Complete house rewire, what to expect? What to do?

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Hi all,

I've had some plans drawn up for the refurb on my house, it's a 1930s house that hasn't been touched in perhaps 40 years or so.
The wiring in ancient and needs to be completely redone.

These are my proposed plans: https://imgur.com/8cdYgRY

Currently the fuse box is where the new WC is going, and I will need to get that moved into the Utility room. I haven't marked out furniture/TV etc yet and as I've never had an electrical work of this scale done before I want to make sure I don't get taken for a ride and I ask for the right things.

I've previously read people put wiring into conduit and so if they ever need to replace wiring they can just use a pull cord and pull the cables out, push the new ones through.

I can see that working for some areas but with a house of this size I'd imagine you'd have conduit everywhere and you'd never be able to keep track of it.
I'll be running lots of ethernet around the house as well, I imagine it'll be about 25-30 ports dotted everywhere throughout the house so that I'll have to take into consideration. I'll be marking out where the plug sockets and ethernet sockets will be going as in some areas it'll be quite specific.

What else should I ask, or communicate to the electrician that I want doing before he starts work that'll make sure my house is done well, is kind of future proof (as much as possible) AND it's easier for the electrician?

Cheers!
 
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Ethernet and mains should not really be run together, and the problem I found was I invited quotes and each was for a different amount of work, so no way to compare.

So likely the best is a quote for minimum of work, the essential stuff you can't do without, as I had quotes some twice as expensive to others, but they were for more work.

Next is where are you going to live while it is done? I had to put mother in a care home at £600 per week, so any delay is costly.

Do you want it surface of hidden, I stipulated could go down corners of rooms surface, but else where needed to be buried.

Who will make good, I did all the re-plastering to reduce price.

Is there any paper on the walls, if you plaster and there is paper on walls, then repair will be paper thickness proud of rest of wall. So ideal all paper removed first.

Access is always a problem, but lifting floor boards easier than floor sheets, and tiled upper floors can be a real problem. My reason for a re-wire was seemed likely mother would need to go into a home full time, and if she did either a re-wire and let out the house which would help towards her care, or sell house. And to let out house it needed a re-wire, so really basic would do.

Bits had already been done, kitchen and wetroom, so not quite a full rewire, cost just under £3000 in North Wales, used a large firm as speed was important.

It was not perfect, but good enough.

To do same house ready to move back in, it would cost at least double, and also at least double the time. So I would say for you large house looking at around £10,000 all in, maybe more. If you can't afford that, you need to reduce what is done.

Since you would need to vacate or pay a lot extra so all kept safe, your not there to give instructions, and likely better your not, as I remember one job where we had loads of requests from the lady of the house, most of which were done, and cost added to bill, seems she had not realised all the extras would also cost extra.

But it means you need to trust the tradesman, so you select more by how much you feel you can trust him, to anything else. I left instructions to keep cost down, no sockets on papered walls for example. I also said all sockets to be on a ring so I could add spurs latter.
 
Ethernet and mains should not really be run together, and the problem I found was I invited quotes and each was for a different amount of work, so no way to compare.

So likely the best is a quote for minimum of work, the essential stuff you can't do without, as I had quotes some twice as expensive to others, but they were for more work.

Next is where are you going to live while it is done? I had to put mother in a care home at £600 per week, so any delay is costly.

Do you want it surface of hidden, I stipulated could go down corners of rooms surface, but else where needed to be buried.

Who will make good, I did all the re-plastering to reduce price.

Is there any paper on the walls, if you plaster and there is paper on walls, then repair will be paper thickness proud of rest of wall. So ideal all paper removed first.

Access is always a problem, but lifting floor boards easier than floor sheets, and tiled upper floors can be a real problem. My reason for a re-wire was seemed likely mother would need to go into a home full time, and if she did either a re-wire and let out the house which would help towards her care, or sell house. And to let out house it needed a re-wire, so really basic would do.

Bits had already been done, kitchen and wetroom, so not quite a full rewire, cost just under £3000 in North Wales, used a large firm as speed was important.

It was not perfect, but good enough.

To do same house ready to move back in, it would cost at least double, and also at least double the time. So I would say for you large house looking at around £10,000 all in, maybe more. If you can't afford that, you need to reduce what is done.

Since you would need to vacate or pay a lot extra so all kept safe, your not there to give instructions, and likely better your not, as I remember one job where we had loads of requests from the lady of the house, most of which were done, and cost added to bill, seems she had not realised all the extras would also cost extra.

But it means you need to trust the tradesman, so you select more by how much you feel you can trust him, to anything else. I left instructions to keep cost down, no sockets on papered walls for example. I also said all sockets to be on a ring so I could add spurs latter.

Cheers for the reply.
I won't be living at the property while the work is being done, it's so extensive that there is no possible way I could live there. The bits of furniture that I can't take with me will be put in storage for two months or so while the main bit of the work is being done.
Luckily I've already taken it back to bare floorboards (the carpet stank something fierce), and nearly everything bar the garage/utility will be hidden. I need to figure out the make good, but it will probably be whoever I get in to do the plastering as they'll need to do the whole house regardless.

