Problematic Full house rewire

Owain_Moneysaver

I think it's quite likely the new connection is in the wall, to what was an existing socket.

Couple of possibilities that work together.

Depending on how your units have been fitted it is often possible to unjoin a unit from its neighbours, unscrew any screws going up through the top of the unit into the worktop, and slide one unit forward without dismantling the others or taking the worktop off.

Other option is a cable tracer, which will detect cables behind plaster and under floor. Starting from a known socket the electrician may be able to follow along the wires and find the join eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQVgMoYV9tg&feature=youtu.be
which is using a
http://www.socketandsee.co.uk/socket-and-see-ffcdcfkit-fuse-finder-and-dead-circuit-tracer-kit.html

A borescope / CCTV camera on a flexi arm can be useful for looking up behind units from under plinths etc. USB ones are quite cheap on ebay.

The other option is if the junction can't be found, work out which cables go to it from where, isolate them all, and then run a new feed to the kitchen and join in to the new kitchen wiring somewhere convenient. Or the electrician may be willing to leave some original cabling in use feeding the juncton if it tests okay. 1960s PVC cable isn't necessarily unsuitable today.

Also worth asking the neighbours (if there houses are similar) as they may have or know of where there "used to be" a socket.

IvyFlood

So we had the quote back, £3200 for full rewire.

This particular electrician is the partner of someone I work with. He has a day job working for a company but he’d be doing our rewire on the side over 3 weekends. Just wondered if that was the done thing! I don’t think he’s self-employed so just wondered how we’d pay him whether he’d send us an invoice? He also mentioned about a deposit upfront which again I’m not sure about as I always read that you should never pay tradesmen upfront until the work has been completed satisfactorily! He’s quite young and we also don’t know if he’s NICEIC registered? Should he be? Obviously we will ask all this but I just wanted to get a heads up first!

We’ve had 5 quotes so far and he’s the only one to have broken it down and given us a description of what exactly he will be doing/how many sockets etc. The others simply put ‘partial rewire’ (when we thought it would just be partial) and a price. I get the impression he has the ‘if you’re going to do something do it properly’ mind-set and he’s been quite thorough the two times he’s been round.

He says he will test after and provide installation certificate but does the work not need to be signed off by the local authority? We have an installation certificate from the new kitchen wiring but that isn’t work the paper it’s written on as we’ve discovered recently!

All advice appreciated!

tacpot12

He will be self-employed, even if it is just for your job.

You are responsble for notifying the work to Building Control (the signoff by the local authority you refer to). An NICEIC registered electrician will normally do this for you via NICEIC. You need to be clear whether your electrician will notify the work to BC (and pickup the cost for doing so), or is he a member of a scheme like NICEIC that allows him to notify the work for free, or is he expecting you to do notify the work and pay the cost of notification? A phone call to him should be enough to sort this out.

Personally I would not use a tradesman working at weekends. For one thing, the work will take a lot longer than necessary, and if he overruns by a day, it will another week before you get your kitchen back. But if you think he will be professional, then perhaps it will work out ok. I would ask if you can speak to someone he has done a similar sized job for.

He has at least he has provided a written specification and confirmed that he will test the changes and issue a certificate.


And to answer your question about how likely it is that the junction is in the wall; in my experience proper electricians tend to make their joints in the ceiling or under the floor. But they could make the connection in the wall, if the circumstances suit this. And dodgy electricians are more likely to make a connection where it cannot be accessed easily. So nobody can really say where the connection will be found. I have often said that electricians are not magicians; they know a lot of tricks of the trade, but they cannot see through walls, know what previous electricians have done, or install cables inside walls without creating some disturbance.