Full House Rewire: What the Job Actually Involves
What a rewire physically involves, how to tell if you need one or just a new consumer unit, what moves the price, and the certificates you should get.
8 min readTeesside Premium
The short answer first
A rewire replaces the cable in the house. That is the whole distinction, and it is worth holding on to, because a new consumer unit on old cable is a different job at a different price. Every circuit comes out and new ones go in, the board goes with them, and the walls and floors carrying the old cable get opened up to do it. In England the work is notifiable under Part P of the building regulations, so it finishes with certificates rather than only an invoice.
Two things are worth knowing before you ring anybody. Some houses everyone expects to need rewiring only want a new board and a handful of repairs. And nobody can tell you which yours is from a photograph or a phone call, because the answer comes out of testing.
What the job actually involves
Rewiring runs in three stages, and the middle one is the stage people are not expecting.
First fix is the destructive part. Floorboards come up so cable can run in the joist voids, chases are cut into walls to drop cable to sockets and switches, and holes go through joists and ceilings. In a Victorian terrace with lath and plaster ceilings and boards nailed down a century ago, that is where most of the labour and all of the mess lives. Old cable is generally left dead in the wall rather than dragged out, because pulling it doubles the damage for no benefit.
Then the plastering. Chases filled, ceilings patched, holes made good. Then second fix, which is the part that looks like progress: sockets, switches, fittings and the new board go on, everything is connected, and the installation is tested circuit by circuit before anyone signs it off.
Decoration comes after all of that, and it is the stage quotes are vaguest about. Ask plainly whether making good means filled and flush ready for you to paint, or filled, skimmed and painted. They are very different amounts of work, and the gap between them is where a rewire quote can look cheaper than it is. Our own decorators finish the rooms our electricians open up, which is why we quote both halves.
One detail catches people out. The main fuse and cut-out where the supply enters the house belong to the network operator, not to you and not to your electrician, and they are sealed. Where a job needs the supply isolated there, it is arranged in advance rather than sorted out on the morning.
Telling a rewire from a consumer unit upgrade
Testing tells you. Everything else is a hint, and the hints worth taking seriously are about the cable rather than the board.
Rubber or fabric insulated cable, which goes brittle and cracks when it is disturbed. Lighting with no earth at the ceiling roses, which is normal in wiring installed before 1966, when the 14th edition of the wiring regulations began requiring an earth at every lighting point. Round pin sockets. Cable too short at the back of a socket to reach a new one. Circuits extended so often that nobody can say what feeds what.
Around Teesside these arrive in a pattern. The Victorian and Edwardian stock in Linthorpe, Ayresome and Oxbridge was first wired for light and very little else, then added to in every decade since. The unearthed lighting circuit is the commonest finding in those houses, and it is the one that tips a property from repairs into a rewire, because you cannot add an earth to a cable that never had one.
The fuse board on its own is a weaker signal. A 1980s or 1990s property with sound cable and a tired board needs the board, the protection and the testing, not the cable. An inspection and test report is how you find out which conversation you are in. Insulation resistance testing across the circuits either exonerates the cable or it does not.
What moves the cost
Search rewire cost uk and you will get national averages from cost guide sites, none of which have seen your house. We will not put a figure of our own on this page either, for the same reason we will not quote a rewire over the phone. What we can do is say exactly what we are looking at when we work one out.
| What we look at | Why it changes the number |
|---|---|
| Circuit count, not floor area | A small house with a shower, a cooker and an outside supply is more work than a larger one with fewer circuits |
| Access under the floors | Original boards lift. Laminate, engineered wood and tiled floors are slower, and sometimes not liftable at all |
| Solid ground floors | Concrete means downstairs cable comes from above or goes into the walls, changing the route to every socket |
| Wall construction | Chasing solid brick is a different job to dropping cable behind a stud or a dot and dab wall |
| Earthing and bonding | What has to be added at the intake and to the gas and water pipework |
| Occupied or empty | Empty is faster. Living in it means working a room at a time and leaving the place safe nightly |
| Making good | Filled and flush is one price. Skimmed and painted is another |
| What you are adding | Extra sockets, outdoor supplies, a car charger circuit and interlinked alarms are additions, not replacements |
One genuine lever, if you have just bought somewhere that has stood empty: HMRC's VAT Notice 708 applies a reduced 5% VAT rate to renovation work on a dwelling that has not been lived in during the two years immediately before the work starts. The conditions are specific and you need evidence the property was empty, so check it with HMRC or your accountant rather than assuming. On a whole house it is not a small difference.
Living in it while it happens
You can. Most people would rather not, and the reason is not the electrician.
Power comes off circuit by circuit, so there are days with no sockets upstairs or no lighting in half the house. Floors are up and furniture sits piled in the middle of rooms under sheets. The plastering stage then puts dust everywhere, and dust travels. Kitchens and bathrooms are the pinch points, because a fridge, a freezer and a shower all want a supply that may be off that day.
If a property is between tenancies or you have not moved in yet, that empty window is by a distance the best time to do it. If you are living in it, say so at the quoting stage. An electrician who has planned for it works a room at a time and leaves you safe each evening.
The paperwork you should end up with
A full rewire installs new circuits and replaces the consumer unit, which makes it notifiable under Part P of the building regulations in England. Almost always that means an electrician registered with a government authorised competent person scheme, who certifies the work and notifies the council on your behalf. The alternatives are notifying building control before the work begins, or having it certified by a registered third party certifier. You can confirm somebody's registration before they start on the register at electricalcompetentperson.co.uk.
At the end you should hold two documents. An Electrical Installation Certificate, which records that the installation meets BS 7671, the wiring regulations, along with the test results circuit by circuit. And the building regulations paperwork for whichever route was used: a compliance certificate issued by the scheme, or a completion certificate from the council if the job went through building control. Keep both.
If the property is let, two more things belong in the same visit. Rented homes in England have to have the installation inspected and tested at intervals of no more than five years. A rewire does not give you a condition report, because a condition report describes an existing installation and there is no longer one to describe. It gives you the Electrical Installation Certificate above, and the five year clock then runs from the date on that certificate. Our guide to condition reports covers the codes and the deadlines for the inspection when it comes round. Alarms are the other one. Since 1 October 2022 a rented home in England needs at least one smoke alarm on each storey with a room used as living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any such room containing a fixed combustion appliance other than a gas cooker. The regulations do not insist those alarms are mains powered. A rewire is still the cheapest moment there will ever be to hard wire and interlink them.
Where to start
Start with a test rather than a quote. Our electricians work across Teesside from Middlesbrough TS3, and the sequence is the same everywhere: inspect and test, say plainly whether the cable is the problem or the board is, then price whichever job it turns out to be. The local pages for Middlesbrough and Stockton-on-Tees go into the housing in each. If you already know what you want looking at, send us the details. </content> </invoke>
Whatever else you do, have the testing done before you agree a price with anybody. A rewire priced without it is a guess about what is behind the plaster, and it is your money underwriting the guess.