Domestic electrician in Lincolnshire

When a rewire is genuinely the right call

Rewires get sold on age, and age on its own is not the reason. What matters is what the wiring is made of and what has been done to it since. Rubber and lead sheathed cable is past saving. Early PVC from the sixties and seventies can still be sound, and a proper test will tell you either way. The honest triggers are a board with rewireable fuses, no earth at the lighting points, sockets spurred off each other over decades, and a condition report full of C2 codes.

A partial rewire is often the right answer. If the upstairs was done fifteen years ago and the ground floor was not, there is no sense ripping out sound cable to make a tidy story. We test first, tell you which circuits are genuinely failing, and quote the work that needs doing. Sometimes the finding is that the installation is fine and what you actually want is more sockets in sensible places, which is a far smaller job and a far smaller bill.

• House rewiring in Lincolnshire

What a consumer unit upgrade involves

The board is the part of a domestic installation that has changed most. A modern one is metal clad, holds RCBOs instead of a pair of shared RCDs, and increasingly carries surge protection too. The practical difference with RCBOs is that a fault on the fridge circuit trips the fridge circuit. On an older split load board it takes out half the house, which is how people end up with a dark landing and a freezer full of water while they are away for the weekend.

Changing a board is not simply swapping a box. Every existing circuit has to be tested before it goes back on, because a modern RCBO notices earth leakage that an old rewireable fuse ignored completely. That is a good thing, but it can turn a morning job into a full day and occasionally into a conversation about one tired circuit that needs attention before the board goes live. Any domestic electrician who skips that step is storing the problem up for you.

• Consumer unit replacement in Lincolnshire

Living in your home during a rewire

Most homeowners have never had a rewire and picture the worst. Realistically it means dust sheets, chased walls, lifted floorboards and a room by room sequence planned so that power, hot water and heating are back on overnight wherever the layout allows. We agree that order before anyone starts, normally working away from the rooms you cannot manage without. Kitchens and bathrooms get planned around instead of left half finished on a Friday, and the same goes for anybody working from home.

Making good is the part people forget to ask about. Chases are filled and floorboards go back down, but plastering and decorating are a separate trade and we say so in the quote instead of leaving it vague. Every circuit is tested and certified to BS 7671, and the Part P notification to building control is ours to make and not yours. Keep the certificate somewhere findable, because selling, insuring or letting the house will need it.