A House Rewire is the biggest electrical job most people ever have done to their home, and the part that worries them is rarely the wiring. It is the mess, and how long they will be living in it. Bexhill on Sea has a lot of houses that were built between the wars and last had the electrics touched in the sixties or seventies. The cable has done its time whether or not anything has gone wrong yet. We handle full and partial rewires across the town, in bungalows around Little Common, semis in Sidley and flats closer to the seafront. What follows is an honest account of what the work is like, not a sales pitch.
Signs a Bexhill house needs rewiring
You do not need to be an electrician to spot most of them. Rubber or lead sheathed cable in the loft, the sort that crumbles when you move it. Round pin sockets, or black bakelite switches still in place. Light switches with no earth wire behind them, which was normal practice for years and is not acceptable now. Fuses that blow when the kettle and the toaster go on together. One socket per room and extension leads running under the carpet. Scorch marks or a warm socket front. Any one of those is worth a look. Several together usually means the installation is past patching up.
Full rewire or partial rewire
Not every house needs everything replaced. A full rewire takes out every circuit in the property and replaces the consumer unit with it. A partial rewire deals with the parts that have failed, which is often the lighting circuits, the kitchen, or the upstairs while the ground floor is sound. On an older Bexhill house that has already been part rewired at some point, a partial job is frequently the right answer and costs a fraction of the full one. The way to find out which you need is an inspection and test first, so the decision comes from readings rather than from guesswork.
What the disruption is really like
Cables have to get from the board to every room, and that means floorboards up and carpets rolled back. Switch and socket positions need chasing into the wall, which makes dust, and in older Bexhill houses with lath and plaster that is messier than it is in a modern build. Bungalows are usually kinder, because a good loft and suspended timber floors give us routes without cutting much. Solid ground floors are the hard bit, and sometimes the honest answer there is a different route rather than digging up your floor. We sheet up, we clear at the end of each day, and we agree who is making good the plaster before a single wall gets touched.
Staging it around you living there
Most of our Bexhill customers stay put, and a lot of them are long term owners in their seventies and eighties who are not going anywhere for a fortnight. So we work in stages rather than shutting the whole house down. We do the first fix in one part of the property while the rest stays live, then the second fix, then move on. The fridge, the freezer and the heating stay running wherever it is possible to keep them running. Power goes back on every evening. We tell you the day before which rooms are coming out and what will be off, so there are no surprises when you get up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I stay in the house while it is being rewired?
A: Most people do. It takes longer that way than an empty house would, because we work in sections and put the power back each evening rather than pulling the whole installation out at once, but it saves you paying to live somewhere else. We plan the order of the rooms with you at the start. If someone in the house has health needs or works from home, tell us early and we will build the sequence around that.
Q: Does a House Rewire include a new fuseboard?
A: Yes. A full rewire always ends with a new consumer unit, because there is no sense running brand new circuits back into an obsolete board. The new unit gives every circuit its own protection and the certification then covers the whole installation. You receive an Electrical Installation Certificate with the test results, and the work is notified to Building Control under Part P. For landlords, that certificate also sets you up for your next EICR.
Q: Will you make good the plaster afterwards?
A: We agree that before we start, and we put it in writing, because it is the single thing people most often assume either way. Chases get filled and made ready. Whether the final plastering and decorating is ours or your own decorator depends on the job and on what you want, and we will be straight with you about which is the better use of your money. What we will not do is leave you with open walls and no plan.
Q: Is a bungalow easier to rewire than a house?
A: Generally yes, and Bexhill on Sea has plenty of them. With a bungalow almost everything can be reached from the loft, so drops come down inside the walls to sockets and switches with far less lifting of floors. Two storey houses need the upstairs floorboards up to feed the downstairs ceilings, which is more work and more disturbance. It is not a rule, and a bungalow with a solid floor throughout can still be awkward, but it is a fair starting expectation.