Council Domestic Rewiring Scheme

jason589

Hi, our council home is due for domestic rewiring. Whilst I am pleased as this is a good and safe thing to do, I am a little concerned as one of our upstairs rooms has recently had some costly (to us)wooden flooring installed which will snap if taken up again, meaning it would need to be completely replaced.
Some work colleagues of mine have advised me that it is quite likely that the works men will need to lift floorboards in most rooms.
We are not due for our survey yet so I am waiting in limbo as to what will need removing/moving.

The room has also had some large and bulky furniture items recently built and installed which would be very difficult to now dismantle and remove + find somewhere to store.

Does any one have any experience of this sort of work, and do you know if there are alternatives? All of our rooms really are full and I can't see where else we could move the bits from this particular room.

Any help would be most appreciated!

Torry_Quine

They will definitely need to lift floorboards, don't you have hatches or trap-doors for acess? Did you have permission for the work?

However until they actually come and survey what needs done it's all speculative.

hannahO_2

From an experience, I think it is possible to replace all the wiring without lifting the floorboards. I used to live in a block of flats and each floor had a concrete floor so what the electrician did, they tied the new cable to the old cable and pulled it until it came out the other end.

Notmyrealname

hannahO wrote: »

From an experience, I think it is possible to replace all the wiring without lifting the floorboards. I used to live in a block of flats and each floor had a concrete floor so what the electrician did, they tied the new cable to the old cable and pulled it until it came out the other end.

Doesn't get done like that where there are wooden floors. Unlike concrete floors where the cables are just fed through a conduit, they're nailed to joists.

[Deleted User]

I had a similiar situation. Complete renovation (including supposed rewiring) and I had to take up every single plank of laminate flooring that had only been down two months. It didn't make me happy, particularly as they only added a couple of sockets in a couple of rooms (otherwise they just swopped single sockets for double sockets - not properly, they were socket expanders screwed to the wall). They also managed to put a screw in a water pipe lol!

But I didn't know much about the process in advance. In my case, someone went around the house and allocated an amount per affected room for redecorating (this may or may not apply in your area). It won't be enough to replace damaged flooring.

You may have to see if you can refuse the work being done but will also have to decide before that if the house really needs rewiring. Personally, in my situation, I fail to see how it improved things to such a degree it was worth taking up all my laminate floors but that is just in my case. This will be based on how old the property is, how certain your electricity supply is (if you are having problems because of overloading it due to inadequate plugs, ring circuits, how good/new the fuse box is etc). However, saying u are concerned about your floors and so want to refuse the rewiring may cause the building firm to come up with a way to rewire without affecting your floors (by using wall conduits).

jason589

Thanks to all of you for your helpful posts.
I have emailed the company who will be undertaking the work to see what they think. We do have wood based floor boards, and I did fear that they may well have nailed in the current cables. I am no electrician but I am pretty sure that certain wires (especially the ones for the light switches) is the original cable. I believe the house was built in 1640/50/60's so these cables will most certainly need replacing. The fuse box, I think is quite new.

I have read that some councils will provide some form of compensation for damage/redecoration but the chances are it would barely cover the cost of driving to get the materials!

As dennatrois has said, seeing as the work has not been done yet, I will approach the company doing the work with my concerns and see what they say.
I don't want to be a trouble maker, causing them more problems than they need but it is only one room with these problems, I suffer from a very painful back condition and works like this could leave me seriously out of pocket in getting the floor re-done by someone and finding someone able to move all of my furniture (I live with my 63 year old mother so can hardly expect her to assist!).

Thanks again for your posts.

deannatrois wrote: »

I had a similiar situation. Complete renovation (including supposed rewiring) and I had to take up every single plank of laminate flooring that had only been down two months. It didn't make me happy, particularly as they only added a couple of sockets in a couple of rooms (otherwise they just swopped single sockets for double sockets - not properly, they were socket expanders screwed to the wall). They also managed to put a screw in a water pipe lol!

But I didn't know much about the process in advance. In my case, someone went around the house and allocated an amount per affected room for redecorating (this may or may not apply in your area). It won't be enough to replace damaged flooring.

You may have to see if you can refuse the work being done but will also have to decide before that if the house really needs rewiring. Personally, in my situation, I fail to see how it improved things to such a degree it was worth taking up all my laminate floors but that is just in my case. This will be based on how old the property is, how certain your electricity supply is (if you are having problems because of overloading it due to inadequate plugs, ring circuits, how good/new the fuse box is etc). However, saying u are concerned about your floors and so want to refuse the rewiring may cause the building firm to come up with a way to rewire without affecting your floors (by using wall conduits).

mrs_motivated

They will lift the floor. Many council's don't allow wooden or laminate floors in the tenance agreement or if they do allow make it clear that if it needs removing it is the tenants responsibility if it gets damaged. So firstly just check the finer points of the tenancy agreement. This is because if the property becomes void (empty) and needs to be re let, they usually rip up and skip any laminate etc. mainly so they can check the floorboards (crazy though this may be)

That said, it could be part of the decent homes programme, and if one of the larger external contractors are brought in to do it, they may be a little more sympathetic.