How do you know if a house needs a rewire?

[AGreatUsername]

The house we are buying has not had any electrical work done since last purchase in 94. Other than a new fuse board and meter. We are budgeting for a full rewire on this basis but is it possible we won’t need one? If we’re planning to stay 15 years or so I guess it makes sense to do it anyway? Or just needed repairs?

Have you asked to have the electrics tested? You’ll have to pay for it but it’s not expensive and it should give you a sense of whether the electrics are safe, which is the main thing.

Google says

Signs that you may need to rewire your home include

Circuit breakers that trip regularly, slight shocks from switches and outlets, frequently flickering or dimming lights, damaged or exposed wires and cables, Persistent Burning Smell, Discoloured Outlets and Switches. .

I wouldn’t do it just because it’s not new, 94 is not that old for electrics. Generally they last between fifty and a hundred years.

The council do ours every 20 years now.

If you're going to rewire, do it first and foremost before doing anything to the house. I found it a horrendous experience the state of the house afterwards.

It would never occur to me to do a re-wire preemptively, as it were. The 90s is hardly that old.

You could start with getting a report called an EICR which is a heath check on your wiring and it will classify/grade what you need to do.

You'll probably need to update the Consumer Unit and earthing arrangements. I did this in my house which is unchanged from 1983 and was otherwise OK. If it's convenient to rewire then you could also uprate the mains cable that feeds the hob, as modern induction hobs use a lot of power (whereas modern ovens use less).

You need someone with the right certifications to do this and there are cowboys around. I would wander over to www.electriciansforums.net/ and see if there is a member in your area. You can post exactly the same question there.

I think it's pretty unlikely that a property built in 1994 would need re-wiring, particularly if it has had a more recently installed fuse box.

Modern pvc cables should last at least 50/60 years.

I wouldn't expect it to need rewiring just because it's 26 years old. 1994 was hardly the dark ages and assuming its pvc coated wiring It's probably fine, especially if there's a newer fuse board and meter.

By all means rewire if you have the budget and want to change the layout and options to more modern aesthetics (more sockets, usb charging points, smart lighting, LED etc) but unless you are actually aware of a likely problem I wouldn't assume it's a given.

Our plugs sparked! Do the sockets have switches?

What you need to do op is get an electrician in to certify the electrics are safe. If you’ve not purchased yet, ask the venders to provide a safety certificate, this is normal. If you get one, you don’t need a rewire.

If you do ger someone round, don’t ask if you need a rewire, because unless you know them and they are good, then you run the risk of them saying yes just to get the work.

My house still has a Bakelite fuse box for the main part and a new one for the extension. Never a problem with either and I've lived here 20 years. Have upgraded a fair few sockets too.

Luckily we have a tame electrician through work who has given us a very reasonable quote for it, but obviously if I can get away without the expense and mess I’d prefer that! We had a bad experience here, the fuse board was new so looked okay but the wiring when we did work was not only black and red, but mostly DIY 😭😭

Great idea about the testing. I’ll get that done ASAP, otherwise I’ve been planning essentials boxes to live out of for the first few weeks while the wiring is being done!

(Although we don’t know how old the wiring is, it’s a minimum of 1994 as that’s when our vendors bought. It could be a lot lot older. But the sockets don’t scream ancient to me)

Get an EICR. Expect some minor issues but so long as there are no gangrenous items (findings are gradded) then there is no issue. 1994 should be fine. Red and Black wiring isn't so old either.. well compared to me!

+1 for EICR
It's the only way to know what state the electrics are in.
You'll get a certificate with the test results for each circuit and a visual inspection of the cable/quality of the installation.

The OP doesn't say it was built in 1994

Only that it has had no electrical work done since then

(Although that might just be what the vendors claim. Is it likely to be true?)

An experienced electrician can often tell within 30 seconds of walking into your house that it needs a rewire, but if not that bad, will take longer.

We just had a new fuse box, additional sockets and garage wiring, house was rewired in the early 90's and the electrician said the old wiring was fine. It was recommended to update it more often in the past when the wiring was rubber, modern wiring lasts much longer

We have just rewired, more because the house was taken to pieces for other work and it made sense to do it at the same time. It didn’t strictly need rewiring as the last time it was done was the mid 80s, but there were a large number of junction boxes, random spurs, and odd single sockets. Some rooms only had one or two sockets. And every socket was surface mounted rather than chased in. So there is a grey area between needing to be done and sensible to do it. It’s very messy so the whole house needs decorating after, all floorboards taken up etc.

You’ll need an eicr.

Electrics do not last 50 or 100 years (!) but 27 years isn’t that long. I’d probably want to rewire it if you renovating anyway though, it’s a fucker of a job to do when you’ve got your house how you want it.

Just to make clear, we don’t know the age of the wiring. The house is 110 years old, and no electrical work has been carried out in the past 27 years of the vendors ownership. Who knows what happened before that?

Thank you all for your help, we’ll be getting an EICR, hopefully between exchange and completion, so we’ll know what to do then. If it’s all sound we may just add extra circuits or sockets in, new hard wires for the new kitchen etc. If it comes back as rubbish we’ll just stump up for the rewire ☺️

You can normally hear it when the electrics are dodgy.

no you can't.

If you happen to have a bad connection in a high-current switch such as immersion heater or tumble-drier, and if you happen to be close to it at the time, and the room is not noisy, you might hear it arcing before it burns away and stops working.

Other faults do not make a noise.

@AGreatUsername we opted not to get an EICR, we waited until we had completed and then got an electrician in straight away to give his opinion. At that point it was a maybe, and an EICR was scheduled for some point in the future. As we started ripping the place to pieces we just decided to get it rewired. But all the way through we had the attitude of 'not rewiring would be a bonus' so it was fairly easy for us to decide once we had got the floorboards up