Can a house be rewired bit by bit?

SiD the Turtle · 23 Jul 2017 at 16:07

Our house has a very old looking consumer unit as well sockets of various ages. The worst offenders are the upstairs bedrooms that have sockets that look to be ancient.

I have the money for a full rewire but also a long list of repairs to do so my thoughts were to get the consumer unit replaced as well as rewire the rooms we're hoping to do up soon, rather than do everything in one go.

Logistically is this possible or will the sparkies grumble about a new consumer unit combined with old wiring?

thezappa · 23 Jul 2017 at 16:19

I suspect they will encourage doing it in one job. It's fair enough doing it your (proposed) way but it will reduce inconvenience in the future and may work out cheaper to get it done in one hit.
They may also say from a professional point of view (duty of care) they feel obliged to do the whole lot rather than have a mix of old and new which may not necessarily work so well together.

rexehuk · 23 Jul 2017 at 17:18

Yes it's possible. I kind of did it the other way around, laid all new wiring/sockets as I went and did a big bang switch over (without the bang!).

I found that doing something like phased switchover was too complicated, whole house was on 1 ring, 1 lighting radial over 3 floors.

Sparky won't have issues sticking old cable into new CU, but because new regulations require RCDs you run the risk of having no electrics if it starts tripping and will have to find what's going on.

HardwareGeek · 23 Jul 2017 at 17:46

best to get get it all done in 1 hit imo, just gonna cost more and complicate things to try and do bit by bit etc

SiD the Turtle · 23 Jul 2017 at 19:10

Thanks for the advice guys. Some of the plugs are very dodgy so worth considering if we change the consumer unit without replacing the sockets and wires it might trip every time I plug something in (which in safety terms is a good thing).

a1ex2001 · 23 Jul 2017 at 21:43

Nothing wrong with bit by bit, depending on the location I'd put a new consumer unit in alongside the old one and just move over bit by bit as you renovate.

DXP55 · 24 Jul 2017 at 09:50

a1ex2001 said:
Nothing wrong with bit by bit, depending on the location I'd put a new consumer unit in alongside the old one and just move over bit by bit as you renovate.

+1 - I did this-- My wiring was single strand and brittle as hell - sparky said don't touch the old stuff at all - this was 40 years ago mind. I was lucky -- all the sockets were on top of door frames - previous owner had 6 great Danes - yes it did smell when we moved in.

Yaayuh! · 24 Jul 2017 at 10:01

*Thread Hijack Alert*

I'm interested in this. However, my house doesn't need renovating, but there are some questionable wiring. Is it possible to re-wire without having to rip apart the building/walls too much?

MassiveJim · 24 Jul 2017 at 11:00

You could always run the wiring to the CU location without wiring up whilst you are renovating, then once you have all rooms done.
You could then install the new CU and wire everything in.

Only downside to this is you will either have the new wires poking out everywhere or you will have to try and hide them behind existing sockets.
If you are running them to new locations you could just cover them with blanking plates until you are ready.

Salty22 · 24 Jul 2017 at 11:59

Had a full rewire done in april, it was a ball ache but so worth doing, some of the cables were rubber and frayed (hallway light if it wasnt being pulled down by the weight of a bulb and heavy lampshade would spark on and off), we had so many different sockets it was unreal, wooden back boxes.
I got the whole lot done in one go, we moved to my mums house for originally one week.
Luckily my mums is a 30 second walk from my house.
Ended up staying two weeks just to get more done before we moved back.
A lot of sparkies wont wanna do the job unless you move out, its an arse for them to relay floor boards every night etc

a1ex2001 · 24 Jul 2017 at 14:57

Rossi~ said:
*Thread Hijack Alert*

I'm interested in this. However, my house doesn't need renovating, but there are some questionable wiring. Is it possible to re-wire without having to rip apart the building/walls too much?

You can do it without making a meass but it will look horrible with surface mounted cables everywhere.

Yaayuh! · 24 Jul 2017 at 14:59

a1ex2001 said:
You can do it without making a meass but it will look horrible with surface mounted cables everywhere.

Yeuck! That's what i thought.

rexehuk · 24 Jul 2017 at 16:59

Rossi~ said:
Yeuck! That's what i thought.

Easiest I found (town house) was pull up floor above the cu to do new runs. From there just needed the ceilings off to do majority of wiring.

Obviously in room where cu came up majority of the floor was needed up.

Ceilings are cheaper than flooring so was my preference , also can get rid of artex!