To ask about electrician prices..

[Endofmytether2]

We have a summerhouse and a shed and we want to put sockets and lights in them.
The armoured cable is already in place in the shed and there is already a connected fuse board in the summerhouse....so all the wires are mostly already in place, although we will need a fuse board in the shed too.

We want 5 outside sockets and 12 doubles in the shed and 12 doubles in the summer house and 4 single sockets up high for led lights.

We've been quoted £1, 800 for the work including materials, (which are the fairly basic ones) and spotlights for the lights in the summerhouse, but just strip lights for the shed (1st and 2nd fix). The summerhouse will have insulation, etc, done as well so they will come back when that is finished just to cover the sockets. The shed can be done in one go.

It seems really high to me, but I'm struggling to get other people in for quotes qtm, so I just wondered if this sounds about right to anyone in the know?

We're in the Southeast of the UK, if that makes a difference.

Thanks.

That sounds quite high but that is an awful lot of sockets. Not really useful for direct comparison but we recently paid around £600 for an electrician to do several jobs (including fuse board upgrade in the house which was the main job taking the majority of the time) which included running power down to garage with lighting and a few sockets.

And we're also in SE.

We were quoted nearly 3k for a similar amount of work. Insane! My DH is doing it all himself and we are paying building regs to sign it off instead.

wtf.... over 50 plug sockets in the garden...? i bet you can see your house from the moon

What on earth are you plugging in? 24 sockets in a summer house?

Lol, sounds a lot I know, but I'd rather have too many and not need them, than not enough....each building is roughly 6m by 4.5m so of a decent size

The summerhouse will be our entertainment area for outside with a (home built) bar, tv, seating area, LED lighting, etc, etc, so we will need a fridge, etc.

What circuit is the cable already wired into? If it's just a 13 amp one I think you are in for trouble.

32 or higher

Jeez, are you planning a cannabis farm? That's a hell of a lot of sockets!

We had it all planned to be done originally when we were having some renovations done to the house, so the main cables were put it already, but things always cost more than you think and I've had health problems, so it's been a slow project doing it bit by bit over the last 2-3 years. This is the last bit that we need to out-source and the rest we can do ourselves.
We want it ready for June so we can make the most of it this summer.

🤣 no, just hate using extension leads so I want them spread out so that however we arrange the room there are sockets close by, where ever you might need them.

I was expecting the price to be around £1000, but not sure if that's realistic after the quote he's given us?

Poor neighbours

I was quoted when we considered a project house approx £50 a socket (double or single) so for 33 sockets that would be £1650. This was 8 years ago.

I'd have said its at the low end of what I'd expect. 33 individual sockets plus a board for the shed means you're talking around £45 a socket inc materials.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. You’ll think I’m
Biased as my DH an electrician, but as someone has mentioned above already the price per socket, it is roughly about what you should be expecting to pay. And we’re in SE too.

Per socket (which I think you've gone overboard on, and isn't the way your job would be priced, so over simplified but a good rough guide) it sounds on the low end tbh. For your area especially.

If you're not happy with that quote, you need to look at other quotes or ask for a breakdown of the estimate so that you can understand the bits you could do yourself or de-scope. For all we know you have awful walls that are a nightmare to work with which take longer to actually wire up because you want stuff in the most difficult positions. That's fine if you want to pay for it.

Where did you get that random £1k estimate in your head from? Was it based on actual data (previous experience, similar jobs neighbours or friends have done)... Or did you just pluck it out of your arse?

I don't work in construction but do work in a technical field and it often amazes me that difficult clients sometimes have no clue about what's involved yet already have an solid understanding about how much it's worth.

I figure that my private liposuction should be a couple of hundred quid at most but unfortunately I've fuck all knowledge about medical insurance costs, surgeon training or salaries, so there's very little point my using a single quotation against a random expectation is there

That sounds cheap and it also sounds like more sockets than I have in my entire house...!

The rough estimate was based on a previous/similar quote from last year, some work has already been done so I took some off, but maybe shouldn't have expected to.

@JellyBabiesFan, bit rude, 🙄 No neighbours to be worried about actually as we live remotely and are not noisy in the slightest anyway.

Good to know it's in the ball park though, just seemed such a jump from the last quote that I wasn't sure if we were being ripped off.

That's a lot of sockets, wiring, fitting and safety checks because they're in outside structures.

Sounds fair to me, and you get what you pay for tbh.

A few years ago we paid £1000 to cap off then reinstate power and light to replacement shed via an existing armoured cable - double sockets in and out - plus replace two motion sensor security lights. Also SE and required two visits.