Fitting car chargers in tricky houses - any and all suggestions please

[FinallyMovingHouse]

Apologies for putting this in tech tis, but nothing else seemed to fit.

We live in a house where the mains electrical intake is at the front of the house in the cellar, and our garage (where we need to charge the car), is at the rear of the house, after a short garden.
We can't charge the car at the front of the house (on street parking and spaces like hens teeth) or at the immediate rear of the house due to the garden and fence. The house is a Victorian terrace/townhouse.

An independent fitter has said it's an incredibly tricky fit and will need very thick/armoured cable to run through the house, likely not chased in as so thick (and we'd have to redecorate everywhere!) and across multiple floor levels (i.e. cellar to ground to first floor then out again to the garage). He also said we could go over the roof of the house, but we don't want to do that! He wouldn't even give a ball park figure for it as had no clue on the cost of the length of cable we'd need for this kind of fit.

I've contacted the national grid to see if we can get a new cable run from the street at the rear of our house and am waiting back on that, but have been told that even if they agree to do it, it's a minefield as you 'don't own the cable'. No idea what that means in practicality? I've also rung Octopus, who said that we can purchase the charger, they can fit anything that is within 30m (he assumed as the crow flies) of the mains intake. This would likely get from the intake to the rear of the house, but definitely not to the garage, so I'm now wondering if I have a set price for that, we could then get an independent to extend the charger from the house and have it set on a pedestal at the end of the garden. No clue if Octopus allow that; is it their charger or mine? If we booked Octopus and the fitter arrived, they are also also be within their rights to say 'nah' when they see the fit, but we won't know that for 2-4 weeks, which is apparently their average wait time at the mo.

Has anyone experienced anything like this and how did you get around it?
Currently considering cancelling the electric car order (due in 10 weeks) but not sure we can do that. In my wildest dreams, I didn't think that the charger fitting would be this flipping difficult. Thanks all.

Ours was a pain for a different reason, the mains was on one side of the house and the garage where we were fitting the charger to the was was on the other side. We are with Eon, who said they could do it, took one look at the pictures and filed it under 'too difficult.' We then had an electrician who had done work for us previously come and fit it by digging a small narrow trench through the front garden any burying the armored cable there.

Do any of your neighbours have a similar set up and a charger, could you ask them whet they did? We got the idea for ours from looking at our neighbours house. It cost £1200 fitted, I wouldn't trust that the energy company will do what they say and get an electrician from the outset. We have an Ohme pro charger and it's great, we ordered it ourselves from a screwfix style website, was about £530

Mine was a fucking nichhtmare - end terrace.

in the end I bought a granny charger which charges off normal mains. I’m mixing that and paid for chargers at my local bp station.

Thanks both. I suspect we'll end up have to speak to another electrician and you've just reminded me that we used one for our bathroom who was really good, so will check with him (thanks!).

No luck with the neighbours. One side is converted into flats and the other side are an older couple who don't even park at the back, never mind charge there (road is narrow so they'd rather just move their car during the day when a space opens up).

Will keep on hunting for possibilities. Many thanks.

Do you have power in your garage? You can probably get away with just granny charging if so unless you’re doing quite high mileage daily. You would probably need to have it plugged in every time the car is at home rather than once every five or six days that a 7kw charger would allow, but that’s fine once you get used to it.

Is your house terraced or do you have side access? You can get really long charging cables, up to 50 meters, so I’m wondering if you could install the charger at the front and just run a long cable to the back.

My setup isn’t as difficult as yours but I have an awkward driveway which is how I found out about extra long cables. I have a 20m cable so that we can charge three cars without having to keep shuffling them around.

Unless you are doing very high mileage, just granny charge. We only need to charge every 2-3 weeks in summer and weekly in winter. It charges overnight.

As a bit of a pivot, you could consider putting solar panels on the roof of the garage and having a battery to store the solar energy and charge your car off-grid. It would be a big outlay but the costs are coming down so it could be something to think about.

Thanks all. To answer some questions, we can't granny charge as high mileage daily commute by husband (new job) has led to the decision to change car and put in a charger.
No side access, but will investigate the 20m cable and see if we can get the charger point to the rear of the house rather than to the garage.
Solar panels not possible right now unfortunately (cost).