House rewire

[ReformedCharacter]

At some point in the not too distant I will have my house rewired. I have a few a few questions and would be very grateful for any advice. The house (1860s) is built of thick rough stone with lath and plaster internal walls of which there are 6 with an additional kitchen and utility room to the side of the house. The floors in the house are either floorboards or floorboards which appear to have been covered with about an inch of concrete in 2 rooms, I'm assuming the reason for the concrete-over floorboards is that a few decades ago, water would sometimes enter the house from an overflowing field next-door. The kitchen was added about 50 years ago and has a concrete floor. Behind that is a 'utility room' which was originally a separate room, used as a milking parlour.

Obviously, carpets and floorboards will have to be removed and made good afterwards. I assume new cabling will have to be chased in for light switches. I'm think it would be a good time to have an external car charging connection made, even if we won't use it for a few years.

Questions arising;

How much floorboard\carpet removal and replacing am I likely to get from an electrician? And similarly, making good the chasing for new cables for light switches and power sockets in the kitchen, partly tiled?
I'd like to add an external power source for the back of the house, and possibly the front, including car charger.
A new consumer unit will be needed.

Comments appreciated, estimate of likely cost, length of work, and anything that I might consider but haven't

Thanks.

RC

[PhaseThree]

Before chasing the walls for the light switches take a look at the Quinetic wireless system - I use them and find them to be very impressive.
https://www.quinetic.co.uk/

Pricing here
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index ... index.html

Their own switches are not to my taste but the grid switched integrate pretty well.

[88V8]

At some point in the not too distant I will have my house rewired.

How much floorboard\carpet removal and replacing am I likely to get from an electrician? And similarly, making good the chasing for new cables for light switches and power sockets in the kitchen, partly tiled?

PVC cable, not overloaded, has an indefinite life. So in theory a house may never need rewiring.

The electrician unless he is very unusual, will hack his way through walls and floor so as to minimise the work and his inconvenience, and reinstate only to the bare minimum he can get away with.

Recently I had to repair damage to a sagging floor where an electrician hacked the ends off the (antique elm) boards and then filled up the space with scrunched newspapers (1982) and concrete and balanced a bit of wood on top, all hidden by the thick carpet.

I would pretty much stand over him.

Best of all, if you agree in advance what needs to be lifted and chased out etc, then carefully do it yourself.

Concrete over floorboards sounds like the most ghastly bodge. Are the boards not rotted?

V8

[ReformedCharacter]

At some point in the not too distant I will have my house rewired.

How much floorboard\carpet removal and replacing am I likely to get from an electrician? And similarly, making good the chasing for new cables for light switches and power sockets in the kitchen, partly tiled?

PVC cable, not overloaded, has an indefinite life. So in theory a house may never need rewiring.

The electrician unless he is very unusual, will hack his way through walls and floor so as to minimise the work and his inconvenience, and reinstate only to the bare minimum he can get away with.

Recently I had to repair damage to a sagging floor where an electrician hacked the ends off the (antique elm) boards and then filled up the space with scrunched newspapers (1982) and concrete and balanced a bit of wood on top, all hidden by the thick carpet.

I would pretty much stand over him.

Best of all, if you agree in advance what needs to be lifted and chased out etc, then carefully do it yourself.

Concrete over floorboards sounds like the most ghastly bodge. Are the boards not rotted?

V8

Thanks for your comments. Yes concrete over floorboards is a nasty bodge, the house has a few more nasty bodges. I don't think they are rotten though, there's plenty of circulating air underneath.

RC

[Mike4]

Comments appreciated, estimate of likely cost, length of work, and anything that I might consider but haven't

As others have mentioned, floorboards and making good. Being an electrician is a filthy, dirty, dusty job mainly due to all the lifting of floorboards and channeling of walls necessary, and many of the electricians I've worked with resent having to do the dusty stuff. They perceive it as beneath them and put boards back and make good the walls in the most slovenly way regardless of their talents at installing the wires.

The best trick is to lift all the floorboards necessary before channeling the walls, so all the wall debris can be easily swept under the floors then the boards put back. For the avoidance of doubt I'm sure our resident superstar electrician here would never dream of doing that!

