Price range for a re-wire

[Andrew Mawson]

Embarking on a whole house re-fit - moving out, having kitchen extension, interior wall demolition, full re-plumb and re-wire and trying to get budgetary prices together.

We are talking four bedroom fairly small detached farmhouse in East Sussex mainly dating from 1900 but a small bit dating from 1760. Reasonable quality but not opulent switches sockets etc (MK Logic Plus range) Three rings (up, down & kitchen) three lighting circuits (up & down & outside), mainly recessed ceiling lights and a few uplighters, three pir floods outside and re-connect to existing farmyard 'street lights wired in swa. Two sub mains emanate from the switch board to outbuildings in swa and again need reconnecting. A small bathroom and en-suite to have under floor electric heating.

Any sparks (Adam???) care to give a guesstimate of low to high costs I might expect?

AWEM

[Tim Watts]

The light fittings can sway it wildly - as I'm finding out right now. However, for any given "look", there's usually a cheaper option that the one the wife finds, or google finds first (lighting is a real rip off market).

May I suggest a smattering of empty boxes next to sockets with conduit drops (20mm oval is fine) which makes comms drops later easier?

Cheers

Tim

[GlowingBlueMist]

No prices from my end but along with Tim Watts suggestion would be to include running plastic conduits terminating with standard boxes for future internet connections. Run them all into a box hidden away in a central closet or basement and do not forget to have them run one conduit from the central box over to where the cables enter the house.

While you might not use them now, later it would be very easy to have internet wires run in the plastic conduits with out a need of further disruption.

[Tim Watts]

Although that will cost a good deal more to route back to a central location and you'll be using round conduit (= deeper chases) and quite possibly 25mm to have any chance of pulling stuff through, unless you can leave access points at some of the bends.

The way I did it was oval drops from the floor above, on the assumption the floor was easy to lift.

[Stewith]

Without looking at the property, factoring in the interlinked smoke alarms, insulation boards for the underfloor heating, I think you should be looking at range between

4.5 - 6K.

[ARWadsworth]

A tough one. Not mentioning how many recessed lights does not help:-)

Assuming that the sparks was only providing the power for UFH and not supplying it then probably £4k + VAT would be at a starting price. And then it rises depending on led lighting and lowers again if you exclude the optional VAT.

[dennis]

I drove past an electrical place Tuesday (I think) near the A34 west of Brum and there was a big notice (15 foot) saying complete house rewires £1995. It could be an old ad or maybe there are cheap labour places using substandard apprentices.

[A.Lee]

Anyone can do it for £2000. There is a company near to me who do a full rewire in 2 days. Use the cheapest sockets and fittings from, say, Screwfix, or other cheap suppliers, get the cheapest £50 consumer unit, surface run your cables, and it is easily possible to do it for £2000 and make a good profit. You are unlikely to get good workmanship though, the one local to me do their testing in 15 minutes. It would take me 2 hours. They skimp and cut corners everywhere.

Alan.

[djornsk]

Try the mybuilder website - you post details of the work required and tradesmen come back with offers. Six months ago we had an empty 3 bed house rewired for £1300 excluding both the cost of any non-basic lamp units and plastering - all fully certificated and above board with vat receipt.

j

[ARWadsworth]

Or maybe they are not fitting downlights, UFH, connecting up submains and are only putting in 2 double sockets per room. They probably forgot to mention the prices of any extras. And they will be using the local wholsalers sockets and switches (nothing wrong with them but they cost a lot less than MK)

You would piss a 3 bed house in a week including the replastering on such a spec and still make a nice profit.

[ARWadsworth]

2 hours to test your own rewire?

[ARWadsworth]

at 3mph below the speed limit just to be sure.

[A.Lee]

Yes, I dont see why not. Even if doing it as you install each circuit, there will be around 2 hours total. If however you do a R1/R2/Zs at the point you think is the furthest, rather than at each point, then you can reduce the time significantly, as well as doing IR tests by testing the whole install at the tails/main switch. The same with the ring tests, many just do an end to end r, then a Zs at where they think is the furthest point. Doing the full test with cross connection, test at each outlet etc. takes significantly longer.

People dont even bother doing a Zs test, they just add Ze to R1+R2, this saves maybe 2 minutes a circuit, but I'd rather do the physical test, as I'm sure you do, rather than rely on a possibly wrong R1+R2 reading.

Alan.

[ARWadsworth]

For an installation certificate you are wasting a lot of time.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Very rough ballpark figure - about £100 per socket/switch/light/etc, including making good but excluding redecoration, lights themselves, and extras such as your submains and laying UFH. Having the house empty and not having to leave everything in a working state each night can make a significant difference over having to clear up and leave everything working and safe whilst having kids running around.

Won't be able to reconnect existing circuits without inspecting/testing them and fixing any faults found.