of organizations for the condition of electrical networks is delineated: someone is responsible from the panel house, and someone is responsible outside the apartment building. If the citizen who carried out the repairs is at fault, then responsibility lies with him for the damage caused.

IMPORTANT: if there was a power failure, the organization is obliged to issue a document confirming this, since special equipment at substations detects power surges.

Contact the appropriate organization to have your electrical networks and equipment that is out of order inspected . It is better to apply in writing under the mark on your copy.
You can also draw up a report with your neighbors about the damage caused, indicating the date and exact time, describing the damage to the equipment. If possible, photographs and video recording will not be superfluous. In addition to the neighbors, the chairman of the apartment building must sign the act.
failed equipment can be taken to a service center , which will give an opinion on the causes of the breakdown, i.e., that the cause of the breakdown was a power surge.
when the equipment cannot be repaired, an independent appraiser can calculate the amount of damage.
After collecting all the documents, you should submit a written claim to the guilty party so that he compensates for the damage caused.

ATTENTION: the claim must be served against a mark on your copy or sent by registered mail.

If there is no response to your claim within 30 days, you can file a complaint with Rospotrebnadzor, other authorities, or immediately file a claim in court for damages.
After the court makes a decision in your favor and it comes into force, you must submit a writ of execution to the bailiffs to force the collection of funds from the guilty party.

To briefly describe your actions, you must record the date, time and the fact of equipment breakdown due to a power surge; identify the person at fault who caused such a surge or who provided inadequate power supply services and then take action to recover damages. The main thing is to establish and confirm a cause-and-effect relationship.

Carrying out an examination

Why and when is the examination carried out? An examination is mandatory when the case is gradually approaching the court, and a conclusion from a disinterested party - an independent expert commission - is necessary.

You can conduct an examination either by court order or at your own discretion. The cost of services of service centers of this kind starts from 1000 rubles. The commission examines the household appliance and establishes the fact of a power surge. A burnt-out household appliance should be inspected before it is repaired, otherwise the conclusion will not be considered valid.

If the examination must be carried out by court order, then it will also be necessary to provide witnesses and draw up a report or list of damaged household appliances. Usually these are residents of neighboring apartments who have suffered the same misfortune.

Report of a power surge that occurred

The corresponding act must be drawn up, as a rule, by the emergency dispatch service and contain an indication of the date of the inspection, contain information about the power surge that occurred, what damage was caused to the citizen. The act must contain the signatures of the persons participating in the survey. One copy of the act is given to the consumer.

It is possible that the emergency workers who arrived at the scene will not want to write in the report that the power surge led to the failure of household appliances. In this case, they can write that the equipment may have broken down due to a power surge. If you firmly refuse to write anything about equipment breakdowns, you can ask the former specialists to indicate in the report which devices and equipment were not working at the time the report was drawn up; Then, with the help of service centers, it will be possible to prove that the equipment specified in the report stopped working due to a power surge.

Carrying out an examination

Complaint about power surges

A citizen, as a consumer, can complain to certain authorities orally or in writing about constant power surges. A citizen must be given a written response to a written complaint.

The complaint may be:

▪ submitted in person,
▪ sent by post,
▪ you can send an electronic message to individual authorities by filling out a special form on the website,
▪ You can also try sending a complaint by email, but you should first clarify whether such a complaint will be accepted for consideration, since not all authorities consider it appropriate to send a complaint in this way.

So, which bodies and organizations should you complain to:

♦ prosecutor's office;
♦ Rospotrebnadzor;
♦ bodies exercising housing supervision;
♦ electric grid company that supplies electricity;
♦ management company;
♦ resource supply organization.

USEFUL : order a complaint from us, and also see tips on how to prepare one

Conclusion

Network voltage is one of the criteria for the quality of electricity. If a jump occurs, the culprits may be the RSO, the management company or third parties. They are the ones who must pay for repairs or reimburse the residual cost of the failed TV.

But before filing a claim for payment, you need to call the emergency service to record a surge in the network, invite representatives of the supplier to determine who is at fault and assess the amount of damage. If the other party does not voluntarily agree to pay the money, the dispute is resolved in court.

Power Surge Claim

If there is a power surge and damage is caused to a citizen, the latter has the right to file a claim against the culprit.

The claim sets out in detail the circumstances of what happened, what was damaged, and how this is confirmed. The purpose of writing a claim is the culprit’s voluntary satisfaction of the consumer’s demands, as well as compliance with the claim procedure before going to court. If a person approaches an organization with a claim as a consumer, then the law on the protection of consumer rights should be referred to and one can demand compensation for damage caused and compensation for moral damage.

