Rewiring a Victorian House – does it really need it ??????

I am buying a Victorian house, 1895, it has definitely been rewired over the years and has a 1970’s fuseboard in it, every electrician I’ve had in the door has said. “needs a complete re-wire this”, with the sucking of teeth you get when you take your car in for service. This is a beautiful old house, with beautiful skirting boards, picture rails and cornicing and it seems crazy to knock seven bells out of it to get the wiring “up to date” when all the lights work, all the sockets work and there is only 2 pieces of 2 core wiring in the house.

Whats the consensus view on this ?? I am flummoxed and worried about destroying the integrity of my beautiful house, but equally, I don’t want it to burn down…….

Thanks
Sean

You’ll need to in order to get a mortgage on it. I doubt it will make much cosmetic mess though.

My house is the same age. We’ve had wiring done that hasn’t required much tidying up: the boards aren’t tongue & groove so they’re easy to take up & replace.
Just make sure you’ve got a suitable ELCB or more modern equivalent as well as fuses. Then take the wiring as it comes. Of course once you need a shower installing or a few more sockets, you’ll need to upgrade.

Do you really need it for a mortgage, I thought it was more just a recommendation.

However, last year we had a 1930’s house re wired that was last done in the 70’s. It didnt even come up as a question in our minds as we dont fancy risking either 1. Having the house burn down or 2. Getting killed by electric shock.

Every sparky that came out to quote said that the wire in the house wasnt designed to cope with all the loading of modern technology + the old style fuse boxes do a better job of killing you than modern consumer units as they take so much longer to blow.

As to damamge, only one wall in our house needed chasing out, the rest was one all done with no damage.

Those skirting boards and picture rails will look lovely charred to cinders after an electrical fire.

Seriously though – old home restoration is big business, I’m sure you can get it done nicely. Even if it means having a sparky do the work and someone else come in and tidy up. I’m sure deadlydarcy will sort it for you 🙂

If it’s not broke – don’t fix it 😉

I’m only alive today because our house had the ‘lectrics done… We’d had ground fault protection put in about two weeks before I nearly fried myself…

My first house was of a similar vintage and it still had fabric covered wires in conduit. It was done for the mortgage, but it must have been an accident waiting to happen. The elecs that did made a good job of going around the plaster corniches and that sort of thing.

If nothing else, if you look at the back of a tv you need so many plugs these days you might as well start agian. 70’s requirements aren’t going to cut it.

What you need is a full periodic inspection report. A properly qualified spark will be able to do this and charge in the region of £150 (depending on size of house) to do it. It will accurately tell you the condition of the wiring and the sparky can then assess what actually needs doing. No one can tell visually if it needs rewiring or not.
Stu

If it’s wired in twin and earth cable of the correct size it’ll be fine (2.5mm for socket rings, 1.5mm for lighting circuits).

Getting a new consumer unit fitted with modern MCBs and RCDs would be very worth while though

If it’s got the old rubber sheathed singles cables (with a fabric cover on), they definitely need to come out as the rubber perishes. They’re 20s/30s vintage…!

The bigger practical issue, is that there’s probably not many sockets in each room, so if you want to change that, you’ll be most of the way through a rewire anyway.

Ours is 400yrs+ in parts, but was rewired about 6 years ago.

Had some weird electrical occurrences though, especially a few weeks back when an outbuilding feed went puff with loads of smoke/smell etc. Sparky arrived, took one look and said there was no evidence of anything that could have happened. Took a look myself and sure enough, nothing there. Tis a spooky place at times though.

Thanks for the advice guys. The problem is that the ground floor is largely on concrete, so all walls need chasing to get new sockets in. Quote of around £6k (only one so far) seems a hell of a lot of money when its all working and also going to cause a complete mess…..

Wish I had a sparks I trusted (not that I don’t trust electricians, just that I don’t know one.

What to do ????????

And no, not a condition of the mortgage.

Thanks again
S

“The bigger practical issue, is that there’s probably not many sockets in each room, so if you want to change that, you’ll be most of the way through a rewire anyway.”

Ah but then you come across the stupid regs which say new sockets and lights have to be at stupid levels from the ground so that on the off chance some one in a wheel chair was to buy the house they can use the switches.