So in summary, any problems with your electrician are likely to revolve around the standard of 'putting stuff back'. In particular the re-fitting and screwing down floorboards properly and the re-plastering. In particular, putting each board back in the same place as it came from is the key to good floor restoration in my experience. Not as easy as it sounds when faced with a large pile of floorboards that all need putting back somewhere.

[bluedonkey]

This is my layman's observations.

Rewiring often leaves the house needing redecorating. Ours did, we planned for it during a refurb.

One minor thing I learnt was that any sockets in the skirting boards have to be replaced with sockets higher up. It's against regs to have them so low down.

[richlist]

One minor thing I learnt was that any sockets in the skirting boards have to be replaced with sockets higher up. It's against regs to have them so low down.

I'd be surprised if that applies to listed buildings. I've seen many country houses with sockets in skirtings.....even Royal Palaces have the sockets in their Georgian height skirting boards.

[Mike4]

One minor thing I learnt was that any sockets in the skirting boards have to be replaced with sockets higher up. It's against regs to have them so low down.

I'd be surprised if that applies to listed buildings. I've seen many country houses with sockets in skirtings.....even Royal Palaces have the sockets in their Georgian height skirting boards.

Regulations are not applied retrospectively. Even though Mr bluedonkey tells us the regs say that now, it does not mean existing/old installations must be upgraded to meet current regs.

[Hallucigenia]

Regulations are not applied retrospectively. Even though Mr bluedonkey tells us the regs say that now, it does not mean existing/old installations must be upgraded to meet current regs.

Isn't there a bit of a grey area depending on the size of the works? When my neighbours did a loft conversion, AIUI they were a bit surprised to be told that due to the scale of the work involved, the whole house had to be brought up to current building regs in respect of eg stuff like mains fire alarms and replacing some door panels that weren't fireproof (and ISTR something about them getting caught out by insulation standards changing during the work).

Going back to the OP - the sparks will do the basic associated building work, but will do it in the easiest way for them not necessarily the way you want it, and it may be more cost-effective to get a general labourer/plasterer to do that side of things, or DIY parts of it.

Yep - outdoor sockets are really handy.
Now's the time to think about things like extra outside lights, and plumbing cables for CCTV etc - even if they only need USB or power-over-Ethernet.
Just generally, the future of energy is electric, so yep think about what might be needed to support car charging, electric heating, heat pumps, solar panels etc.
As above - mains fire alarms if you haven't got them already.
I know everyone's excited about wireless and it's perhaps less relevant in a rural area, but Wifi isn't ideal from a security and interference POV, and the signal can be pretty crummy in old houses, so you might want to think about some permanent Ethernet cabling to key places.

[DrFfybes]

As others have said, do the prep work yourself as much as you can, and offer to reinstate.

The massive irritant on our last place was installing new switches alongside the old ones (easier to chase a new slot, then cut the old wires in the ceiling and leave them in the wall) and then just filling the old switch backbox with plaster. The fact that it protruded 1mm from the old plaster was irrelevant - The sparky said making good wasn't his job, and the plasterer said he wasn't paid to remove old electrical equipment. I had to chip it out, remove it, and refill, all for the sake of some lazy ****** not being bothered to undo one screw to remove it before filling. It also took several sandings and fillings before the new channel was smooth enough for our liking.

We've just had the boiler replaced here, with solid floors downstairs everything runs under the upstairs landing. When I lifted the carpet and had removed the rubber dust that 40 years ago was underlay (horrid filthy job) I found why the boards creaked. A couple of previous plumbers and electricians had cut so many slots in the joists there was little for the 4 inch oak planks to fix to, and barely any had any tongues left on the side. In the end I lifted most of it and infilled with chipboard floorng sheets (plus packers all around as the old floor was 2mm thicker. I removed so many old cables it was silly, and we thought about removing the old pipework that would have been connected to the back boiler in a previous heating system, but as there are so many bits tacked on in this place we decided best not to disturb it as we couldn't find a blank end to work back from.

Paul

[9873210]

PVC cable, not overloaded, has an indefinite life. So in theory a house may never need rewiring.