Similar demands can be made by the injured citizen against the guilty citizen, but it is no longer possible to refer to the law on the protection of consumer rights, since the citizen did not provide any services to the injured person, but caused harm as a result of his actions, for example, when renovating an apartment.

The claim must contain information about who the claim is addressed to, indicating the address, information about the applicant, i.e. The name and address of the victim, as well as a contact telephone number.

USEFUL : the claim must be signed by the applicant; for more tips on filing a claim, see our video from the YouTube channel

Who should pay for the replacement?

Before paying for a replacement device, you need to research the law. After all, there are several reasons that allow you not to do this. For example, depending on where the electricity meter is located, in the apartment or on the site, the result may be different.

If an electricity meter located inside an apartment burns out, then according to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, all responsibility and financial costs for installing, replacing and maintaining the meter are assigned to the owner of the apartment if the apartment is privatized. If an agreement was concluded with a homeowners association or housing cooperative, then this organization pays the financial costs.

If the meter is installed on the landing, then it is also the property of the apartment owner. According to Resolution 491, the common property of electrical networks includes electrical networks from the external border (limit of responsibility of the apartment building) to individual, common (apartment) electrical energy metering devices. Thus, an individual meter is not community property.

We talked in more detail about who should pay for the replacement of the electric meter in the corresponding article!

Claim for compensation for damage caused by a power surge

If the consumer’s demands are not voluntarily satisfied by the guilty party, then a claim should be prepared in court for damages.

The following information must be indicated in the claim:

the name of the court to which the person is filing the claim;
Full name of the plaintiff, residential address, you can also indicate a telephone number, email. mail;
cost of claim;
information about the defendant: for an individual - full name, residential address, as well as date and place of birth, place of work, one of the defendant’s identifiers, namely, SNILS, TIN, identification document details (series and number), for individual entrepreneur OGRNIP, series and the driver's license number and vehicle state registration certificate, if they are known to the plaintiff.
the document will be called a statement of claim;
in the reasoning part, in support of his claims, the plaintiff must set out all the circumstances of the case with references to evidence and indicate how his rights were violated, and also indicate the calculation of the amount that the plaintiff asks to recover from the defendant;

IMPORTANT: if the claim was not sent, you do not need to falsify evidence and attach a claim that was supposedly sent, but in fact was not sent, otherwise you may be subject to criminal liability.

In the operative part of the claim, the plaintiff must clearly formulate his demands, for example, to recover 5 thousand rubles from the defendant in favor of the plaintiff. to compensate for damage caused by voltage changes in the electrical network;
after this, a list of documents attached to the claim is listed (copies of inspection reports, photographs, conclusions of organizations, conclusions of a service center, etc.);
At the end of the claim, the date, signature of the plaintiff and the transcript of the signature are indicated.

ATTENTION: indicate in the text of the claim that you approached the defendant with a claim that was not satisfied. Attach a copy of the claim to the claim, order drawing up a claim in court from us, and also watch a video with advice from a lawyer

Old tube TVs

The adult generation remembers very well that in the USSR under every TV there was a plastic box called a “voltage stabilizer” that was sure to hum. The box, as a rule, was hot and necessarily heavy.

Of course, TVs could work without these boxes, but any deviation of the voltage in the outlet from 220V led to the image on the screen changing its brightness and saturation, and the picture itself changing in size. So almost everyone had stabilizers.

Such stabilizers worked using the principle of supersaturation of the transformer core and therefore were designed for a narrow range of load powers .

For black-and-white TVs with a power of 100-200 W, some models of stabilizers were produced, and for color TVs - completely different, more powerful ones. It was impossible to include a low-power load in a powerful stabilizer, because in this case, the very principle of its operation was violated and it ceased to perform its function.

Here, for example, is an excerpt from the instruction manual for the Soviet Vega-9 voltage stabilizer:

Allowable output power of the stabilizer: - minimum 100, - maximum 200 W.
Permissible input voltage fluctuations are 154…253 V. Stabilized output voltage is 198…231 V.
Efficiency - 84%. Stabilizer weight 3.4 kg.

As you can see, there was a limitation on the load power from below, i.e. It was impossible to turn on a small black-and-white TV with a power of less than 100 W in such a stabilizer. More precisely, it was possible to turn it on, but in this case one could forget about any voltage stabilization.

