How to Plan a Successful House Rewire

If your house’s wiring is found to be outdated, damaged or otherwise unsafe, a rewire is pretty much essential. At the very least, faulty wiring can cause trips, outages and blown fuses, while at worst it can lead to electric shocks and even fires.

Unfortunately, rewiring a house is no mean feat. As well as the cost, it will require a lot of preparation. However, within that, there’s also an opportunity to make some much-needed improvements to your home.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to plan your house rewire to ensure everything goes smoothly – and get the most out of it.

Seizing the opportunity

Completely rewiring a house is a big job. It requires your existing wiring to be pulled out and replaced. But that also means you can make any changes to switches, sockets or even electrical appliances in the process.

With that in mind, it’s important to consider how many light switches and plug sockets you want for each room and the best position for them. Don’t forget the actual lights themselves. Maybe a long room needs two light fittings instead of one? Or perhaps you would like a dimmer installed, which needs a deeper back box.

If you’re considering any new electrical appliances, now is the time to decide. The cables for an electric shower, hob or outdoor lighting can all be put in place to make things easier when you do have them installed.

Preparing your home

Once you’ve decided what work you would like done as part of the rewire, it’s time to think about preparing your home. Ideally, your home should be as empty as possible – including people.

Electricians will need access to all the walls, floors, ceilings and even the loft space. Anything that’s left in your home will probably get in the way. As well as the risk of those things being damaged, they will make the job longer to complete and more expensive as a result. Try to move as much as possible out of your home, into relatives’ or friends’ houses or even into storage units.

It’s a similar scenario for people. Given the size of the job, it’s best if you can be out of your home for the duration of the job. Not least because an empty house is much quicker to rewire, so you can restore normality far sooner that way.

On top of that, your home won’t be a particularly pleasant place to be while work is being done. As well as having no electricity, you’ll have noisy, messy work taking place throughout your home.

In simple terms, the emptier the house, the easier the job and the faster you can get back to normal.

Don’t forget redecorating

Redecoration is another key part of your rewiring plan, to get your home back in order as soon as possible. All wiring and cables will need to be chased away within walls and coving, which will leave them needing plastering and redecoration after the rewire.

Costing things up

Costs are an inevitable part of any house rewire. It’s best to get a clear idea of the costs as part of your plans. That’s where Smart Electricians can help. We provide an easy to use house rewire cost calculator, that takes into account the size of your home, how empty it will be and what kind of rewiring you need.

If you have any more questions about the rewire process, get in touch with our team of expert electricians in Sheffield.