Perished rubber · out
New copper · in
The method
How we behave in your home matters as much as what we do to its wiring. The method is written down, and it does not change from house to house.
Furniture covered, floors boarded, thresholds taped. Dust sheets and floor protection on every job, as standard — laid before a single tool comes out of the van.
We plan every cable run first, then open the fewest boards the work allows. You will have a written quote before any board comes up — routes, making good, the lot.
Boards back flush, chases filled, paint matched. We put the house back as we found it — including the decorating. That standard is the whole business.
What's inside the walls
If your house was wired before about 1970, there is a fair chance the cables inside its walls are insulated with rubber. Rubber does not last. It dries, hardens and cracks, and the moment it is disturbed — a new light fitting, a boarded loft, a mouse — the insulation crumbles away from the copper like burnt paper, leaving live conductors bare inside the fabric of your home. There is often a smell first: faint and sweetish, like warm tar behind a switch plate.
A careful rewire takes every run of it out and replaces it with modern insulated-and-sheathed cable, finishing at a new consumer unit — the fuse box's better-mannered successor — where each circuit is protected against overload and against the small faults that start fires. Consumer unit replacement is often the first call we get from Hereford's older houses; a full house rewiring is sometimes what the house actually needs. We will tell you honestly which yours is, in writing, before anything is opened.
The craft is in the routes. In a period home we fish cables through the voids the building already has rather than cut ceilings; we lift boards rather than trench floors; and where a chase truly cannot be avoided we cut it narrow, by hand, and make it good in lime. Rewiring lath and plaster walls is a plasterer's problem only if your electrician makes it one.
Typology · Herefordshire
Every period property in Hereford fails in its own particular way, and forgives in its own particular way. These are the three we are asked into most.
Georgian · lath & plaster
Near the Cathedral the ceilings are lath and plaster, and they will not forgive a careless boot. We work from above wherever we can — boards lifted, cables fished along the joists — so a ceiling that has held since 1790 is never cut from below.
Victorian · lived-in rewire
Bartonsham and Whitecross terraces have solid walls and nowhere to hide a cable. We chase narrow and by hand, make good in lime, and rewire room by room so you can go on living there — kettle on, beds made, the dust sheets moving through the house like weather.
Timber frame · oak, do not notch
Toward the Welsh border the frame is the house. Structural oak is never notched and never drilled on a whim; we follow the voids the building already has and leave the frame alone. Where the wattle and daub is fragile, the cable goes the long way round.
Word of mouth · written down
4.9
From 212 Google reviews · Hereford
“The dust sheets went down before they'd said yes to a cup of tea. When they left you couldn't tell they'd been — the boards sat flush and the skirting was touched in.”
“We lived in the house the whole way through a full rewire. Every evening it was hoovered and the furniture put back where it stood. I still don't quite know how.”
“The written quote came before a single board was lifted, and the price at the end was the price at the start. Even the paint was matched.”
“Our farmhouse is listed and I was dreading it. They talked us through the consent, worked around the oak, and left the place exactly as they found it.”
Finished work
Rooms photographed after we've gone. If the work were visible, we would have done it badly.
Board up
Put back
Chase open
Made good
Arrange a look · no obligation
Tell us what the house is and what's worrying you — a fuse box you don't trust, sockets that run warm, black cable that crumbled when the loft was boarded. We'll come, lift one board, and tell you plainly what the wiring is doing and whether it needs anything at all. If it doesn't, we'll say so and put the board back.
If it does, you'll have everything in writing before any work is agreed — the routes, the making good, the decorating — because the quote is part of the method.