If you plug a load of more than 200W into Vega-9 (for example, a color TV of those times), then the stabilizer is guaranteed to overheat and the plastic case begins to melt and stink. I have seen such melted boxes from other people more than once.

By the way, today such old stabilizers for old TVs are called ferroresonant. Today's devices are often assembled using an autotransformer circuit with a large number of taps and triac switching between them.

Very fast overhaul in 3 years. Introduction. Part 1

So, here I want to tell you about my experience of almost independent major renovation of an apartment (two-room apartment on the 16th floor, 50m, II-68-01/16U-2/78). Condition after purchase. I wanted to burn it. everything was covered in cockroaches. It was autumn 2022, apartments were cheap. Was purchased for 6500.

After the purchase, it was decided to demolish all the walls, throw out all the floors, throw out the plumbing cabin, beat off the asphalt on the loggia (it’s there instead of screed), these and some other decisions doomed me and the girl to a LONG repair. The final cost came out to somewhere around 3 million (they didn’t save on materials, and almost didn’t save at all... the money ran out in the end...)

Dismantling and result (here the plumbing cabin is still in place)

Well, for now I’ll press stop and think about the continuation of the epic because... As a result, I gained enormous experience and I want to share it. What would you like to read about?

Where can the repair road lead? Balcony

One day I was flipping through Peekaboo and saw the post Balcony: 1.9 sq.m of joy. Or a major renovation of an open balcony. I immediately wanted to give a high five to my fellow sufferer and share how I myself accomplished the balcony repairs this year. Let me make a reservation right away: the Chukchi is not a builder, don’t throw your slippers too hard. I did everything on my own and many things for the first time, often breaking the sequence of actions.

One fine Saturday morning in August, I made myself some coffee and stood admiring the view from the window. And something struck me that it would be nice to put in order the railings of the balcony, which had not seen repairs since it was built. From the very beginning I didn’t take any photos: I didn’t expect to do a full-fledged renovation, and I didn’t think that I would write a post about it. This is what it looked like when I started stripping the metal.

Removed as much rust as possible from the metal. At the same time, I dismantled and threw out the already collapsed cabinet. I covered it with 3 layers of primer-enamel paint for rust 3-in-1 as an experiment, because before that I always applied the primer separately. Immediately the view changed.

Next, I peeled apart the mounting foam around the plastic bag. When installing the window 15 years ago, it was simply left in the sun and, accordingly, it fell into disrepair long ago, crumbling from one touch. Foamed everything again. At the same time, I decided to visually connect the concrete fence with the wall of the house and foamed the gap between them. The same fate befell the concrete floor slabs, which were in very good condition and did not require repairs. I foamed both the gap between my slab and the wall, and the gap between the slab of my neighbors above and the wall, making it look like a monolithic structure.

Then it was the tree’s turn. Calculated the dimensions of the railings and floorboards. I chose larch: floorboard 21*103*2600, edged board 150*30 for the railing. Everything had to be carried manually to the apartment. The floorboard arrived more or less dry, but all uneven. The edged board lay in the apartment for almost a month to dry. Everything was sanded down. Impregnated with antiseptic concentrate for several times. Large cracks on the front sides were repaired with wood putty. Painted with oil and wax to match the color of mahogany. I decided to fasten the railings together through a groove and glued them together with polymer glue. And in addition, I tightened it with a bolt in this place. From the bottom of the railing, I used a router to cut out a recess for the metal railing for a more reliable fixation.

Of course, I struggled with the floor. It took a lot of cutting to fit the fence and pulling it together (okay, all the boards except the first two had to be pulled together). And I didn’t succeed everywhere. I wanted to attach the boards to the joists using furniture brass screws. I drilled holes for them and drove them in with a drill without fanaticism. And when I started tightening it with the ratchet, their heads began to fly off. Either the larch turned out to be too hard for them, or the temperature outside was already low, or the quality of the screws was bad. But after the fifth screw in a row was torn off, I unscrewed everything back.

I filled the holes that were made, and tightened the boards with self-tapping screws for the floor. If I chose the brass ones so that they could be seen, then with the self-coring ones it turned out almost unnoticed. Where there were noticeable cracks from the boards that were not completely pulled together, I went over the wood with putty and two more layers of oil on top. I barely managed to do everything before the cold weather set in in October. Literally in the evening I finished the last layer of oil on the railings and floor, and the very next evening the temperature dropped below 0 and the balcony was covered with snow. Everything took about 2 months of leisurely activity in the evenings after work, when there was no rain. And in October we were very lucky with the weather in the last 2 weeks. Otherwise, this adventure would have to end in the spring. Overall, I'm pleased with the result, although it didn't come without some hiccups. Now I would do some things differently.

