Rewiring a 3-bed house - how long will it take?

[Schulte]

We're considering buying a house that needs rewiring. We'd have to live in there while it's being done, with a 1yo and a 3yo. Madness? How long do you think it would take to have the whole thing rewired, maybe we can plan a holiday to be out of the way.

it would all depend on how many sockets/light fixtures you would need and if you want extras. you might need a new fuseboard and if you wanted extra sockets/lights then it would need a bigger board. my DH is an electrician and he could probably have a full rewire done in 2-3 days so you may not need to book time away for it to be done if you did want to add extras (often in houses needing a rewire there arent enough sockets) it could take another day or so but i reckon at the most 3 days for a straight rewire

I think ours took three days. We had a three bed, four story place and they did the whole lot - our place hadn't been touched since the 40's.

We had all new plug sockets recessed into the walls, all light fittings, hallogen spots in bathroom, kitchen and basement, all the wiring associated with central heating that we had also put in, completely new fuse box/circuit board etc etc.

There were three electricians working and in that time they did everything. Because all the existing sockets had to be recessed and further sockets had to be put in there was a lot of chasing into the plaster which was very very messy, dusty and noisy.

We didn't live in our house when it was done but that was more to do with the house generally being uninhabitable rather than for reasons specific to the rewiring.

Oh excellent, thanks, I thought it would be something like 3 weeks! And just how messy is it, would we come back to a house full of holes and would I have to plan for the floors and bathroom to be done straight afterwards or could they wait a while?

I had mine done last year.
3 bed semi. Just moved in with 2 and 4 year old children. It took about 5 days. There were two days when I wanted to be out of the house really due to floor boards being up in all three bedrooms and the fact that the electricians were up and down the stairs so it was challenging to contain the children! The mess was minimal.
The electrician we had has children + so was very thoughtful about leaving the house in an inhabitable state at the end of each day.

He patched up the wall beautifully where he had to channel out, and I asked him to try to minimise damage to my lovely ceilings downstairs and he didn't touch them at all! Brought cables down by existing sockets and then channelled across the wall for new sockets.

I love my sparky!

anyway, very long post short - very possible to live in the house with small children during a re-wire in my experience.

Our 4 bed is taking 1 guy a week. We're going to be staying with friends locally for the duration as it will make life a lot easier for the electrician as he can then just crack on with it and not have to spend time making it partly habitable for our 2 yo each evening. We are going to be on hand though to answer any queries that come up - don't think I'd want to be away on holiday if a decision needed to be made on where to locate something.

We are paying for a plasterer to come in and make good the walls. We were going to do it ourselves but given that every room will need replastering to a greater or lesser extent we decided to let a professional do it so we could get it done quickly so that we could then get on with other stuff.

If you can get it done before you move in, or as soon as you move in it will make life a whole lot simpler.