Teesside was wired in waves, and the wave your street belongs to predicts most of what an inspection will find. The Victorian terraces of Middlesbrough, Stockton and the Hartlepool Headland were first wired for light and very little else. The estates that grew around the chemical works at Billingham and the steelworks at Dormanstown were wired to a 1950s idea of what a family plugs in. Ingleby Barwick and Coulby Newham went up to a modern standard and are now old enough that the consumer unit is the oldest component in the house.
We are a multi-trade firm based in Middlesbrough TS3. Hiring an electrician in Teesside is really hiring for the era of your property rather than for the single item on your list, because what sits behind the plaster decides whether a job is a morning or a fortnight. Our electricians work to the 18th Edition of the wiring regulations, and notifiable work is certified rather than just finished. Registration under a competent person scheme such as NICEIC is what lets an installer self-certify that work instead of notifying building control job by job.
The work we are asked for, and what moves the price
Domestic electrics divide into a small number of recognisable jobs. The middle column is what you are buying. The right column is the honest answer to why one house costs more than the next.
| Job | What it covers | What moves the price |
|---|---|---|
| Condition report | Inspection and testing, findings coded, plain English summary | Circuit count and property size |
| Consumer unit replacement | New board with correct protection, testing, certificate | Circuits, and the state of earthing and bonding |
| Full rewire | New cable throughout, new board, making good | Size, access, occupied or empty, floor coverings |
| Partial rewire | The oldest circuits or one floor, planned to join up later | How much of the existing installation is sound |
| Fault-finding | Tracing an intermittent trip or a dead circuit | Approach and cost agreed with you before we start |
| Sockets and lighting | Additions, moves, outdoor supplies, switching changes | Distance from an existing circuit, wall construction |
| Alarms | Smoke and heat detection to current standards | Storeys, and whether interlinked cabling exists |
| Car charger supply | Preparing the supply and installing the circuit | Headroom on the main fuse, and the earthing arrangement |
The one price we will not give is a rewire over the phone. A figure produced from a description is a figure for a house nobody has looked at.
Landlord testing and the five year duty
A rented home in England needs a satisfactory condition report in place before a new tenancy starts, renewed at intervals of no more than five years, with a copy going to the tenant. A current report carries over to the next tenancy, so this is not a fresh test every time somebody moves in. That is the duty, set by the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 and explained in the government's guidance for landlords, tenants and councils. It is enforceable by the council, which is why it is the electrical job we do most.
The part landlords find frustrating is that the report is graded rather than pass or fail in the way an MOT is. C1 means danger is present and it gets made safe on the day. C2 means potentially dangerous, and it has to be put right for the report to be satisfactory. FI means the inspector could not see enough to judge, and that counts against you too. C3 is a recommendation, and it does not make a report unsatisfactory, whatever anyone quoting to fix all of them tells you.
We keep the testing and the remedial work as two separate priced items, because the person marking the homework should not be paid by the number of faults found. There is more on the codes and the deadlines in our landlord guide to condition reports, and a void week between tenancies is by some distance the cheapest time to handle all of it.
A new board is not a rewire
These get confused constantly, and the difference is worth thousands.
A consumer unit replacement puts modern protection in front of circuits that are themselves sound. It is a day's work in most houses, it comes with the certificate your insurer and any future buyer will want, and it is often the whole answer on a 1980s or 1990s property where the wiring is fine and only the board has aged out.
A rewire replaces the cable. That is the job when the insulation has gone brittle, when lighting circuits have no earth, or when so much has been added over the decades that nobody can say what connects to what. Putting a new board on cable like that is a new lid on an old problem.
Testing is what tells the two apart, which is why we test before quoting rather than after. It cuts both ways: a fair number of houses that were braced for a rewire turn out to need a board change and a short list of remedials, and we would rather say so than sell the bigger job.
Certificates, and who is allowed to sign them
Part P of the building regulations covers electrical safety in dwellings, and some work has to be notified to building control — the Planning Portal sets out which. In England that means new circuits, consumer unit replacements, and work on circuits in a special location, which in practice is the space around a bath or shower and any room with a swimming pool or sauna heater. That list is narrower than it once was. Until 2013 the whole bathroom counted, and plenty of guidance still online has never been updated. Registered electricians self-certify the notifiable work through their scheme and the notification happens for you.
This is the piece people skip and then meet again at the worst moment. When a house sells, the buyer's solicitor asks for the paperwork on any electrical work, and there is no retrospective fix that is as cheap as having done it correctly. Keep the certificates somewhere you will find them.
Kitchens, bathrooms and cars
Three things have changed what a house asks of its wiring: induction hobs, electric showers and car chargers. Each one is a large fixed load added to an installation designed before any of them were common, and the question is always the same. What headroom does the incoming supply have once everything else is counted.
A bathroom brings its own rules on zones and what may be installed where, which is why the electrics get planned with the room rather than added at the end. If your enquiry is really the start of a bathroom refit or a new kitchen, say so, because first fix wants to happen at the right point in the sequence and our own team covers both trades.
Where we work
Our electricians cover the whole Teesside conurbation rather than one town, and the housing changes noticeably as you move across it. The Victorian and Edwardian stock in Middlesbrough and Stockton-on-Tees throws up old cable and unearthed lighting. The seaward property in Redcar and along the coast has exterior fittings and garden supplies taking salt air that inland ones never see. The port stock in Hartlepool covers everything from Georgian on the Headland to large post-war estates.
Travel is stated honestly rather than promised away. The far ends of the patch sit half an hour or more from TS3. Whether we reach one of them the same day turns on where the vans already are that morning, and we will say which it is when you ring.
When we are the wrong choice
If the lights have gone out and your neighbours are dark too, it is the network rather than your installation. Ring 105, which is free and connects you to the distribution operator for this area.
If you are looking for commercial electricians in Teesside for a factory unit, a three phase installation or periodic inspection across a portfolio of trading premises, we are the wrong firm. Our work is domestic and let residential property, plus the occasional small shop or office that behaves like a house. Being clear about that is more use to you than taking the enquiry.
We also cannot certify work somebody else installed. Certification follows the person who did it. We can inspect and report on what is there, which is a different thing and often worth buying, but it is not a certificate.
And if what you want is the cheapest condition report available, we are unlikely to be it. A quick inspection that codes every finding as advisory produces a satisfactory report and protects nobody.
Getting a price
Anything substantial starts with a test or a survey. What follows is a written quote, in plain language, that you can keep and accept online in your own time. Quoted work carries no call-out fee. Where a fault has to be traced before anyone can say what the repair is, we agree the approach and the cost of the fault-finding with you before we start rather than starting the clock.
Anything found once the boards are up comes back to you as a written variation with a price attached before the work happens. Certificates are issued when the job completes, and if plaster had to be disturbed our decorators can finish the room properly instead of leaving you a patched wall to sort out. Tell us what you need and we will quote it properly.
