Cost of house rewire..

[Spike]

Our little terraced house is in need of a rewire. Weve still got a 1960's style system, with a ring that has not enough sockets, and old 30amp wire fuses..

Now, the plan is to sell the house at some point in the near future.

Our plan was to state to potential buyers, "The house is worth X, but it needs a rewire, which is going to cost about Y, so the price is X-Y"

Not having sold a house before, is it the sort of thing that is a) going to put people off buying in the first place, and b) possibly cause problems as far as buyers getting a mortgage etc?..

Is there a standard rate for house wiring (ie, around x per power socket and x per ligh fitting"?...

Any pointers gratefully received....

[John Rumm]

You and a good proportion of the UK housing stock then ;-)

In which case it sounds like SEP!

I would keep schtum and let them work it out for themselves. A 60's install will probably be PVC wiring, which if it has not been abused is quite possibly still safe and servicable (an insulation resistance check would confirm). Leave adding more sockets and updating CUs etc to the new owners.

a) unlikely - many places they look at will be the same. A survey may make comments like "a lack of sockets was noted in some areas, and most of the wiring is hidden from view - hence we recommend a report be obtained from a bla bla...."

b) Unless a report highlights some immediately dangerous situation then again unlikely.

(if you had a 1920's lighting circuit with rubber insulated cables, then that would be a different matter!)

Depends on many factors like how easy it is to work on the house, who does the making good after etc.

[Richard Polhill]

"Spike" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Yeah it would be better to either get it done or say nothing. While the wiring could certainly do with replacing you are not obliged to ensure it is up to date to sell. The buyer (outside Scotland) is responsible for getting a survey and it is up to them to decide how much they want to know beforehand and how much they want to knock off if they feel it needs rewiring.

Being right in the middle of the exchanging contracts stage of moving I have looked at about 20 houses this summer and I think every one of them could be regarded as 'needing' a rewire. It is then my responsibility to use this to negotiate a lower price if necessary.

If anyone ask when it was rewired you should tell the truth; I'm not advocating dishonesty, it's just that you're not obliged to tell prospective buyers what you think needs doing; nor suggest a discount.

I don't suspect you'll get anywhere by rewiring it to sell. IME new wiring is not regarded as a selling point so if you did it the house would probably sell for the same price as if you didn't.

Yeah it is something like that. You can always get an electrician around for a free estimate. Estimates should be free and no-obligation so it'll cost you nothing. That way if a buyer tries to knock, say £5000 off the asking price because 'it needs rewiring, dunnit' and you have an estimate for £1800 from an electrician then you'll know the buyer is taking the p1ss and negotiate from a position of knowledge.

[dave stanton]

Around Worcs, Npower or whoever they are these days charge about £2800 - £3500 for typical semi and thats surface wiring in mini trunking. No chasing in.

Dave

[AlexW]

An electrician I know charges £40 to £45 pound per point on a full rewire. Or £20-£25 pound per hour. Area is east cheshire and the variance is for factors like travel time, awkwardness of cable runs etc.

HTH,

Alex.

[woodglass]

We got our last house cheaper than the asking price because we were told that it needed a rewire.

Because we were told this we offered 10% less than the asking price.

I'm a qualified electrician, so re-wiring was easy & cheap !.

Why tell any potential buyer that there's not enough sockets - surely this is subjective ?.

CG...

[PeteZahut]

John Rumm wrote

What is an insulation resistance check exactly, how is it done and what does it show? Pete

[John Rumm]

It is a way of assessing the state of the cabling in a property even if you can't actually see much of it.

It is a type of electrical resistance test carried out with a an insulation resistance tester. Unlike a multimeter that measures resistance with a very small voltage, this tester will stick 500 or

1000V across your wiring. It is also capable of measuring very high resistances (i.e. several hundred megger Ohms). (The testers are sometimes called "Meggers" since Avo produce a range of products under this title)

To do the test you first disconnect the wires from the CU, and also unplug/disconnect everything from the circuit. That way you are seeing just the wires and any sockets etc. You then measure the resistance between L & N, L & E, and N & E. Naturally you would expect to see an infinite resistance between each since none of the wires ought to be connected to each other.

