Fitting Gas Central Heating and Rewire costs

[RJEThorpe]

Hi, 2 questions in one. I am currently purchasing a 3 story 7 bedroom victorian semi. It has no GSH and I suspect will need a complete rewire.

Can someone give me an estimate of the costs? I suspect t-he GSH will be £10-12k (all in rads and boiler) and the rewire 6-8k.

Does this sound right? Also, is it possible to get one company to do both the wiring and plumbing at the same time? In East Anglian, suggestions/recommendations welcome.

Thanks Rob

 

[Lime]

There are too many variables involved to be able to say if the figures you give are good estimates.
Your wishes and the house's requirements will dictate much of the costs.
You need to get a couple of quotes from local installers.
Asking neighbouring householders may help you to find an installer and estimate costs if they have had work done recently.
They will be much more valuable than my guesses.
As for one company doing all the work IME that is not the best nor cheapest route to take.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

is it possible to get one company to do both the wiring and plumbing at the same time?

But water and electricity don't mix...

:lol:

 

[RJEThorpe]

thanks for the reply. I simply have no idea of costs so if anyone has recently installed GSH and or had a rewire, then i would be interested to know the cost and also the time the work took. I appreciate there are many variables but I am interested in rough costs. Cheers

 

[jocelyn plummer]

I would think that you are fairly close to the mark, but definitely get 2or 3 quotes. Labour costs are quite high at the moment, around £160-£190 perday.
Many factors will affect the length of time to do the job... floor boards up, channelling the plaster, or surface mount etc.

Good Luck

 

[RJEThorpe]

Thanks for your reply.

 

[plumbers mate]

Three or four bed Victorian terrace, 9ft ceilings, big single glazed "Ventrolla'd" windows - £4800 from scratch - no heating at the mo which is why I have fingerless gloves on and walking socks (as well as jumpers and jeans before Penners get excited.)
They were not the cheapest firm but they know old buildings and came recommended.
This is with "round topped" radiators - not what I wanted but will do the job until I can afford different ones or move!

 

[RJEThorpe]

4800 is that really al in? Spounds like a good deal to me - I assume they are still installing then at the moment?

 

[DaveBrigg]

Getting the heating and rewiring done at the same time is a good idea, because they will both need to have the floorboards up. It'll save the duplication of effort and damage. This is a busy time for heating engineers (a friend is booked up with servicing and repairs until the start of Feb) so you might not get much choice.

 

[Lime]

The reasoning behind getting both the electrical work and central heating done at the same time is not clear to me.
While I can understand the wish to get all the mess over in one go installing both pipework and wiring at the same time when a house is occupied is not an easy task.
The two different installations require different floorboards to be lifted.
Indeed the two should not be run together.
If the work is to be done in an unoccupied house the lifting of dozens of floorboards is much easier but I don't see the advantage.

 

[Pford75]

Some of the biggest variables are:

Floor area of the house in question (there are large 7 beds and medium 7 beds).
The ease of access (lifting floorboards carefully is time consuming work)
Will old pipework/wiring have to be removed?
Does the CH require rads? If you choose cast iron period rads, this will be perhaps the biggest expense of the CH.


I concur that trying to do both at the same time is a good idea (although we were not able to acheive this). Although some wires & pipes will take different routes, it is likely that there will be some time saving (eg. fitting a rad may require all of the boards up in a room, which will certainly benefit the cabling of electrical sockets).

Without knowing some of the things raised above, it is difficult to comment....but I would suggest that your figures are a little optimistic.

We have a large 3-storey 8 bed house in Norfolk (apx. 6000sq ft).

Rewiring quotes ranged from £12k to £28k (although these included LAN cabling, plenty of sockets and some outbuildings)
The plumbing was £26k which included oil CH, new boiler, pressurised system and replumb of 6 bathrooms (all in copper...no plastic pipes). This did not include the supply of the 46 cast iron rads we needed (which we sourced ourselves)

PM me if you want to discuss any of the variables in more detail or if you want recommendations on electricians to use/avoid in Norfolk.

 

[Penners]

RJEThorpe

I echo what others have said above. Rewiring and plumbing a period property is virtually impossible to cost, sight unseen. There are so many variables - visible and invisible - that can affect the ultimate cost enormously. This can happen even when a plumber or electrician has closely inspected the house for quotation purposes.

But for what it's worth (which isn't much), I suspect that your guesstimates may be on the low side, I'm afraid. In your shoes, I think I would add a good 30% to them both.

 

[Penners]

I have [on] fingerless gloves on and walking socks...as well as jumpers and jeans before Penners gets excited

Too late...

 

[RJEThorpe]

Thanks all for your responses. Seems I wont know until I get the work done, but suspect I'll need a big war chest! I'll post back in a couple of months with average figures I am quoted. There is a reasonable amount of other work to be done so may put up some other posts to tap in to your experience!

Cheers!

 

[Penners]

We'll look forward to hearing more from you.

And yes, please do post back with details of your quotes.

 

[DaveBrigg]

The two different installations require different floorboards to be lifted.
Indeed the two should not be run together.

We had both installed at the same time, while the house was empty (apart from the plasterers). In some cases different boards were lifted, but while the electricians lifted a run of boards to run cables from one end of the house to the other, through the joists, this allowed access for the plumber to feed in pipework which generally runs parallel to the joists. The area at the top of the stairs is particularly busy. Although our pipes and wires generally follow different routes, I wasn't aware that there was a problem in having them together. Is this for the obvious reason of reducing the risk of a water leak next to a junction box, or is it a more subtle problem?

 

[plumbers mate]

If you aim to live in the house as the work is done, best of luck - I have had to move everything to one side of every room and the kitchen needs two sides of it cleared. Carpets have to be raised too of course. It sounded fairly easy when the guys said where they needed clearing but life here is getting to the "poor old soul, living like that, she should be put away" stage.
There is a week to go before the guys arrive and it will take a couple of weeks.
If you can, wait till summer.
This for purely psychological reasons. When it's dark most of trhe day (08.20 to 15.50 ish up here) and cold and you have no carpets down, can't reach the gas fire and have an unpleasant atmosphere to live in it is somewhat depressing. If you do have a while to wait before it's done - then get rid of as much junk as possible - most of yesterday was spent moving boxes of such junk but I have no time to sit down and sort through to see what is really junk and what is valuable momento! :?

 

[Penners]

There is a week to go before the guys arrive and it will take a couple of weeks.

Is that calendar weeks or builder weeks?

Two very different measurements of time.

 

[DaveBrigg]

When it's dark most of the day (08.20 to 15.50 ish up here) and cold and you have no carpets down, can't reach the gas fire and have an unpleasant atmosphere to live in it is somewhat depressing.

You have my sympathy. There are times when it seems that it will never get light, or warm, again. The good news is that in just a couple of weeks things should get dramatically better, and then keep on slowly improving. It's a wonderful feeling to be able to switch on the lights in every room, and see the place transformed.
The tip about getting rid of junk was a good one though. We ended up moving some boxes and bits of furniture from room to room as work progressed, before throwing them out after everything was done. It will be worth it in the end.
During the rewire...View attachment 1

and a year later (that's how long it took to finish the painting)

 

[ljn]

To get a really rough idea on electrics, I estimate £50 per point - that's any switch, socket or light fitting.
And then add £1000 for mains connection and fuse board.
That is considering the standard white plastic fittings. I do the "extras" budget separately.
It seems to give me a rough idea of what the quotes are going to com in at.

That is just for the wiring bit and doesn't include "making good" the damage caused.