A house rewire is the biggest electrical job most people ever pay for, and in Eastbourne it usually comes up for one of three reasons. A survey has flagged the wiring during a sale, an EICR has come back with a column of C2s, or the sockets ran out years ago and the house now runs on extension leads. A lot of housing here has never been fully rewired, only added to. The Victorian and Edwardian terraces behind the seafront often still carry original runs in the roof and under the floors with newer circuits spurred off them. We do full and partial rewires across BN20 to BN23.
Signs a house here needs rewiring
Round pin sockets, fabric or black rubber sheathed cable, light fittings with no earth, a wooden fuse box, sockets that feel warm, brown scorch marks around a plug, or lights that dim when the kettle goes on. In older seafront and Old Town properties the cable often runs through an unheated roof space or a damp cellar, and rubber insulation in those conditions goes brittle and crumbles off the conductors. The strongest evidence is not the age of the house though. It is insulation resistance readings on an EICR that have drifted down across several circuits at once, which means the problem is the installation rather than one bad accessory.
Full rewire or partial rewire
A full rewire means every circuit comes out back to bare cable, with a new consumer unit, new circuits and new accessories throughout. A partial rewire is the right answer more often than people expect. If the kitchen was done recently and the shower circuit is sound, there is no sense pulling them out to replace lighting and upstairs sockets that are genuinely tired. The test results decide it, not a sales pitch. In a flat inside one of the converted houses there is a third possibility worth checking first, which is that the weak link is the sub-main from the shared intake rather than the wiring inside the flat.
What the disruption honestly looks like
Floorboards come up and carpets come back. Chases get cut into walls for cables and back boxes, so there will be plaster damage around every socket and switch, and there will be dust. In the older terraces the fragile part is lath and plaster ceilings, and we will tell you up front where we think a ceiling is unlikely to survive having cables pulled above it, rather than discovering it with you halfway through. First fix is the messy stage. Second fix, when the accessories go on and the board is connected, is far quieter. We sheet up and clear up at the end of each day.
Staging it around people still living there
Most rewires here happen with the family still in the house, so we work room by room or floor by floor and keep the kitchen and one living room usable throughout. Temporary sockets go in where they are needed and we agree in advance which day the consumer unit changes over, because that is the day the whole property is off. If the property is let, the tenant needs proper notice and access arranged, and the landlord's duties under the 2020 rented sector regulations carry on while the work is going on. Everything is tested and certificated as each stage is completed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can we stay in the house during a rewire?
A: Most people do. We keep circuits live where we can and work through the house in sections so you always have a kitchen and somewhere to sit. First fix is the part you will notice, with floorboards up and dust about. An empty house is easier to work in, but it is not a requirement and planning around an occupied home is standard for us.
Q: Do you make good the plaster afterwards?
A: We fill and make good the chases and around the back boxes as part of the job, so you are left with a flat surface ready for a decorator. Full re-skimming of walls and ceilings and any decorating is a separate conversation, agreed in writing before we start rather than assumed either way. In older properties we will also flag which ceilings we are worried about before a single cable is pulled.
Q: Can you rewire a flat in a converted seafront house?
A: Yes, and it is a big part of what we do in Eastbourne. The extra things to sort out are the freeholder or managing agent's permission and access to the shared intake cupboard. We check the sub-main feeding your flat before quoting, because there is little point putting new circuits behind an undersized or tired supply cable that will still be the limiting factor afterwards.
Q: What paperwork do we get at the end?
A: An Electrical Installation Certificate for the new work, a full schedule of test results, a properly labelled consumer unit and a circuit chart. A rewire is notifiable work under Part P of the building regulations, and we deal with the notification. Keep all of it somewhere safe. It is the first thing a buyer's solicitor asks for on a sale and it saves argument at the next EICR.