I am buying a house, and have made enquiries about the electrical system. I was told that a previous electrician had noticed a new 'Consumer Unit' had been recently fitted, under the stairs. Would an electrician fit a consumer unit to old wiring, or does this mean that the wiring itself would have been replaced/ upgraded? Any advice would be appreciated.
It just means that it is more likely to have more recent wiring. There's certainly no guarantee. You'd hope that no-one would stick a new consumer unit in whilst not bothering to replace the disintegrating rubber wiring, but you can't be sure. At least the rubber would be safer with the RCD (or more likely not work at all with all the leakage).
Christian.
It could be any combination of new or old wiring. Best to have it checked properly.
Have it checked. Be warned by my experience :-
I did my own survey when buying my house a few years back. It all looked ok - new sockets, new switches and modern PVC cable coming from the consumer unit.
It was only after purchasing that I found that this PVC wiring extended about 3 feet under the floor boards before being connected into the old rubber shit using 'chocolate block' connectors.
How pissed off was I?
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Always wise to remove a random switch, socket and ceiling rose to see what's behind.
How I wish I had - but you know how it is when you don't want to embarrass people?
Actually, the whole buying of the house was a bit like that since I had the 'cheek to make an offer'.
They turned me down flat. I upped my offer - they told me to get lost
- "How dare I make an offer".
Problem was that they wanted me to say that I had not found the house via an estate agent, which I had.
Doing this, of course, would mean they saved about £2000 on fees. No problem to me so I suggested we, in effect, share the saving £1000 each.
Mr Vendor had different thoughts and wanted the £2000 to himself. Turns out later he was a bit bitter anyway as I think his wife wanted out of the relationship. But certainly seemed to be one of those unfortunates we all meet at some point in life who is not going to let anyone 'get one over' on them, even if they are not.
So they found another buyer through the agent, also offering less than asking price, something I couldn't understand since they would eventually have netted less than my original offer, but hey! I was the bastard who dared to make an offer!
To cut the story short, I eventually called the agent and offered the asking price (first time I had ever done that in my life), knowing that they would have to accept my higher offer on the advice of the agent.
I got the house, but the guy was incredibly pissed off that it was me who got it. Strangely, his wife was fine about it.
They left it in a shocking state and locked me out of 'my' new garage (which was still full of their stuff).
BUT, all this sort of thing is nothing if not good experience and at the end of the day, I've got a nice house, albeit with dodgy electrics.
Rob
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