Bought new house in Feb - Found out electricity is dangerous

wiseguy80

Out of interest how much does "rewiring a house" cost? I am in the middle of purchasing one and would like to find out if I should go with an electrical inspection since it's an old house.

silvercar

Our garden lights were similarly botched. The solution is to isolate and turn them off until such a time that you can afford to have them installed properly. They are hardly an essential. We have had no garden lights for 3 years.

jjlandlord

What could be cheaper:
Find the garden light circuit connection in the house and reconnect it through a 12V transformer, then replace the garden lights with 12V ones.

12V is safe so I always feel more comfortable with that instead of cables on mains running around the garden (and mains cables have to be buried properly, and shielded, adding to the cost).

You could in addition setup a wall socket and plug the transformer and the circuit on it, so it would no longer be part of the house electrics, which helps re. regs.

DRP

wiseguy80 wrote: »

Out of interest how much does "rewiring a house" cost? I am in the middle of purchasing one and would like to find out if I should go with an electrical inspection since it's an old house.

Ours was quoted at about 2.5- 3k (no VAT, 3 bed terrace).

hazyjo

clever_duck wrote: »

Thought I'd see if it was possible anyway because the previous owners must have known the work they got done is wrong.

Really? I can't think of many people who would choose to live in a house knowing there were dangerous electrics! Maybe they did it, maybe someone before them, maybe they bodged it themselves, maybe some cowboy did a dodgy repair... who knows! But I doubt they knew they were 'dangerous' (presume you have been told 'dangerous' and not just old or out of date.


Jx

DavidF

wiseguy80 wrote: »

Out of interest how much does "rewiring a house" cost? I am in the middle of purchasing one and would like to find out if I should go with an electrical inspection since it's an old house.

Depends on size of house, Location, Spec (Expensive top grade materials or materials that just comply with the relevant BS numbers.....there IS a difference in quality and lifespan)
Also depends on other factors such as empty house or one full of furniture and finally type of house and building materials.
You really can't give a one size fits all quote.

***NOTE to all please use a fully qualified professional electrician who supplies relevant certificates upon completion of the job.

JimmyTheWig

G_M wrote: »

Survey would not.

Electrical inspection would.

Would a surveyor not recomend an electrical inspection if it looked like one was needed?

marvulous

Its hard to tell what you mean by dangerous. Best item you could buy is a socket tester screwfix or toolstation sell them and check the sockets and just do corrective messures (maybe remove ) your only allowed 1 spur (extra socket) for every socket you have on the ring main (goes all the way out and comes back) then theres the ring final(just goes out). cable on ring or final sockets should be 2.5mm twin and earth, lighting should be 1.5mm twin and earth. Old cabling-single phase (all wires all seperate) is still fine to have in your house.
I can do a new build in 3 days but on not new can take a week will all knocking plaster off walls
I wouldn't go pay for a company just their employees in spare time but anyone who is 16th edition trained will do, maybe spark advertising in local paper?
hope this helps

G_M

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Would a surveyor not recomend an electrical inspection if it looked like one was needed?

Many surveyors recommend inspections asa matter of course. This gives no indication of whether the electrics are OK or not.

Other surveyors only recommend inspections if they see something suspecious - but as they are not electricians this is also no help: they might recommend where the electrics are fine; they might not recommend where the electrics are dangerous.

trailingspouse

Our re-wire cost £7000 about 18 months ago - two guys, two weeks. Proper professional company. We'd just moved in, so the house was full of furniture - but I'd taken the carpets up and they knew I would be doing a complete renovation so they didn't have to worry about spoiling any decoration.

We didn't have an electrical survey before we moved in - it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the place would need a re-wire, so there didn't seem much point in paying for a survey. Better to put that money towards paying for the re-wire.