How much to wire a house?

So you don't know about everything then? Wonders will never cease!

I suppose you would be looking at £1500 for the cheap job (ie couple of sockets per room, no smoke detectors, no tv or telephone points and the minimum 17th edn CU) rising up to whatever they think they can getaway with for a decent amount of sockets, TV and telephone points, smokes, extractor fans etc.

I quoted £2000 per house a few years ago for a row of 3 bed town houses (new builds) then stuck on £1750 of extras (ie burgular alarm, 27 downlights, electric shower on the top floor and so on)

But as you pointed out, it is only a "how long is a piece of string question"

It's worse than that. String cost scales linearly with length of string.

So what changes the cost of a house re-wire? Is it speccing better components that puts the price up, asking for more bits and pieces, state of the house (i.e. plaster off and undecorated is easy) or the awkwardness of the house construction?

More bits and pieces certainly bumps the price up - usually by more in labour costs than material costs. Imagine a hallway with just 1 pendant light and the same hallway with 4 downlights. If you shove cheap downlights in at £8 a throw the labour charge will cost more than the £32 worth of lights and a bit of T&E.

Unoccupied, no plaster on the walls and no ceilings certainly make for a cheaper rewire (like newbuilds) than an occupied house with the furniture and carpets.

Our experience is that multiway switching can increase the complexity and cost significantly, both on the materials and labour side.

Not offering the electrician a cup of tea can increase costs dramatically.

Yes, so be sure to bring your battery-operated kettle until the kitchen's done :-)

I think the norm this side of the pond is a couple of days for a couple of people on a new-build (i.e. easy access to wall spaces), which might give you an idea of labour costs - and maybe you can estimate materials costs to add onto that (and add something for "profit")

cheers

Jules

Thata miniu really.

Depending on how much alarm cable, cat 5 and thermostat wires you want, it can take a lot longer than that..also dong it invisibly is a bugger. One electrican spent two days in an old house running a single ring..and that's without the faceplates added.

DIYing it would pay well, per day.

Take advantage of any spaces to run cat5e in, no need to terminate it if you dont need it now. In future you probably will - and to fit it now costs little, to fit it later costs lots.

NT

TBH, I didn't factor that kind of thing in. I think of re-wiring (or wiring in the first place) as meaning just mains (and Steve didn't mention to the contrary). Not everyone needs network, phone, t'stat etc. so yes, those would be extra IMHO.

I'm not sure they've even come under the remit of an electrician over here, but be done by phone engineers, HVAC techs etc. as/when needed.

Was that with access to the wall space? I can understand issues if they were fishing cables through existing walls and hit a major snag, but I'm amazed it took that long otherwise.

cheers

Jules

Shouldn't be a problem with a 17th ed split CU

Thanks for the reply, I had estimated £3000 for the work and I'm looking for tenders around that value. One quote was however so far from that that I thought I had better check my reality. However since the bloke in question made it clear today that he wants £600 to fit a four-pole 30KW rotary isolator, I suspect the rest of the quote is inflated in proportion.

I read that as kV and thought it was bloddy cheap!!

Owain

I would imagine that if they quote £x for Y sockets then they'll do it in plastic conduit on the surface as that'd be quicker and easier than burying the wires. [g]

I'm sure that if they wanted a bodge job the average punter would diy

tim

There is a time and place for cables in trunking. This is not one of them.

What wall space? We build houses over here, not glorified garden sheds :-)

Pete