WHAT FURNITURE DO I NEED TO MORE WHEN REWIRING MY HOME?

WHAT FURNITURE DO I NEED TO MOVE WHEN REWIRING MY HOME? What do I do with my furniture?

When you are having your property rewired whilst you are living in the property you will have all of your furniture still in the property. This furniture will need to be moved to help aid the electricians carrying the work out. Where and when you move your furniture depends on a few factors. Below is a guide although your electricians carrying the work out will advise during the works.

DOWNSTAIRS

If you have floorboards on the ground floor then whilst having your downstairs sockets rewired it is advised and also makes the work much easier if you move all of your furniture into the middle of the room, this allows the electricians to lift the floorboards up in the corners of the rooms where you will be having your sockets installed. This will allow the electrician to feed his cables under the floors using some cable rods. This helps speed up the rewiring with minimal lifting of the carpets. Once the sockets are wired and chased into the walls the furniture such as settees can be put back in place.

If you are having your downstairs lights rewired then it is advisable to have your furniture around the edge of the rooms ensuring the centre of the room where the lighting pendant is situated is clear, this helps with feeding the cables under the floor from the upstairs and fishing the cables out in the correct lighting locations.

UPSTAIRS

Rewiring the upstairs is a little trickier when it comes to the furniture. Wiring the sockets is the same process as the downstairs, however, when rewiring the downstairs lights, the electricians will need access to the floorboards in the centre of the room, this will allow them to access the lighting points downstairs and also the switch cable drops downstairs. The electricians will still try and only lift the carpets around the perimeter of the room, this helps with restoring the floorboards and carpets at the end of each day. The landing area is usually a key cable run, most of the upstairs cables and some of the downstairs cables will be run under this floor area, it is advisable to move all furniture from the landing area, this will help as usually all of the landing carpet will be lifted each day to allow the electricians to lift the floorboards and drill cable holes into these joists.

BREAKABLES

It is advisable to place all breakables/valuables in a safe place, these items may be TV’s mirrors, vases, pictures. As your electrical rewire will require the moving of the furniture it is possible these may get damaged. A lot of customers place these either in their garage or conservatory or in a spare bedroom out of the way. If you do store these items in these rooms, then these rooms will be the last to be rewired. Your electrician will advise when it will be safe to move these items on a room by room basis

CAN YOU REWIRE AN APARTMENT WITH SOLID CONCRETE FLOORS AND CEILINGS?

Last week Fylde Coast rewire’s had been contracted to carry out an apartment electrical rewire over in Lytham St Annes. As far as electrical rewires are concerned, this was a tricky project.

FCR Originally carried out an EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report) when the owner had first bought this property. On completion of the EICR, it was noted that there was no earthing on the sockets, this was mainly due to the circuits being wired in Pyro. Pyro was in it’s day a great cable, it is durable, fireproof and hard waring, sadly, just like ourselves this does not last. With the amount of remedial works required to bring the installation up to a safe and current standard, it was more cost effective to rewire the property.

The biggest obstacle to rewiring this property was the solid concrete floors and ceilings the only option was to chase around the top of each room, the wiring regulations B.S.7671 state that the top 150mm of each room is a designated cable zone, this allows you to run your cables around the top of the rooms whilst keeping within the wiring regulations. The wiring regulations also state that a cable zone can run from floor to ceiling within a corner of a room, again keeping to the 150mm wide chase. So, this is how we installed the cables, there was a lot of chasing and dust, dust was kept to a minimum by only chasing one room at a time and tidying and vacuuming the rooms on completion.

The rewire was completed in four days excluding the second fixing of the bathroom and kitchen, this was due to the kitchen and bathroom not being installed when the rewire was completed, we will call back in two weeks to complete the second fix work.