Yes, I know I could just ring a sparky and ask but they usually want to come and spend an hour looking at it and then give a detailed quote, we’re just after a rough guess so wondered if anyone here had had similar done recently?
.
19th century cottage near Peebles
Big downstairs room plus small kitchen and bathroom and a little entrance hall
2 decent size bedrooms upstairs plus a little landing.
Needs complete rewiring, everything needs changed.
Just lights and sockets required in most rooms. Cooker is likely to be gas so nothing needed for that. Emersion heater looks new but might need to be moved. Power shower and heater required for the bathroom.
Lots of other work to do so no need to worry about trashing anything else like the plaster.
.
Best guesses?
Thanks.

I would say anything between £5K and £8K.

why not do most of it yourself once it is isolated? i.e run cables, terminate fittings etc

sparky in for the bigger jobs like cu and then test and signoff

Even though you have a gas cooker I suggest you put power to it too.
You never know, it migh come in handy. Especially if you will sell at a later stage.

I could do cable runs and things myself, as long as I had a professional to show me what went where, would save paying him to do the basic stuff. Things like calculating what size cables and connecting it all up to a fuse box would be well beyond me though!

I’d not connect and sign off a job that someone else had wired. How do you know they are clipped/supported properly, no damage to them and that they are in appropriate safe zones? Who pays for fault finding if a cable is damaged?

Anyway, is it lathe and plaster walls or solid stone strapped and plasterboarded?

Things like calculating what size cables and connecting it all up to a fuse box would be well beyond me though!

Takes five minutes to look up. But… unless you have a mate who’s a sparky you’ll find it hard to get someone to sign it off.

My guess is £5K (welsh pounds).

I have just had a 1950’s 3 bed semi done for 2.5k, that was supplying all switches and sockets plus a new consumer unit. We also had aerial points in every room including a booster, and 3 new strip lights in the garage.

The other 2 quotes we had were 2.7k and 3k.

Takes five minutes to look up.

I often wonder why apprentices bother to spend 4 years at college when they can learn everything on YouTube in 5 mins.

Op, don’t worry about the safety of your family or any visitors, just fling it in yourself. As long as the lights work it must be safe…right?

Seems reasonable Mr Mix, whereabouts are you? I guess it might vary a bit from area to area.
It’s solid stone walls, but likely to go for timber studs with plasterboard and insualation so everything would be very easily accessible. Anything I did would be easily visible for him to check

I’m North Leicestershire, I think our sparky would have charged us nearer to 3k but he owed us one.

I have just had a 1950’s 3 bed semi done for 2.5k, that was supplying all switches and sockets plus a new consumer unit. We also had aerial points in every room including a booster, and 3 new strip lights in the garage.

We had very similar done for £3K in watford area, hertfordshire – concrete, ex council, all switches, sockets, wiring, consumer unit, light fittings, with extra capacity for future extensions.

Shouldn’t be much more than that.

very easy to size cables if you know what type of breakers are protecting them

some folks overcomplicate things

also most apprentices spend 1 day per week/fortnight at college, that hardly amounts to 4 years.

the savings to be made by diy more than compensates for the extra cost of slightly overrating some cables

And who will sign it off for you?

I’d not connect and sign off a job that someone else had wired. How do you know they are clipped/supported properly, no damage to them and that they are in appropriate safe zones? Who pays for fault finding if a cable is damaged?

Out of curiosity, if you do some work for me how do I know that you have clipped and supported cables properly and not damaged them?

In the way that every time served professional tradesman works.
In accordance with whatever regs he needs to adhere to.

In the way that every time served professional tradesman works.
In accordance with whatever regs he needs to adhere to.

Didn’t answer the question. How can you prove that you haven’t accidentally damaged a cable during the installation?

“Stop asking tricky questions” is not the right answer.

18 weeks per year in blocks of 5 or 6 weeks.
Once your oversized cables are all fitted and connected how do you determine if the supply authority earth is of an appropriate impedance? That’s right, you get someone with appropriate test equipment and training to do it for you. Like I said before, it’s easy to get something powered up but it doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Oh and cable sizes/types are selected depending on various factors none of which is the size of protective device. Back to YouTube I guess…

Flaperon, your welcome to watch me work if you want? You can measure the distance between cable clips and do a wee vid for everyone else 🙂

Roughly similar property, area and size as OP – rural Fife, early 19th century house, 3 bed/kitchen/1 small bathroom + downstairs wetroom/1 reception room. No immersion heater or electric shower, but everything else could do with refreshing. We were quoted somewhere between £5-6k by a good mate, although we are maybe slightly skewed towards the more expensive end due to our proximity to St Andrews and its ludicrous hourly rates.

And on a more serious note, a look at my test results by someone experienced enough to interpret them will prove that the cables are undamaged. We also get an annual niceic inspection where they pick jobs at random and go to inspect them. If you had any concerns about work I’m sure they would arrange a “random” check.

