What Is Involved in a Full House Rewire? | Sittingbourne Electrician’s Guide
A full house rewire is one of those projects that homeowners across Sittingbourne know they probably need but keep putting off because the process feels uncertain and the disruption feels daunting. The lights still work, the sockets still deliver power, and nothing has visibly gone wrong — so the urgency stays just below the threshold where you actually pick up the phone. But behind the walls, the cabling that has been silently doing its job for forty or fifty years is deteriorating in ways you cannot see until something fails.
This guide walks through exactly what a full rewire involves from start to finish — what happens at each stage, how long it takes, what disruption to expect, and what you are left with when the work is complete. If you have been putting off the conversation, this should give you the clarity to have it with confidence.
The Initial Assessment
Every rewire starts with an assessment of the existing installation. An experienced electrician inspects the consumer unit, checks the cable types visible in the loft and behind accessible sockets, tests a sample of circuits, and assesses the earthing and bonding arrangements. This visit typically takes thirty to sixty minutes and tells you what condition the installation is in and whether a full rewire, a partial rewire, or a targeted upgrade is the right approach.
Across Sittingbourne, the housing stock ranges from the older properties around the High Street and through the established streets of the town centre to the inter-war and post-war housing across Murston, Milton Regis, and Kemsley, the later estates through the expanding edges of the town, and the village properties throughout Bapchild, Teynham, and Newington. Each era of housing has characteristic wiring that the assessment identifies — rubber-sheathed cabling from the pre-war period, early PVC wiring from the 1960s and 1970s without earth conductors on the lighting circuits, or more modern installations that may only need targeted updating rather than wholesale replacement.
The assessment produces a clear recommendation — full rewire, partial rewire, or consumer unit upgrade with remedial work — along with a detailed quote specifying every element of the work.
Planning the Work
Before the first cable is pulled, the electrician plans the circuit layout for the new installation. This means deciding how many circuits the property needs, where every socket and switch will be positioned, what lighting each room requires, and how the circuits will be distributed across the new consumer unit.
A typical three bedroom house in Sittingbourne needs eight to twelve circuits — a ring final for the ground floor sockets, a ring final for the first floor sockets, two lighting circuits split between floors, a dedicated circuit for the cooker, a dedicated circuit for the electric shower if fitted, a circuit for the smoke and heat detection system, and potentially dedicated circuits for an EV charger, a home office, or high-demand appliances.
This is the stage where you make every decision about socket positions, switch locations, and lighting types. Walk through each room with the electrician and decide where you want doubles replacing singles, where additional sockets are needed, where USB outlets would be useful, which rooms need dimmer switches, and where you have always wished a socket existed but never had one. Every decision made now costs very little to implement. The same decisions made after the plaster has dried cost significantly more.
First Fix — The Disruptive Phase
First fix is where the physical work begins and where the visible disruption happens. The electrician removes the old consumer unit, strips out the existing cabling circuit by circuit, and installs new cables throughout the property. This involves chasing channels into the walls where cables need routing vertically or horizontally, lifting floorboards to run cables through the floor void, and routing cables through the loft space to reach first floor rooms and lighting positions.
Chasing walls is the messiest stage. A mechanical chaser cuts neat parallel grooves into the plaster and masonry, and the dust — fine and persistent despite protective sheeting — is the main source of disruption during a rewire. Every room that receives new cables gets chased, and the dust migrates despite the best efforts to contain it.
The electrician works room by room rather than stripping the entire house simultaneously. You maintain power to the rooms not yet being worked on, and each evening temporary connections ensure you have lighting and enough sockets to function. The house remains liveable throughout, though accepting a degree of construction mess in the rooms being worked on is unavoidable.
First fix on a three bedroom house in Sittingbourne typically takes three to five days. A four bedroom house takes four to six days. Larger properties take proportionally longer.
The Consumer Unit
The new consumer unit is the heart of the rewired installation. Every circuit connects to its own protective device — either a miniature circuit breaker on a board with separate RCD protection, or an individual RCBO that provides both overcurrent and earth fault protection in one device for each circuit.
An RCBO board is the superior option for daily living. If a fault occurs on one circuit — a tripped device caused by a faulty appliance, for example — only that circuit loses power. The rest of the house stays on. With a split-load board using shared RCDs, a fault on any circuit protected by that RCD trips everything on that side of the board — potentially losing half your sockets or all your lighting simultaneously.
The consumer unit is typically installed in the same location as the existing board unless there is a practical reason to relocate it. The board is labelled clearly so every circuit is identifiable — ground floor sockets, first floor sockets, upstairs lighting, downstairs lighting, cooker, shower — making future work and fault diagnosis straightforward.
Plastering and Making Good
Once first fix is complete, the chased channels need filling and the walls need making good before the electrician returns for second fix. This is plastering work rather than electrical work, and coordinating it promptly keeps the programme moving.
The plasterer fills the chased channels, patches around new back boxes where sockets and switches will sit, and skims any areas where the chasing has damaged the surrounding plaster beyond what filling alone can repair. In older Sittingbourne properties with traditional lime plaster — common around the town centre and through Milton Regis — the plastering stage may involve more extensive patching where the chasing has disturbed a wider area than it would on modern plasterboard walls.
The plaster needs to dry before second fix begins. Depending on the extent of patching, the room temperature, and the ventilation, this typically takes three to seven days. Rushing this stage and fitting faceplates onto damp plaster causes staining and potential corrosion behind the fittings.
Second Fix — The Clean Phase
Second fix is when the rewire transforms from a building site back into a finished home. The electrician returns once the plaster has dried and installs all the visible elements — socket faceplates, light switches, dimmer plates, ceiling roses, light fittings, the cooker connection, the shower unit connection, and smoke and heat detectors throughout.
This phase is clean and quick compared to first fix. There is no chasing, no dust, and minimal disruption. The electrician works through the house connecting, testing, and commissioning each circuit systematically. Second fix on a three bedroom house typically takes two to three days.
Testing and Certification
Once every circuit is complete, the entire installation undergoes comprehensive testing. Every circuit is tested for continuity, insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance, and polarity. RCDs and RCBOs are tested to confirm they trip within the required timeframes. The results are recorded on an Electrical Installation Certificate — the formal document confirming the installation complies with current BS 7671 wiring regulations.
This certificate is important. You need it for your records, your insurance company may request it, and you will need it when you sell the property. The certificate proves the installation was designed, installed, and tested by a competent person to current standards. Keep it with your property documents permanently.
If the electrician is registered with a competent person scheme — NICEIC, NAPIT, or ELECSA — they self-certify the work and notify building control on your behalf. If they are not registered, you need a separate building control inspection and sign-off, which adds cost and time.
How Long Does the Whole Process Take?
A full rewire on a two bedroom property in Sittingbourne takes roughly two to three weeks from first fix to certification, including plastering time. A three bedroom house takes three to four weeks. A four bedroom house takes four to five weeks. These are total elapsed timescales — the electrician is not on site every day because plastering and drying time sit between first and second fix.
What You Are Left With
A fully rewired home has modern cabling throughout, a consumer unit with comprehensive protection on every circuit, sockets and switches in the positions you chose, lighting circuits designed for how you actually use each room, proper earthing and bonding, compliant smoke and heat detection, and a certificate confirming everything meets current standards.
The installation is designed to last twenty-five to thirty years. The disruption of the rewire happens once, and the result protects your family and your home for decades.
If you are considering a rewire at your Sittingbourne home, get in touch for a free assessment. We will check the condition of your existing installation, give you honest advice on what is needed, and provide a clear quote so you know exactly what is involved.