Been quoted what sounds like an eye-watering amount to an outbuilding so checking in here.

It’s for a 40m run of cable (armoured) for electricity and CAT6E to an outbuilding. Probably involves drilling a hole in a couple of walls (one plasterboard, one brick) and installing the cable (not recessed into the ground). What do you reckon?

Alternatively, any electricians want a job doing it in the Southeast please?

I ran my own cable and then got it connected up by someone who knew what they were doing. 35m, 10mm, 3 core SWA was £110 delivered.

What did the person who “knew what they were doing” cost please?

I did exactly this to connect my new garden office.maybe only 35m of armoured laid in 40mm plastic waste pipe duct (alongside sw drainpipe) trench capped with broken slabs. Same for cat 6 cable but I was told they should not run in the same duct. £130 for armoured cable and £40 for cat 6 £50   For waste pipe and couplers

What did the person who “knew what they were doing” cost please?

Cup of tea and a biscuit. BIL is a sparky….

I paid £630 for 7m of cable + complete wiring of a garage ie sockets, lighting, consumer unit, security lights.

A lot will depend on your existing consumer unit. Do you have a spare way to run it from? Are the rest of the electrics up to spec? There may be a load more work to get it connected up if you want it done properly. You could do some of the donkey work yourself, eg digging the trench, laying some conduit. Two runs and ideally proper conduit not water pipe. You’ll need to get a friendly spark to let you do this though.

I think I spent about £600 (parts only) on wiring up the workshop (50m cable run). I ran 25mm steel conduit with 10mm cable inside that and then twin outdoor grade CAT-5 separately. The drum of cable (100m) was about £200 IIRC and the conduit was about £4/m delivered, which was about £200. Then junction boxes, new consumer unit etc etc on top. Total cable run inc was over 50m, so had to buy a 100m drum and then ending up giving away the 40m left over to a sparky working on next door’s house. Also 10mm junction blocks only came in packs of 50, so he got 46 of those!

Some photos in this thread: https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/power-to-shed-what-piping-hose-etc/

On top of that I think Building Control charged £150 for the electrics to be signed off (I did all the work and alanl, of STW parish, helped with advice for regs etc).

There is a spare way for the electricity. I don’t know what it means by “up to spec” it’s for a new building.

Thanks to everyone who put their costs up. Sounds like I’m being quoted around what it should cost.

Sounds like I could save some cash putting the cable in place, but not sure I can do a good enough job.

I’ve been quoted roughly £1200 for:

– 25m of armoured cable for electricity.

– 30m of armoured Cat6

– An ethernet socket

Sounds pretty steep. They will have to drill through a couple of walls, but I’m having a hard time believing it’s going to be more than a day’s work. Materials don’t look like they’ll cost more than £200, even if you try really, really hard.

Any opinions?

Once you factor in burying or clipping the cable it becomes very time consuming.

If someone is getting paid to do it you are also paying for the sign off.

dont mean to sound a **** but perhaps try one (or a combination of all) of the following

1. get another quote?

2. Ask him for a breakdown?

3. Ask what their hourly rate is and take risk away from them and go for a time and line approach?

If they are VAT registered that will bump the price up. Its hard to price without seeing it and admittedly its been a while since I was in that game, but it without seeing it but its probably doable in a day. Hourly rate of between £25 & £40 (depending on location and person doing it). Travelling time and costs?

Looks like they might think it will take more than a day, bearing in mind they will have seen the job, What will they be fitting the  power cable to in the outhouse? more time and money for lights, sockets etc, testing and certifying?

edit – the word the swear filter blanked out wasnt a really bad word and i didnt expect it to be even closely close to being filtered, no offence intended

@turin no offense taken. The work is being done as part of building the outbuilding. So the quote is from the people who build the outbuilding. I’m assuming they subcontract the work to one of their electricians.

Not aware of what the hourly rate is, as it’s all part of the job. But it “sounds” like it’ll all be done in a day.

I’ve already asked a local electrician to quote. So I’m waiting on that. I’m not sure what is and isn’t reasonable for this stuff if I’m honest. I know skilled electrical labour costs money, but £1200 I’d have thought would cover a few days’ worth of labour.

The breakdown I have from the original quote just shows 3 items. One for the electrical line install, the ethernet cable install and for an ethernet socket. There is no burial of the line in the quote. Just laying and clipping the cables. They’ve told me I can dig the trench if I want to bury the cable and that will save a lot of money.

The costs for the outbuilding include sockets and lights so there’s no breakdown for that. It’s just an option you tick along with the lighting you select. The lighting includes fitting a panel light, hood and deck lights, and an external light attached to a PIR. There are 6 electrical sockets in total and you get to choose where they go. The cost also includes a part P certification.