Our sparky refused to put the sockects at hights we wanted pointing out the above, to which we said, OK we wont sell the house to some one in a wheel chair…. bloody PC world we live in! Any how in the end we had to sign a disclaimar.

You might just need a consumer unit change or even just the BS3036 rewire-able fuses for MCBs to bring it up to scratch, e.g http://www.gil-lec.co.uk/products/Circuit%20Protection/Replacement%20MCBs/Wylex/Wylex%20MCB%20’Old%20B%20Type’%20SP%2010A/2428585215.

Have the electricians you have spoke to done a Z_e test, continuity and insulation test on a few of the circuits? This would be the minimum tests I would have thought you need to ascertain if a rewire was needed. As Stuart says a periodic inspection is what you need.

EDIT: This assumes it’s not obviously that old fabric wire stuff or some other type of wire, I forget that is known for decomposing badly, but the insulation test should pick up this issue.

Ah but then you come across the stupid regs which say new sockets and lights have to be at stupid levels from the ground so that on the off chance some one in a wheel chair was to buy the house they can use the switches.

Part M. >400mm <1200mm.

Quote of around £6k

That dose not sound too far off for a family size house. It’s a lot of work to rewire a house and submit paperwork e.t.c.

You might not need to chase the walls? We had some work done where the old cable was used to pull a new cable through. We also had a lot of walls chased. Skirting boards etc. were all fine but we had other work going on and a good joiner and plasterer in who started and finished the job keeping it to a high standard.

Are you planning on redecorating? If so the mess will be less of a problem.

Do you actually have 6k or is it going to be a problem finding the money. If you ever sell the house then that buyer will almost certainly be wasnting a rewire (or will say that to get the price down).

If you think you might get it done in a couple of years it may be worth biting the bullet now as you’ll get piece of mind and less disruption in the long run.

mybuilder.com may help with electricians as you get references in an ebay style.

When you buy a house of that age renovations need to be carried out rather differently. If you prepare the surfaces as if it were a modern house, you’ll keep taking it back to try and find a firm base until you end up with a pile of assorted bricks on the lawn and no house.

Often the correct fix for a piece of plaster that’s coming away fron the wall is a rawlplug and a big washer. I chased my concrete floors to put pipes in and found they were only 20mm thick in places, and there was dirt underneath. Looking out under the wall I could see daylight too.

If it’s got PVC cabling, leave it alone – just fit an RCCD device at the fusebox. If it’s got TSR rubber cables they need to come out.

Just renovate and decorate one room at a time. You can bury any new exposed cables as you go.

mybuilder.com may help with electricians as you get references in an ebay style.

Apropos of nothing, the CTO of that site is a good friend of mine. Always makes me smile when it gets mentioned.

If it’s not broke – don’t fix it

just cos it appears to be working, doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. Of course, doesn’t mean it is either, but if several sparkies have all said it need rewiring, then I’d be thinking that maybe it does.

As somebody else wrote above, you’ll be wanting modern conveniences like halogens and heated mirrors and towel rails in the bathroom so I would bite the bullet and get it all done to a decent modern spec.

bloody PC world we live in!

Yeah. How dare they want the same ease of life as the rest of us!

(Why don’t you post that on a disabled forum (if there is one) and see how you get on)

grips – it’s a stupid rule.

a rewire of our victorian house required all sockets to be 400-1200. This, in a house over three stories with no way of getting wheelchair access. It’s over indulgent nonesence to go go round ravaging perfectly good layouts in the name of DDA. There’s more than enough housing stock for which its more appropriate and representative of a populations sample’s needs without going OTT.

Its silly,generalised rules with no scope for adaptation and make no allowances like that, that mean people ignore them. Same applies to Bat/Newt molesting and Natural England licences, Part F ventilation in the Regs among others.

Guys brilliant advice allround. As some have said, as I have had a few sparks telling me it should be done, it should. But I live in an area where people have more money than sense. I don’t (Not that I have a lot of sense, but have very little money after buying this shed !) and so therefore am a little cautious as it seems to have been the default position upon entering the house (and I mean LITERALLY entering the house – not checking anything)

I reckon maybe I’ll get a EIC check first and see what they say.

