This summer I managed to get Seaward to loan me the latest state of the art portable appliance testing machine, the Seaward Apollo 600 to trial and give an honest opinion of; a challenge set because of my low opinion of the product. They felt I was wrong.
I’d sat in a meeting with the bods from Seaward for altogether different reasons and told them quite bluntly how I didn’t rate the Apollo series of machines… how wrong they were to prove me
A few weeks with this revolutionary new tester and they were proving me wrong; I’d listened to too much hearsay over the web and hadn’t used the machine first hand.
Seaward Apollo 600
Seaward tell us that the new Apollo series will change the way you manage test and inspection and I would now agree with them, especially as we went out and bought a 600 almost immediately, and are just about to invest in a second.
The Apollo 600, which I had for review, allows the PAT technician to easily integrate risk assessment into their work, utilising the guidelines of the Code of Practice, 4th Edition allowing for a more managed PAT testing programme for their clients.
The ‘600’ also has the added bonus of an on-board digital camera which is a huge time saving bonus not just on the job but when producing reports. I know myself how frustrating incorporating photographs into my reports is, having to download them from my iPhone then upload them into the software – it’s a painstakingly slow process. Now the 600 can take the photograph in real-time, record it to the asset and then download it as part of the full report – that saved me 15 minutes administration time straight away, and about an hour a week – that’s priceless. Dependent on how you value your time the 600 will pay for itself in 12-18 months with this feature alone.
Have you ever been in that situation where you fail an appliance only to find the client still using it? With the Apollo 600 you can take a photograph of the failed appliance, then if they continue to use it and have an accident, when the investigation comes along not only will the report show your photograph but your records too.
The Apollo 500 is a slightly cheaper option, but for the sake of a couple of hundred pounds extra you can have the all singing all dancing 600; the 500 doesn’t have features like the camera which we feel make it unique.
We’ve heard stories of people saying “but the camera on the Apollo 600 means I won’t be able to take it into sensitive areas”; that shouldn’t be a reason to not buy the 600, for the benefit of your business, just a reason to have an alternative option such as the Seaward 100 or 250+.
But, despite all these great features what I found to be the biggest benefit of the Apollo series is point to point measuring of fixed appliances and additionally how Seaward allows the Apollo’s to be compatible with our favoured software from Simply Pats.
This article has been written by Richard Ayre, of DRA PAT Testing, based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
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