I applied the last layers of oil after these photos, so now it is even juicier, and traces of wood putty and the places where I painted the floorboards at different times are completely invisible. Already now, from the outside, the balcony stands out strongly against the general background with its whiteness)) But in the spring, it is still worth washing the facade walls from the dirt that has accumulated over the years, and varnishing the decorative putty.

This is how one innocent desire to paint rusty railings led to a large-scale renovation of the entire balcony))

Heating in a private house. Part 1

Hello, dear ones! Today I would like to talk about modernizing the heating system in a private house. I can’t fit everything into one post, so I’ll divide it into parts. In the first part I will look at the periphery, in the second I will go through the materials, in the third I will talk about assembling the boiler room.

Let me make a reservation right away that I am not a professional, I have not carried out thermal calculations, everything is based on personal experience and on the advice of a person who has assembled heating systems in more than a dozen cottages. Looking ahead, I will say that the system works, it works well. I will listen to criticism, but there won’t be much point in it, since the system is already assembled, there is no way to change anything.

If this were new construction, it would be much easier. I had to dismantle the old system and install the new one. The old system was extremely reliable, but very archaic. The only parameter that could be controlled was the temperature of the coolant on the boiler. Iron pipes, cast iron radiators...

First, we dismantle the floor on the first floor. We remove the linoleum, remove the OSB boards, remove the tongue and groove boards and joists, and clean it down to the concrete base.

Thanks to my father for his great help. We started this work on January 3. All winter I was engaged in work not related to heating - since the floor was removed, it was necessary to remove communications as much as possible into the new floor, so I completely redid the water supply and sewerage systems, and added electrical wiring. But this is not particularly relevant to this post, so let’s return to heating.

Base. Two-pipe system, radiators around the perimeter, on the external walls. Basically nothing special. There are 7 radiators in the base, divided into 2 arms for ease of installation. The main line leaves the boiler room with a 26x3 pipe and is divided through a tee into two arms of a 20x2 pipe. From the main line to the radiators there are bends with a 16x2 pipe. One caveat. On one of the arms there is a jumper made with a 16x2 pipe between the supply and return. This is necessary so that if the thermal heads close all the radiators, the pump does not go crazy from the inability to pump the circuit.

First floor. Radiator heating using a radiant scheme. That is, the main line (26x3 pipe) from the boiler room comes to the distribution manifold, and from the manifold to each radiator there is its own pipe (16x2). The advantages of this system are that there is a single pipe going from the collector to the radiator, there are no connections that will be walled up in the screed, and it is possible to turn off each radiator separately. Picture from the Internet.

By the way, I strongly recommend that before pouring the screed, you take very detailed pictures of the location of the pipes with a tape measure. It would be very disappointing to break a pipe, for example, when installing thresholds.

Second floor. Radiator heating according to a radial scheme, the same as on the first floor. On the second floor we had to cut a screed, lay pipes from the collector to the radiators in it and fill it.

Bathrooms. There are heated floors in the bathrooms on the first and second floors. Moreover, it is made separately from the warm floor of the first floor, that is, the main line from the boiler room (pipe 20x2) comes to the distribution manifold in the bathroom of the second floor, and from the manifold - the circuit to the bathrooms. This was done so that, for example, in the off-season or in the summer, you could turn off the heated floors in the entire house, but leave the heated floors in the bathrooms.

Both the warm floor and radiator wiring are made of Pex-Al-Pex metal-plastic pipe. All connections are made using press fittings. Rems EcoPress press pliers with replaceable nozzles for 16,20,26 mm with TH profile were purchased. Cool stuff.

Before laying the underfloor heating pipes, extruded polystyrene foam 50 mm thick was laid. Even though the base is heated, I still wanted to cut it off, since the temperature in the base is not high, 16-17 degrees is enough. In addition, extrusion had to raise the floor level. After laying all communications, a semi-dry screed was poured. Its main advantage is the speed of installation. In 3-4 hours the team filled 90 sq.m. In general, it is a good technology, the floor is quite flat and does not require additional leveling.

All radiators with thermal heads. The solution is old, but reliable and quite affordable. Allows you to maintain a stable temperature in each individual room.

In the next part I’ll tell you about the choice of materials and if I forgot to write something in this part. I will try to prepare the next parts as quickly as possible.