If you are going to be paying a spark to dig its gonna be very expensive!!

@nwmlarge for sure! Which is why I’ll be digging the trench.

£250+mats a day round here

Is £1000 excessive for materials then? I’m guessing it will be something like:

30m armoured cable for electricity

30m armoured cat6e for internet

Sockets

Ethernet patch panel

Something to connect to the fuse box

That’s it? Looks like 25m of armoured cable is around £50, so I’m not sure where the money is going.

What current rating has been specified for the out building?

That will determine the cable size and cost…

I’m pretty inexperienced at this sort of thing, but how would you figure that out?

From what you say, it sounds like the outhouse comes already wired and will need a small consumer unit in there and Im sure you mentioned that there is a spare way in the consumer unit.

I think the local guy will be a lot cheaper than the £1200, which might be down to the company installing the outhouse applying a tax for those people who aren’t prepared to have a look round. Im guessing the overall cost of the outhouse isnt cheap and they may be looking to make a little bit of easy cash and they find that most people just nod their heads?

There will be a little bit more to be added to the list of materials, like glands and clips etc but they are not going to cost much more than £10.

If its only going to have some sockets and led lights, worst case a kettle 3kW and a 2kW heater, expected total load 6kW  or 26A for a run of 30m you would probably be okay with 4mm csa even go to 6mm csa (which is overkill) and the easiest way is to get 3 core armoured cable which a very quick google comes in at £2.08/m for 4mm and  £2.3/m for 6mm, exterior ethernet comes in at around £2.5/m so assume £5/m combined  gives ballpark £150 for cables, even add another £50 for accessories and faff (which is vastly excessive) and allow another £50 “profit” for the guy if they are supplying it (thats being overgenerous and I dont want to start a sub-discussion over what is acceptable or not :-)) so thats £250 add £25 for an mcb/rcbo at the consumer unit £275 absolute tops, more realistically closer to £200, with a little bit of profit for him

From what has been described about the installation its a day, even allow 2 days to include travelling, part p blah blah at £250 a day brings it up to £700. which is more in line with what footflaps mentioned. If its as easy as a one day job then its going to be closer to £500.

Worst case add the chunk for the government of VAT makes it an absolute max at between £600 and £840.

standard caveat etc the actual job *might* be much more complex for whatever reason and also I haven’t seen it  etc

which is more in line with what footflaps mentioned.

Mine was expensive as it was a 50A supply! I have a 30A welder supply, 10kW of heating etc. 100m drum of 10mm T&E is about £200 alone, conduit was another £200. I did all the installation, so labour was £0.

apologies, I was meaning to refer to Mr FunkyDunc. Which I know is still different to what the OP is wanting done but its a very big ballpark afterall 🙂

@turin thanks for the detailed response. I really appreciate it.

I’ve also asked the outbuilding company to supply a breakdown for the installation cost. You’re right, it’s not cheap. I’m happy to pay what they’re asking for the actual building because they’ve got a reputation for being good at what they do, and it seems like good quality work. So no problems there. It’s just the cabling quote that sounds excessive. Maybe they pass the burden of dealing with subcontractors onto the customer and charge a hefty markup for essentially co-ordinating that work.

This is the work they may have to do:

We run a cable from the fusebox in the house to the fusebox (consumer unit) installed in the garden. Our surveyors will also look to see if you have any spare capacity in your existing fusebox, or if you’ll need a sub consumer unit installed. The quote will include a part P certificate sign off by our fully qualified electricians.

– I have spare capacity in my existing fusebox.

– The ethernet cable will follow the same route as the electrical cable.

Basically it’s about 6m inside the house through a plasterboard wall before going through the external brickwork. It then goes into the garden where it will be clipped to a fence (thought I am thinking about recessing it), takes a right turn, and then goes into the outbuilding. The total cabling run per cable is around 25-28m.

Either way, £400-£600 is money well worth saving. Worst case I could drill the holes, lay the cabling and see if someone is happy to connect and certify it for me.

no problem, happy to help.

I think you could be right in them adding a big mark up on, or they just throw that number in and hope to balance them all out over the long term?

If you have the cash id get an independent man or woman in to do it rather than them. if they are friendly or really busy they might be prepared to let you do some of the work.

If your going to buy the cable yourself, id get whoever is going to install or connect it to give you the distance, or add 10%, to the total for unknowns and radius of the bends etc

Got a breakdown of the costs and the materials cost for the cabling is 10x what I can get it for.

You read that right, 10x.

They’ll do the wiring to a consumer unit in the outbuilding and supply a dead test certificate. I’m not sure what this means for my electrician though. Can he/she do a P Certificate if they’ve not wired the consumer unit themselves?