Rewiring a circuit or room involves removing every cable of wiring that is powering plug sockets, light switches, ceiling fans, light fixtures, extractor fans, inside cupboard lights… and replacing the cables with new wiring, which might involve chasing the wiring through walls and ceiling, to make the room or circuit safe. The main reason someone will want to get a room, circuit or entire home rewired is due to either very old wiring that is no longer safe, or a fault in the wiring causing a circuit needing to be replaced with new wiring to avoid an electrical fire.

Can I rewire only one room?

A skilled electrician will be able to undertake the task of rewiring a single circuit or just one room. A partial rewire might be necessary if one circuit is damaged and making that circuit electrically unsafe. The partial rewire might include one circuit of the house, e.g.; the wall plug socket circuits on ground floor, or it may involve a room as part of a renovation in that room, e.g.; a kitchen renovation. 

Usually rather than room by room, the rewiring goes by circuit;

• Upstairs lighting
• Upstairs sockets
• Downstairs lighting
• Downstairs sockets
• Kitchen

Before undertaking the rewire project, consider the needs of the room and how many plug sockets will be needed to avoid overloading a single socket with a multi adaptor. 

If you are planning on rewiring the entire house, but want to do a circuit or room at a time, although do-able, in the long run it is much better and less living chaos to rather evacuate the house for a few weeks and have the entire home done at the same time. It will be cheaper as the project will be less complicated for the electrician, resulting in less labour time. This way the electrician can pull out all of the wiring and rewire, rather than trying to keep rooms with running electricity while focusing on one room or circuit to rewire at a time.

If the circuit being rewired is downstairs only, this will still interrupt your daily life while the electrician needs access to the floor above, lifting floorboards to access the downstairs ceiling wires.

Rewiring just the upstairs circuit is less intrusive as it does not impact on the downstairs. The electrician will be able to access the ceiling via the loft and pull up floorboards with minimum disruption to downstairs.

How much will it cost to rewire a single room or circuit?

Rewiring a room or circuit could require 2 or 3 labour days for the electrician and then once the electrician is finished, you will need a painter and decorator to replaster the walls and repaint to finish off the job.

A quick cheaper fix would be to rewire the new circuit with trunking on the outside of the wall, but this is unsightly. A neater finish is chasing wires into walls. When it comes to rewiring a room, added expense and labour time is if at the time of rewiring an old property, if the opportunity is taken to relocate plug sockets. Older homes, e.g.; 1930s houses, had the plug sockets wall mounted just above the skirting board. Nowadays for various reasons; flood control, people with disabilities reaching the sockets, cords on appliances having room to plug in… plug sockets are mounted higher, at least 45cm from the ground. So at the time of rewiring, plug sockets may be moved higher which requires further chasing in, more plastering, and extra labour time all adding to the expense of rewiring that room.

Can you rewire without removing drywall?

A skilled electrician will be able to rewire a room without causing damage or removing drywall. The electrician will run the new wiring through the crawl space which might involve loft access. As old wiring is often stapled to the framing of the walls, it cannot be pulled out but may have to be cut and remove the exposed part while leaving redundant wiring still stapled to the frame but now made safe. This might involve making some holes in the dryhole (which can be patched up after) but avoids the entire room wall having to be removed. The electrician will use these gaps to feed through the new cabling. The only downside is that the new wiring will not be stapled to the stud walls. The electrician might secure the new wiring to joists, and they will ensure they are securely anchored for safety.

How messy will rewiring a room be?

Rewiring is a messy job, as it involves accessing every part of the room, from lifting floorboards to accessing the ceiling and cutting into the walls. A lot of dust can be churned up which will spread to the rest of the house, and while banging to cut into walls it will create a lot of noise and disruption through the house.

Most professional electricians will try to work around your needs, but they will prefer for you to either move out of the house for the few days or leave them to get on with the task of rewiring while you go to work, or leave the house for the day, allowing them to turn off mains electricity when needed and make noise when required.

How many rooms can be on one wired circuit?

A single breaker circuit is capable of safely serving multiple rooms in a house, controlling all plug sockets, lights, in one room or in multiple rooms. The limitation placed on the breaker is the load and size of the breaker and wiring. 

Nowadays most homes have single breakers broken down to different sections, one providing power to smoke alarms, another to lights, a separate circuit for plug sockets or electric showers. When it comes to a fault with the flow of the electricity, the more circuits you have, the easier to locate the fault and isolate just that area, e.g.; plug sockets in the kitchen only allowing you to still use the rest of the homes plug sockets… allowing you to carry on with your home needs while waiting for the electrician to come through and rewire or fix the faulty circuit.

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