Cable life is only part of it. There's a lot of other details. And the longer it's been around the longer there has been for people to mess with it: overload it, add branches poorly, burry it in insulation, drive nails through it, yank on it hard to get that extra cm of play to replace a fixture, let rodents nibble on it, ... .

An extreme example comes from the US. Knob-and-tube wiring was used around 1900. The wire and ceramic insulators will last indefinitely. It was invariably installed to a high level of workmanship. An undisturbed installation is still quite safe; but after a century very few of the remaining installations are undisturbed.

[quelquod]

88v8 wrote that:
“PVC cable, not overloaded, has an indefinite life. So in theory a house may never need rewiring.”

PVC Cable from the late 60s or thereabouts can have a surprisingly short life as the plasticisers in early cable manufacture reacted with the copper to dissolve the insulation into the well-known “green goo”. It’s quite attractive to mice too. And, as noted above, very few houses more than a few decades old haven’t suffered from amateur electricians’ improvements.

[88V8]

88v8 wrote that:
“PVC cable, not overloaded, has an indefinite life. So in theory a house may never need rewiring.”

PVC Cable from the late 60s or thereabouts can have a surprisingly short life as the plasticisers in early cable manufacture reacted with the copper to dissolve the insulation into the well-known “green goo”. It’s quite attractive to mice too.

OK. Despite having some 1960s wiring, luckily we've escaped that, although the stranded alloy cable in our previous house was a pain as even after 20+ years - then - it was still consolidating and would become loose in the fittings, as well as corroding due to the slightly damp sub-floor.

Cable life is only part of it. There's a lot of other details. And the longer it's been around the longer there has been for people to mess with it: overload it, add branches poorly, bury it in insulation, drive nails through it, yank on it hard to get that extra cm of play to replace a fixture, let rodents nibble on it, ... .

Haha how true. It's amazing how many spurs one can daisy-chain onto a ring.

V8

[gpadsa]

Knob-and-tube wiring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring - beautiful, slightly terrifying
What if the bath overflows

[9873210]

Knob-and-tube wiring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring - beautiful, slightly terrifying
What if the bath overflows

About the same as slightly more modern wiring. The wires are insulated. 100 year old insulation is often fragile, but in the absence of abuse should be intact due to support and lack of rubbing. Something that is often not true for slightly younger cables. The standoffs also help keep the wires dry compared to cables directly contacting the buildings structure. Lack of protective earth is a concern, this can be significantly mitigated with a ground fault device, which can be installed fairly cheaply, usually without knocking holes in the walls.

[csearle]

Oh my goodness.

How much floorboard\carpet removal and replacing am I likely to get from an electrician? And similarly, making good the chasing for new cables for light switches and power sockets in the kitchen, partly tiled?
I'd like to add an external power source for the back of the house, and possibly the front, including car charger.
A new consumer unit will be needed.

Comments appreciated, estimate of likely cost, length of work, and anything that I might consider but haven't

Usually some/all of the floorboards of all the hallways need to come up. In each room one whole floorboard (but often two) has to come up plus some kind of access below each socket outlet. In rooms with no access under the floor the same applies for rooms above them. The making good must be negotiated before the job starts. To be perfectly honest, unless the electrician prides his/herself on plastering then it is best to let him/her do their worst and get a plasterer in to do all the making good of chases afterwards. As for floorboards this can also be clarified before the job but the minimum you could reasonably expect is that the boards lifted will be replaced and either nailed or screwed back down with none left in any way unsupported.

A new consumer unit will require that the electrician takes responsibility for all the fixed electrical installation, which is a good thing. Expect Earth bonds to gas/water/oil to be upgraded. Expect surge protection within the consumer unit. Insist upon individual RCBO's for each circuit.

Get the EV point sorted during this disruption rather than adding it later.

Actually is sounds like quite an involved job so expect at least a couple of weeks (if not then a bit longer). The price will depend upon where you are and whether you insist upon a quote, an estimate, or a day rate. Impossible to say.

PVC cable, not overloaded, has an indefinite life. So in theory a house may never need rewiring.

