Buying a house -do not forget about the electrics The most important single piece of advice I can offer to any house purchaser is get an opinion on the state of the electrics before you make a deal with the vendor. The external appearance of the electrics in your potential new home may be pleasing, with modern sockets and contemporary light fittings. However,the most important parts of your home's electrical installation are the wiring - usually hidden in the walls, floors and ceilings and the fuse board or "consumer unit". Red Kite Electrical's free visual inspection visit will give you a much better idea about the condition of the electrics than a full survey from home surveyor who is not a professional electrician. Red Kite Electrical will help to assess the state of the existing wiring, and give you an idea of how much it will cost to put right or improve. If work is going to be needed agree with your vendor access for Red Kite Electrical between exchange of contracts and completion. Most sensible vendors will accept this if they have already moved out-because if you do not complete they get to keep the benefit of the improvements. For you as the purchaser it will minimise the amount of time between completion and your new property becoming habitable. Houses from the different eras of Reading's housing stock present different challenges for the professional electrician. Across Reading and south Oxfordshire there are houses of all ages. Ranging from small Victorian terraces in the town centres of Reading and Henley on Thames, to Haddocks-built semi detached houses in suburbs like Emmer Green and Tilehurst to more modern estates like Caversham Park Village built in the 1970's and recent developments across Caversham and Central Reading. Different construction techniques and materials used present different challenges for Red Kite Electrical when we are asked to rewire, extend or change an electrical installation. This is especially true when the customer requires, as most do, electrical outlets to be flush mounted and the cabling hidden inside the fabric of the building (see our section on planning home improvements). Updating the electrics in Victorian Houses Whilst these structures have stood the test of time they are showing their age -when being adapted to 21st century needs. The interior walls are usually made of inferior quality bricks known as commons. The bricks can be quite soft, or hard as glass -probably because the kilns in the 19th century lacked the precise temperature control possible today. Soft bricks are usually OK to cut into -provided they have not become excessively damp, but the hard ones can be very difficult. They will resist attempts to cut them up to a point -then they will shatter, often leaving a complete hole in the skin of the wall. And they are very often covered in a truly fiendish material - lime and horsehair (yes really!) plaster. Not only is this material almost hanging off the wall it creates the most offensive dust when chased. The chasing will often cause large lumps of the l&h to fall off the wall, and if that does not finish it off, the removal of the skirting board -which because of its width (usually twice the modern size) is often impossible to chase behind can cause large areas of this obsolete dressing to disintegrate. And unless the ceilings have been renewed these will be made of lath and plaster. This is not a problem unless you are keen on modern recessed light fittings. These are very difficult to fit well into lath and plaster -and it will probably be simpler to replace the ceiling with modern plasterboard. Pre-War Houses These houses are a very mixed bag. Houses built by the Reading builder Haddock in the 1930's (common in Emmer Green and Tilehurst) are amongst the best built properties in the town and generally the walls and floors of these withstand the process of flush mounted rewiring well. It may well be worth getting rid of the lath and plaster ceilings if undertaking major renovation of these properties. Other builders' houses from this era are of varying quality, but the worst problems are usually caused by badly done extensions in subsequent years. Post-War Houses I often describe the 1960's and 1970's as the nightmare years of house building. New materials, such as cinder blocks and gypsum plaster board (or is that asbestos? -well you will never know because there is apparently no record where this carcinogenic material was used in domestic premises) became available. And people figured out how to use them on a trial and error basis. Cinder blocks are simply the most awful material -comprised of compacted power station ash, studded with a few stones cutting boxes into them without destroying them is a very nice art. In Reading, there are hundreds of houses of this era in Caversham Park Village, just north of the river Thames, and due South in Woodley. On the electrical side, because many of the current wiring regulations did not exist at this time important things like bonding cables connecting the copper pipes to electrical earth are often missing -and these have to be put right before user facing changes can be made to a wiring installation. And early versions of pvc, from this era, suffer from the infamous green goo. Modern (post 1980) House Increasingly the tighter regime of regulations, and the effective use of modern materials has made the basic electrical installation more predictable. However, there are a lot of homes (in Lower Earley for example) that were built about this time and were only fitted with old rewirable fuse boards. A modern consumer unit will greatly enhance electrical safety. These houses, like all those built earlier will not have enough sockets to cope with modern demands for domestic technology. Houses of any age Firstly, it is fair to say that all cables carrying mains electricity today should be sheathed in pvc. If there is any rubber or fabric coated cable in the house you are buying it needs to be rewired as soon as possible because this tells you that the wiring is very old and very possibly dangerous. You may even find lead sheathed cable which again indicates a very old electrical installation which urgently requires updating for safety reasons. Major changes to the structure of a house need to have regard to the state of the existing electrical installation. The trouble is the specialist firms that sell fitted kitchens, or conservatories are chiefly concerned to sell a kitchen, or a conservatory. This often makes them reluctant to point out to a householder that there maybe issues with the existing wiring. Just as with a full rewire, these problems are most easily addressed before the conservatory goes up, or the new kitchen goes in. So if you are buying watch out for those badly conceived extensions, conservatories and fitted kitchens. If you are considering having major changes made to your home, ask the contractor; whether they are confident that the existing socket and light circuits can safely be extended what tests they will undertake before the work to confirm the existing circuits are in good condition about electrical certification and notification to local authority building control. What to watch for in the information you get from your vendor Although HIPs (home improvement packs) were abolished in May 2010, you can still get some valuable information from your vendor not least by asking them for information. Some of the information you may get might include questions on the condition of the electrics, whether they've been updated or not and when. Watch out! A professionally updated electrical installation will (since the introduction of Part P of the building regulations in 2005) have been submitted to the local council to receive building control consent or have been conducted by a Part P certified electrician who has provided a certificate stating that the work has been properly completed. If you think work has been done and not properly certificated - particularly in a modernised bathroom or kitchen - push your conveyancer to get clarification from your vendor and estate agent. Remember, a surveyor is not qualified to provide you with a clear and authoritative assessment of the state of the wiring, electric sockets and light fitments - let alone how you might adapt it to your needs - but a fully qualified, professional electrician such as Red Kite Electrical can! Call Red Kite Electrical to find out more about how I can help with any electrical aspect of these kind of projects.