To find someone you can trust take local recommendations and get someone that takes pride in their work.

murf – Member
I often wonder why apprentices bother to spend 4 years at college when they can learn everything on YouTube in 5 mins.

Op, don’t worry about the safety of your family or any visitors, just fling it in yourself. As long as the lights work it must be safe…right?

Exactly. 4 years on an electrical engineering HND 35 years ago and yearly regs update courses have obviously been a waste of my time.
I could have bummed around and learned it all off YouTube in a jiffy!

TBH I don’t get involved in house bashing these days as I’m more big industrial stuff, but still get asked about sorting out other peoples DIY bodge work. I point them to a bloke I know locally who is top notch but not bargain bucket.

And who will sign it off for you?

Building control.

Just had my workshop signed off by them which I wired up inc re-wiring the house distribution board. All passed bar a faulty RCD (brand new), without any issues, Faulty RCD was swapped out (I had a spare, so that wasn’t a big issue). Wiring to the regs isn’t hard, just follow the excellent IET on site guide…

3 bed detached completely rewired here for £1800. Moving heater and shower work would likely add quite a bit to that so, £3-4k?

But make sure you get the latest version, amendment 3 is now out and has a yellow cover. I’ve got 56 in the boot of my car to drop off at work this week, hopefully get a quiet moment to have a squint through it.
Do building control come out during the course of the build to see how you are wiring it up? Do they look over your cable calcs and check if they are buried in insulation etc etc?

Do building control come out during the course of the build to see how you are wiring it up? Do they look over your cable calcs and check if they are buried in insulation etc etc?

They normally inspect after 1st fit, but in my case they didn’t as I forgot to tell them. As it was it was all surface mounted in 20mm PVC pipe, so it didn’t matter. The guy wasn’t really interested in my cable calcs and did less tests than I expected, but then you don’t really need cable calcs as you can use the tables in the On site guide in most cases (they are pretty extensive). I suspect my anal wiring and attention to detail meant he was less bothered – I’m quite OCD with regard to DIY as Building Control keep pointing out every time they visit….

Slightly out of date photos, since added a 32A socket for a welder to the junction box…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/qp15Gz]Workshop Consumer Unit[/url] by brf, on Flickr

[url=https://flic.kr/p/pZcnZN]Surface wiring in 20mm PVC pipe[/url] by brf, on Flickr

Qualified as a sparks over 20 years ago but haven’t been one for many years so I’m not P certified. When I rewired our house 6 years ago I had to put in Building notices to our local council. I also supplied my qualifications, detailed plans of what was going where and with what cables. Once finished the council came out and inspected it, there were no visits during the rewire but as I was terrified they would ask me to remove plaster or lift floorboards to check it all I took loads of photos.

The guys who tested it said it was one of the neatest and over regulated installations they’d had to test and was I looking for work! I put all light switches and sockets at new regs height even though I didn’t need to, showed my calculations for where to drill joists and what size hole to use, amongst other things.

Oh yeah, we were quoted 5k to do the job and no P certified sparks we spoke to said they sign off another person’s work even if all we did was chase walls and pull cables. Going the council testing route only worked for me because I was qualified albeit from years ago.

We paid about £1600 all in for a complete rewire, 3 bed semi based in West Yorkshire.

“We paid about £1600 all in for a complete rewire, 3 bed semi based in West Yorkshire.”

Which just shows how much of a minefield it is when puting a price on these things as i paid 1500 for materials for my rewire.

1500 quid in rochdale, so move here.. re wire.. and move out would be the smartest move..

Which just shows how much of a minefield it is when puting a price on these things as i paid 1500 for materials for my rewire.

That is a lot! What were you installing and where did you buy it from?

3 bed semi with 2 garage and 3 sheds. Power to all and big dirty cable from te cu to main garage /workshop as length of run vs current taken.

Led lamps / polished nickel switches and sockets and assorted clips/conduit/finishings new cu etc etc

Will never see it back but its done for me to live in not to profit

East Mids, I do rewires for £2000 ish for a 2/3 bed house.
Thats good quality white fittings, basic pendant lighting, split RCD board, wired fire alarms etc.
Add more for fancy (chrome/black etc) accessories, more for an all RCBO board (recommended), more for recessed downlights (the work of the Devil), more for a workshop etc.

I’m dead cheap BTW, which I’m trying to change!

£1500 for parts – thats an awful lot – shiny accessories, LED downlights etc?

I’m dead cheap BTW, which I’m trying to change!

Yep, you need to charge more, esp given how good you are!

Not alot of shiny accessorys tbh.

Metric **** load of cable for sockets and lights to take advantage of current conduit instead of raggling my walls to bits.

So every socket /light is dropped down and taken back to the ceeling which seems mad but cost to raggle and make good after it made sense.

Black nickle light switches and sockets bought in bulk.

All rcbo cu and garage units in both garages

Linked fire alarms and heat detectors and a couple of outdoor lights.

Standard 240 downligher lamp holders with led bulbs (3 years ago so good leds were still pricy)

16amp outlets in workshop