I was hoping it'd be about £7k for the full thing as I'm hoping to take off all the current plaster myself so that it's even simpler for the electrician to come in and do the work.

I need to understand what "smart home" options there are these days? I only use Hue and Ubiquiti APs
 
Just make sure you use someone who is recommended and not go down the cheapest route. You get what you pay for
 
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You can run the ethernet (don't forget coax for satellite or terrestrial TV) yourself so if budget is important just cut that bit out of the spec entirely.
Smart home options are many and varied- on a rewire unless you know exactly what you want you're probably best off specifying the wiring to give yourself max flexibility- one way to do this is to have each cable running to fitting and to switch all coming back to a central point (loft or understairs cupboard maybe)- you can then put your smart toys under there. Do specify how many cores you want running to each switch if you go this road.
Yes knock the plaster off the walls before spark arrives- be aware that if you do this building regs require that you look at improving the thermal conductivity of the walls to current values (U of 0.3 iirc for refurb).
 
I'll be running lots of ethernet around the house as well, I imagine it'll be about 25-30 ports dotted everywhere throughout the house so that I'll have to take into consideration.

That seems an excessively large number, for a normal domestic home and would cost rather a lot. Two ports per usually occupied room is usually enough for most purposes. A router can be plugged into a port, which can serve multiple items with wifi or wired.
 
Just make sure you use someone who is recommended and not go down the cheapest route. You get what you pay for
I'll see who my builder recommends, but I would rather go elsewhere. I'll probably use NextDoor to get a recommendation, I got a great gas engineer from there

You can run the ethernet (don't forget coax for satellite or terrestrial TV) yourself so if budget is important just cut that bit out of the spec entirely.
Smart home options are many and varied- on a rewire unless you know exactly what you want you're probably best off specifying the wiring to give yourself max flexibility- one way to do this is to have each cable running to fitting and to switch all coming back to a central point (loft or understairs cupboard maybe)- you can then put your smart toys under there. Do specify how many cores you want running to each switch if you go this road.
Yes knock the plaster off the walls before spark arrives- be aware that if you do this building regs require that you look at improving the thermal conductivity of the walls to current values (U of 0.3 iirc for refurb).
I've got a solid wall property and my heating barely works at the moment so I'm whacking insulation everywhere I can as well just to reduce the TC of the walls and ceilings. External insulation for half the house, cavity wall for the other half and finally underfloor insulation to cap it all off.

That seems an excessively large number, for a normal domestic home and would cost rather a lot. Two ports per usually occupied room is usually enough for most purposes. A router can be plugged into a port, which can serve multiple items with wifi or wired.
10 in bedrooms, 4 in living room (PC/Nvidia Shield and PS4), 4 in the rear room, a couple for the garden office I'm eventually going to build, 5 Access Points through out the house & garden and finally 2-3 for Sonos speakers (where ever I put those)
I like WiFi for phones, tablets but everything else must be wired for me. I'd rather the speakers be wired just because I find the Sonos loses connection all the bloody time from WiFi and then I have to perform a reset.

The main thing is I don't want switches everywhere like I currently have, I would much rather have a cable out the wall to the device.
 
That seems an excessively large number, for a normal domestic home and would cost rather a lot. Two ports per usually occupied room is usually enough for most purposes. A router can be plugged into a port, which can serve multiple items with wifi or wired.
For a retrofit maybe. For a full bare bricks I'd be looking at a pair or maybe 2 pairs where the telly will be and at least 2 x 2 pairs in every room (so whatever device can be used without cable crossing the room or the doors).
 
For a retrofit maybe. For a full bare bricks I'd be looking at a pair or maybe 2 pairs where the telly will be and at least 2 x 2 pairs in every room (so whatever device can be used without cable crossing the room or the doors).

Many devices only work via wifi, so options to use wired LAN are limited. Living room here has TV, phone, Iphone, 3x Smart Plugs and a router - only the router and TV can use wired LAN
 
Many devices only work via wifi, so options to use wired LAN are limited. Living room here has TV, phone, Iphone, 3x Smart Plugs and a router - only the router and TV can use wired LAN

I think this is a case by case scenario tbh. The Nvidia Shield TV, which is my main media consumption device, has a gigabit ethernet port as do my gaming PC and my PS4. Even though I never use my TV smart features it has a ethernet port on that as well.
In my old house I used to use a USB C hub to my tablet so I could plug an ethernet cable in and streaming would be flawless.

My Tado thermostat is wired as well, but again it depends on what you use most.
 
I would not necessarily re-site the mains. Having the incoming supply and consumer unit in the loo is not a problem.

Unless, ofc, it's in the way of the WC pan!
 
I'll see who my builder recommends, but I would rather go elsewhere. I'll probably use NextDoor to get a recommendation, I got a great gas engineer from there

Alwsys good to get a personal recommendation for an electrician. I wouldn’t trust a builder for this! NextDoor maybe but
- get 2 or 3 quotes
And
- make sure your chosen sparking God is listed here:
https://www.electricalcompetentperson.co.uk/
Or you’ll have legal paperwork issues later on.
 

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