This is unfortunately not the case. Eventually the plasticiser exits the PVC leaving the material brittle and unable to be moved, which is sometimes required. Also rodents get in and eat the cables (especially in 19th century buildings).

The electrician unless he is very unusual, will hack his way through walls and floor so as to minimise the work and his inconvenience, and reinstate only to the bare minimum he can get away with.

Recently I had to repair damage to a sagging floor where an electrician hacked the ends off the (antique elm) boards and then filled up the space with scrunched newspapers (1982) and concrete and balanced a bit of wood on top, all hidden by the thick carpet.

In my opinion this is the work of an unusual electrician; not a usual one. More likely the work of someone with no finesse or regard for best practice.

Being an electrician is a filthy, dirty, dusty job mainly due to all the lifting of floorboards and channeling of walls necessary, and many of the electricians I've worked with resent having to do the dusty stuff. They perceive it as beneath them and put boards back and make good the walls in the most slovenly way regardless of their talents at installing the wires.

You have my sympathies, and on behalf of my fellow sparkies I apologise.

The best trick is to lift all the floorboards necessary before channeling the walls, so all the wall debris can be easily swept under the floors then the boards put back. For the avoidance of doubt I'm sure our resident superstar electrician here would never dream of doing that!

:) Quite, that's why electricians own brooms, dustpan/brushes, scary masks, and countless rubble sacks (barely to mention our obligatory waste-disposal policies).

One minor thing I learnt was that any sockets in the skirting boards have to be replaced with sockets higher up. It's against regs to have them so low down.

Well it has nothing to do with the wiring regs but electrical accessories have to be between 450 and 1200 for disability access (building regulations), only for work carried out under the auspices of building control though. If you just go to an electrician and ask for your house to be rewired he/she can put/leave them wherever you like.

Haha how true. It's amazing how many spurs one can daisy-chain onto a ring.

You are only allowed to have as many spurs on a ring as there are points on the ring (see BS7671). As soon as there are more then it is no longer a ring - by definition. It becomes a glorified radial circuit which must have a maximum overload protection of 20A (otherwise it has been altered to no longer conform with the wiring regs). I get your point though. It gets done but I suggest only by people that think it's all terribly easy and straightforward. It is indeed easy, but to be perfectly honest many people (often competent electrical engineers) are blissfully unaware of what makes an electrical installation safe because they are fixated by what is needed to make it work. They do stuff, it works, and that supports their own beliefs about how easy it is. They typically give zero regard to environmental issues (like impact, rodent, sunlight, water ingress, etc.), automatic disconnection of supply, Earth fault issues, etc.

Chris

[csearle]

Knob-and-tube wiring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring - beautiful, slightly terrifying
What if the bath overflows

I've discovered this method of installation in Kent too. (Happily it wasn't energised.) Like the electrician before me I left it in place under the floorboards almost like a museum artefact. C.

[csearle]

Isn't there a bit of a grey area depending on the size of the works?

I don't believe it is the size of the works directly but more about whether building control stick their oar in, which I grant might be more likely for larger projects. So for example I was wiring out a garage conversion of a house on a slope in Crowborough. The new garage-room was down three steps from the hall, a kind of dead-end room. A building control bod had been visiting a house opposite and saw some building work going on. He just decided to get involved and started issuing edicts. The electrical accessories suddenly had to be at disability heights (even though anyone able enough to gain access to the room would not have required such a facility). He even made the owners have linked smoke/heat alarms throughout the entire house. So in this case it was a tiny job that the building guy had simply spotted by chance.

Chris

[Dod101]

I find the comments from one who is obviously a professional electrician very refreshing. I get so fed up with the usual cynical barrack room lawyers when it comes to DIY. Does no-one appreciate that tradesmen of any trade need to work at it for some years before they are qualified?

Thanks for your various posts, Chris.

Dod

[mutantpoodle]

I am sure that you would have thought to do it...BUUT

when hyou get around to getting quotes I suggest that you specifically point out the possible ingress of water from fields occasionally

it might only be once in a blue moon...but water and electricity dont go well together so wiring under floor might be an issue??