What can in fact happen is that at the high test voltage, you can see the effects of any cable damage, water ingress, etc, since the insulation can break down and start to conduct. A small amount of conductance (i.e. a very high rather than an infinite resistance measurement) is allowable, but the more you get, the more problems it tends to indicate. (IIRC 500K ohms is the minimum, but many folks would consider less than 2MOhm to be pretty dodgy)

[PeteZahut]

So if there was a tiny nick in the cable somewhere it would show up? Could this pinpoint the nick or just say there is a potential problem? What if a nail had hit the cable, not splitting the live and neutral wire but exposing a microdot of copper, for example. The reason I ask this is my father had one of his bedroom walls battened and boarded with new plasterboard and while they were doing it they tripped the leccy, one of them went in the loft and wiggled the wire about near to where he was nailing to see if he could get it to trip again but couldnt. I thought it was strange but could be worrying about nothing. Pete

[John Rumm]

It might - depends a bit on if moisture could get in among other things.

If you find a circuit is giving low insulation resistance readings then you may be able to pinpoint where the fault lies (assuming it is a single fault and not just as a result of all the cable being past it), by disconnecting bits of the circuit and thus narrowing down which segments the fault is in.

In itself not likely to cause a major problem. However if the surroundings got a little damp then you could start to see earth leakage from a cable that might sensitise or trip a RCD. Quite often a megger test might indicate this sort of problem. Especially if the readings from L to E and N to E were noticably different from each other.

You may well find this sort of fault with an insulation resistance test.

Did they trip a MCB or an RCD though?

[dave]

Are you still allowed to re-wire a house now these Prescot laws are in place?

[John Rumm]

Yup, just ignore the daft git, everyone else does! ;-)

(More correctly the answer is still "yes", but you ought to pay the money, submit a building notice first, and then jump throught whatever hoops the council requires regarding inspections etc).

[Doctor Drivel]

There is certain work you can do on your own house without inspection or any need to notify anyone, you just go and do it. Such as replacing parts of a ring, replacing sockets but NO work in wet rooms, etc. Anything above this and a building notice is required. With a building notice you can do the lot. The problem is the charge from the council. Some vary in costs from very expensive to very reasonable.

Once the charging has settled down (many councils never got their acts together despite warning), and say it is £100, then that is still worth if you totally rewire your house. Two visits: first fix and second fix. If you are just installing another ring, then it may be more cost effective to get in the local "registered" electrician, who self certifies the job.

[John Rumm]

You can do some very minor work in kitchens and bathrooms like changing a broken accessory with another like for like.

Some "wet" rooms such as bedrooms that include a basin or shower do not seem to get included in "bathroom" definitions either.

For a full rewire is is less of an issue, since compared to the cost an hassle of that it is not *that* expensive and will represent a much smaller cost than paying someone who can self certify to do it. Obviously on smaller jobs it would frequently be a major hassle and cost.

This is one area where you can see it all fall about in a heap. For the DIYer who decides that he will put in a notice to rewire a house, but plans to do it room by room as they are decorated, you would in effect be looking at two visits per room, plus a final overall test. No doubt the sparks will be charging the council full whack (and then some) per visit. If the council is working on a fixed price, then someone is going to get stuffed with a big bill.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out in practice.

Indeed. A system that punishes the diligent while leaving free reign for the cowboy.

[dennis]

You did start this job before the regulations came into force didn't you? No need to comply then is there?

[AlexW]

Thought that the grace period on work in progress was March 31st this year ... did that change?

Alex.

[Paul]

We just got quoted £2700 for a rewire including chasing from Allen and Bocking in Norwich and thats for a 2 bed bungalow.

I plan to do the chasing and then pay a sparky to do the cabling is this allow with the new Part P regs?

Paul

[John Rumm]

Can't see why not...