Rewiring questions

[BlackberryandNettle]

It's a late 60s house. Others on the road have been rewired. I'm a bit clueless as have no prior experience of working on a house. How do I assess whether we need rewiring? Obviously I could get an electrician in but just to get a basic idea what should I check? As we are renovating anyway, would it be a good idea if only to add sockets and remove old random heating/arial fixtures? Or is it unnecessary expense/doable by a handyman? Thanks in advance

Old looking fixtures, single sockets, not many sockets in a room. Old wiring is a fire risk so if you can afford to do it, then do it. You could ask an electrician to take a look in the loft as there should be cabling easily visible up there. Bad idea to add new sockets to old wiring...

A few quick checks:

1. What do the sockets look like. Are they flush mounted in the walls (and do they look 'modern')?
2. Look at any pendant light fittings. Is the visible cable white?
3. Most sure fire way is to have a look at the consumer unit (fuse board). Are there individual old-style (wire) fuses, or are there 'breakers'? Often more recent consumer units will have an installation date written on them somewhere.
4. Finally, how many sockets are there in the rooms? If there are very few sockets, it's possible the system may have been uprated rather than rewired.

No substitute for a proper electrician checking out the system of course.

Definitely get this done EARLY. A lot of people cut corners when renovating and do loads of cosmetic work, leaving things like wiring untouched. It's madness. No-one died because of ugly wallpaper, but you can end up with fires and shocks from bad wiring!

The job is filthy and creates havoc, so it's best done before you do lots of nice work to make walls and floors look good. It will mean you can put in loads of lovely new sockets in convenient places.

Thank you all, I'm asking really because decorating plus an extension at the back is exactly what we're planning to do. I'll check out the consumer board later this evening and perhaps go up in loft to look at wires.

Does anyone think this would be a 'move out whilst it's done' job? If so, I'm wondering whether to tag it on the front of a period of building work.

Has anyone rewired existing house, knowing an extension is on the cards but not immediately...? Just wondering if it's worth rewiring with extension in mind but not yet in place/trying to o work out what order to approach things in

Wiring is not obviously ancient, pendants hanging on white wire, sockets a mixture of newish looking white ones (mounted on rather than set into wall, with a few older looking yellowish switches around the house

It's entirely possible that the cables you can't see are rubber insulated rather than pvc. The 60s was a transitional period and without having them checked, you wouldn't know. The problem with rubber is that it perishes and can leave the copper wire exposed. This is extremely dangerous for electrical installations. We had part of our older house rewired - all the cables chased into the walls and in the ceilings were rubber insulated.

Can you post a pic of the board? My other OH works in facilities and building management so could probably give you a rough yes/no. Re-wiring is a total ballache if you need the full works and you don't have conduit in the walls they have to channel out the plaster to remove the old and replace the new, they need full floor and loft access as floor boards need to come up to access wiring and the ceiling of rooms below for light fittings to be changed they obviously do the ones in 1st floor rooms from the loft. If you have flat roofs ceilings need to come down. Also bathroom tiling if you have a wired in shower with no access and kitchen tiling......I have gone through all this in the past.....and about to go through it all again as we are buying a house that needs a full re-wire but luckily this time we won't be living in it while it happens.
If you have bought recently was it not in your full building survey?
Feel free to ask any more questions

The pendants and surface facings of sockets are cheap as chips and easy to replace and hide dangerous wiring that can give shocks and cause house fires.

Not an extension, but we had our house rewired a few months ahead of a major kitchen refurb (walls knocked down, outside loo removed etc!) and our electrician set it up so the kitchen (or in your case extension) was put on a separate circuit so it could be rewired at a later date. He said it wasn't difficult to do.

We had a full rewire and then an extension 3 years later, used the same electrician for both and he just added the extension wiring onto the existing house wiring, no problem.

We had ours rewired due to old cabling which was degrading - came up on electric survey - and actually went three months with no upstairs lighting after it failed!

I would get it done very early on as it makes a lot of mess and ideally you would move out. It's a great opportunity to put in extra sockets (everywhere) and cabling (we got all previously external TV cabling etc. rerouted inside). We plan to redo our kitchen later (but not extend) and electricians put in place the extra wiring to allow this when the time comes. Just go into it with a futureproofing outlook - whatever you want now power wise you are likely to want more of later.

We have lots of double sockets in our newly rewired kitchen and dining room. You can't have too many.

If you are planning to redecorate I would rewire first, as it does involve digging into walls. We had ours done when we moved in and lived with the bare plaster where the wires were replaced for ages. It is messy and it is easier if you aren’t there as everything can just be shut off.