EICRs and safety checks
EICR electrical safety checks
An Electrical Installation Condition Report tells you the actual state of the wiring, with anything dangerous coded so you know what must be done and what can wait.
Rented homes in England need one at least every five years, and at the start of a new tenancy if the existing report has run out. Agents ask for them, buyers' solicitors ask for them, and homeowners book them when a house has not been looked at in a decade.
The inspection is part visual and part dead and live testing: continuity, insulation resistance, polarity, earth fault loop impedance and RCD operation, on a sample of circuits or all of them depending on the property. Observations are coded C1 (danger present), C2 (potentially dangerous), C3 (improvement recommended) or FI (further investigation). Only C1 and C2 make a report unsatisfactory — a page of C3s does not.
Questions
About this work
How long does an EICR take?
Two to three hours for a flat or small house, longer for a large or heavily altered property. The power goes off in stages rather than all day.
What if it comes back unsatisfactory?
You get a written quote for the C1 and C2 items, with each one priced separately so you can see what you are paying for. Fix them and the report is re-issued.
Do I have to act on C3 items?
No. C3 means an improvement is recommended, not that anything is unsafe. A report with only C3 observations is satisfactory.
Where
EICRs and safety checks across the patch
Same work, wherever you are on the list. Full areas covered.
Other services
While I am there
Fault finding & repairs
Most call-outs start here: something has stopped working, or the fuse board keeps throwing the whole house into darkness and nobody knows why.
Fuse board upgrades
If one fault takes out the whole house, or the board still has rewirable fuses, it is doing a job that modern boards do far better.
EV charger installation
A home charger is mostly an electrical job rather than a car one: what matters is the supply into the house, the main fuse, and how the cable gets to where you park.
Sockets & lighting
The small jobs that make a house easier to live in, and the ones most people put off for years because of the extension lead that has become furniture.
Rewires
A rewire is the job nobody wants and plenty of older properties round here eventually need — usually the ones still running rubber or fabric-insulated cable.
Want this quoting?
Ring with the postcode and I will tell you what it involves.