Period cottage rewire – Farncombe

The Brief

The owners of a 1900s brick cottage near Farncombe station called us after their buildings insurer flagged the electrics at renewal. The house still had a mix of rewireable fuses, black rubber-insulated cable in places, and a handful of sockets that had been added over the decades with no earthing. Nothing had tripped or failed — which was exactly the worry. They wanted the house made genuinely safe, but they were living in it with two young children and couldn’t move out.

What we did

We started with a full inspection and test to map what was actually there, circuit by circuit — old cable doesn’t always run where you’d expect in a house that’s been altered five times. The rubber-insulated cable had gone brittle and was the real hazard, so it all came out. We planned the rewire room by room so the family always had power, heating and a working kitchen: cables chased in carefully to keep replastering to a minimum, new earthing and bonding throughout, and a modern 18th-edition metal consumer unit with surge protection and separate RCBOs so a fault in one room can never black out the whole house. Every circuit was photographed before the walls closed. We issued a full Electrical Installation Certificate — the document the insurer wanted — and the job carries our six-year guarantee.