Frequently Asked Questions - Qualified Electrician in Barnet

Rewiring is often misunderstood by homeowners. It’s not a simple job—a full rewire involves replacing all the electrical cables throughout your property, installing a new consumer unit, and updating all sockets, switches, and light fittings to current standards.

For a typical three-bedroom home in Barnet, a complete rewire usually takes 5-10 days depending on the property size and access. The work involves lifting floorboards, chasing walls, and running new cables throughout the property. You’ll need to move furniture and clear rooms as we progress through the house.

Partial rewires are possible if only certain circuits are outdated, which can reduce both time and cost. I provide free quotes after inspecting your property to give you an accurate assessment.

A good time to rewire is during renovation work. Work can be planned and executed alongside building work by working closely with the builder or project manager to install cabling in rooms or sections of the property when walls, ceilings or floors are exposed and being worked on.

Many Barnet homes, particularly older Victorian, Edwardian, and post-war properties, still have outdated fuse boxes. If your property has an old-style fuse box with wire fuses or ceramic fuses, you need a modern consumer unit.

Modern consumer units provide essential safety features that old fuse boxes lack, including RCD protection (which can save your life by cutting power in 0.04 seconds if there’s a fault) and surge protection for your expensive appliances and electronics.

You’ll definitely need a consumer unit upgrade if your current board has:

- No RCD protection

- Old rewirable fuses

- Insufficient circuits for modern demand

- Signs of overheating or damage

- Failed an EICR inspection

Consumer unit upgrades require Part P certification and building control notification, which I handle on your behalf. The work typically takes 4-6 hours, and your power will be off during installation.

EV charger installation isn’t as simple as many homeowners expect. Before installation, I need to check several things:

- Your incoming electrical supply capacity (most homes have 60-100 amps)

- The condition and capacity of your consumer unit

- The cable route from your board to where you want the charger

- Whether your earthing system meets requirements

- Parking arrangements and cable length needed

Most EV chargers draw 32 amps (7kW), which is a significant load. If your consumer unit or supply is already near capacity, you may need upgrades before the charger can be installed safely.

The installation requires Part P certification and building control notification, which I handle completely. Installation typically takes 3-5 hours for straightforward jobs, longer if electrical upgrades are needed first.

I provide fixed quotes for EV charger installations after a free site survey.

Garden and outbuilding electrics are another area where homeowners often underestimate what’s involved. You can’t simply run an extension lead outside—outdoor electrical installations require proper armoured cable, appropriate protection, and often their own dedicated circuit.

For a garden office or substantial outbuilding, you’ll typically need:

- A dedicated circuit from your consumer unit

- Armoured cable buried at the correct depth or run overhead

- A small consumer unit in the outbuilding itself

- Appropriate sockets, lighting, and potentially heating circuits

- All work certified and notified to building control

The cost and complexity depend on the distance from your house, what you want to power in the outbuilding, and access for running cables. I provide free quotes after assessing your specific setup.

This is one of the most common questions I get asked. Many homeowners are confused about what trips in their consumer unit and why.

A fuse or MCB (Miniature Circuit Breaker) protects the wiring in your property from overload. If you plug in too many appliances or there's a short circuit, the fuse or MCB "trips" to prevent the cables from overheating and potentially causing a fire. Each circuit (like your kitchen ring main or lighting circuit) has its own fuse or MCB.

An RCD (Residual Current Device) protects you from electric shock. It constantly monitors the electricity flowing out through the live wire and back through the neutral. If even a tiny amount of current is going elsewhere (like through a person touching a faulty appliance), the RCD cuts the power in milliseconds. This can literally save your life.

An RCBO (Residual Current Breaker with Overcurrent protection) combines both functions in a single device. It provides both overload protection (like an MCB) and electric shock protection (like an RCD) for an individual circuit. This is the modern standard I now exclusively install.

Why I only fit RCBO consumer units

I've made the decision to only install RCBO consumer units in all my work because they offer significantly better selectivity. Here's what that means for you:

In older-style consumer units with RCDs, one RCD typically protects multiple circuits. If there's a fault on any of those circuits—say a faulty appliance in your kitchen—the RCD trips and cuts power to several circuits at once.

You might lose your kitchen sockets, your living room, and your garage all at the same time, making it harder to identify which circuit has the fault.

With an RCBO consumer unit, each circuit has its own individual protection. If there's a fault on your kitchen ring main, only that RCBO trips. Your lights stay on, your other sockets keep working, and you can immediately identify which circuit has the problem.

This means:

• Less disruption to your home when a fault occurs

• Easier fault-finding and diagnosis

• Better protection overall

• Compliance with the latest wiring standards

If your RCD or RCBO trips, it usually means there's an earth fault somewhere—a potentially dangerous situation that needs investigating. If an individual MCB or RCBO trips due to overload, it means that specific circuit has too much load or has a fault.

Older properties with fuse boxes have neither MCBs, RCDs, nor RCBOs, which is why upgrading to a modern RCBO consumer unit is so important for both safety and convenience.