GUIDE TO RENOVATING

A whole house rewire is commonly needed in renovation projects - here's everything you need to know about the job and the costs

- IAN ROCK

Quantifying the extent of electrical work required for a renovation project isn’t always as straightforward as you might imagine.

In some cases, the system may only require localised updating or extending. At the other end of the spectrum, a whole house rewire may need to be shoehorned into your budget.

As well as ensuring compliance with the latest IET electrical safety regulations, replacing the entire system has the advantage of opening up options for stylish new lighting schemes and smart home technology. The downside, of course, is that rewiring the whole property doesn’t come cheap.

Accurately gauging the amount of electrical work needed can be challenging because first impressions are sometimes cruelly deceptive, potentially landing novice renovators with budget-crippling additional costs. For example, in a typical property awaiting refurbishment, alongside outdated wallpaper you might expect to find ageing electrical fittings that look like they've escaped from a museum: yellowing switches, weird-shaped wall sockets and nicotine-stained fittings. But even where the fittings appear to be fresh out of the box, it’s not unknown for seductive brushed-nickel cover plates to be concealing a tangled morass of frayed cabling of unfathomable antiquity. As such, it’s essential to get electrical systems professionally checked whatever their apparent condition.

GETTING THE RIGHT SURVEY

A good starting point when buying a renovation is to commission a detailed Level 3 RICS Building Survey. But when it comes to assessing services, survey reports aren’t always tremendously enlightening. This is because auditors at surveying firms dictate that even where the electrics look okay, the surveyor should nonetheless condemn them with a red condition rating indicative of ‘a serious defect requiring urgent repair or replacement’.