There’s more than enough housing stock for which its more appropriate and representative of a populations sample’s needs without going OTT

Right so if I’m disabled I can only buy certain houses? Ok, that sounds great.

if you were disabled only certain houses would suit your needs regardless of how far the sockets are off the deck. Dont get all PC on me here, it’s just common sense*

*PC & Common sense often benig mutually exclusive.

and its not “can” only buy certain houses is it? Anyone “can” buy any house. Having every house physically capable of compensating for every range of disability is idiotic though.

PC? PC’s not the issue here. It’s disability legislation.

My point is that some annoyances created by the legislation (that can’t fully cater for everyone of course) are nothing to the crap that the disabled have to put up with.

I would prefer the term ‘being fair minded’ than ‘PC’

Oh and BTW, disabled doesn’t necessarily mean wheelchair user.

Come on chaps we’re helping me out here, not starting a political debate!!!
😉

Being legislation doesnt preclude it from being PC.

Take that ridiculous bit of law harperson jemmy’d* through parliament before her crazypower was taken away.

* every green paper has to be checked and neutralised for effect on inequality before presenting to the house regarldess of the tenuousness of any such inequality.

This is STW.

All your thread are belong to us.

Oh and BTW, disabled doesn’t necessarily mean wheelchair user.

do you know I never thought of that…

Right so if I’m disabled I can only buy certain houses? Ok, that sounds great.

Correct.

You’d never get a wheelchair into my house because of the 9 steps up to the front door. At which point the height of the sockets is utterly irrelevant.

I think the correct description should be “if you’re disabled you shouldnt expect every house you could buy to be already adapted to accomodate your specific physical needs”

You’d never get a wheelchair into my house because of the 9 steps up to the front door. At which point the height of the sockets is utterly irrelevant

So? I could be disabled and not in a wheelchair.

Molgrips

Its stupid legislation.

There is no way some one could get in to my house in a wheel chair. Yet I have to have switches at certain height for people in wheel chairs. Absolutley no logic to it at all.

In fact it would put the sockets at a nice height for my 1 year old to stick his fingers in to the socket.

I refer you to my post above – third time now:

I could be disabled (ie unable to bend down to plug and unplug stuff) and not in a wheelchair.

Then buy a house that is suitable for a disabled person !

Its positive discrimination against able bodied people. Why should I have to make MY house suitable for some one who doesnt live in MY house. It costs me money and makes it harder for me to get to light switches and makes it easier for my able bodied son to either kill himself or end up disabled !

Public buildings is a different matter though

Sean, speak to Neil and ask for Martin’s number, he’ll give you a proper, honest opinion on it.

Jono btw

A few of you being a bit shortsighted here. Look beyond the ‘disabled adaptation’ thing and think of it more as practical things that make house better for more people for longer. I was all for the funkydunc line until my Mum became terminally ill. Having no downstairs toilet, sockets by the floor etc. meant she couldn’t return home and had to live out her days in a hospice. So a few sensible requirements for new builds and when changes are made to a property mean houses are easier to live in for everyone, regardless of disability.

and you couldnt make the adaptation for your mother when you needed too?

Its not that an adapted house isnt a better idea, its the fact that you are being required to physically correograph your house (when you do substantial works/build a new one) according to someone elses’ design. Its MY house I want it laid out MY way. And I want it to have visual charactersitics that I want which may well include having floorbox sockets or skirting mounted ones.

Other regs are about physical integrity and as a safety issue that makes sense to a certain extent, but again in some cases at the cost of freedom of design expression (such as open stair risers or the most ridiculuos one Ive seen: the 25mm change in level around a wood burner hearth – making an excellent trip hazard…)

being disabled doesnt give you a right to expect generic design accomodation across other peoples homes.

Then buy a house that is suitable for a disabled person !

So.. perfect house, perfect location, got the money, really want to live there – but I can’t cos some tool’s put all the sockets down by the floor. Hardly fair is it?

makes it harder for me to get to light switches

Oh my, that’s rich. You’re complaining about how hard it make things for YOU, an ABLE BODIED person (I assume) who can do all sorts of things, when you don’t give a crap about those who have all sorts of difficulties all the time and have far fewer options. That’s nice.

And it doesn’t cost you money because you only have to do it if you are having the work done anyway – surely?

and makes it easier for my able bodied son to either kill himself or end up disabled

This is just silly. Sockets by the floor are just as easily accessible by toddlers.

Its MY house

Currently, yes. It could be around for hundreds of years though, you won’t be.