Ferndown, West Moors and West Parley
EICR Ferndown: clear reports for bungalows, family homes and lets
Ferndown EICRs from £160
Plenty of Ferndown homes have had the same owner for decades, and the board in the hall cupboard has never been looked at closely. We test every circuit, explain what we find in plain words, and the price is fixed before we start.
Jump to: Cost · The town · Bungalows · Long owned homes · For a relative · Selling · Letting · West Moors and the edges · Business units · What is tested · The codes · Questions
Ferndown EICR prices
The figure comes from one thing: how many circuits your consumer unit feeds. A bungalow on a quiet close and a large house near the golf course pay the same amount when their boards carry the same number of circuits.
| Circuits on the board | Often found in | Fixed price |
|---|---|---|
| 6 or fewer | Retirement flat or small apartment | £160 |
| 7 to 10 | Two or three bedroom bungalow | £210 |
| 11 to 15 | Chalet bungalow or four bedroom house | £265 |
| 16 and up | Large detached home, annexe or shared house | £345 for the first 16, and £20 per circuit beyond |
To find your count, open the board cover and count the switches in a row, leaving out the big main switch. Old style fuse boxes are counted by their fuse carriers instead. A photo sent by text or WhatsApp is enough for us to confirm the row before you book.
An old fuse box can be replaced for £675, with the EICR done as part of the job
That is a new consumer unit with surge protection, fitted and tested in one visit. The full detail sits on our fuseboard changes page. Nobody has to replace a board just to get a report.
Ferndown and the villages round it
Ferndown grew out of heath and pine woods, and most of its housing went up from the middle of the last century onward. That gives it a different feel from the Victorian streets of Poole and Bournemouth. You see wide roads, generous gardens, plenty of bungalows, and estates of family houses from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
We cover the whole of it. The shops along Victoria Road and Penny's Walk, Tricketts Cross to the east, Ameysford to the north, Stapehill and Hampreston toward Wimborne, and Longham down by the river. West Moors and West Parley come under the same postcode, and they are on our list too.
Pete is based in Poole, about twenty minutes away, usually up the A348 through Bear Cross and Longham. Close enough that a gap in the diary often turns into a Ferndown slot.
Bungalows: most of the wiring is in the loft
In a two storey house the cables run between floors. In a bungalow nearly every lighting cable, and often the socket cables too, run across the loft and drop down inside the walls. That makes the loft the place we spend real time.
- Cables buried under insulation. Thick loft insulation laid over a cable makes it run warmer than it was designed to. We note where that affects a circuit, and whether the breaker still suits it.
- Chalet bungalows with rooms upstairs. A dormer bedroom added later often takes its supply from the nearest circuit downstairs. We trace how it is fed and whether the cable is big enough for what it now carries.
A home owned for thirty years
When a house has had one careful owner for a long time, the wiring is often in better shape than people fear. It has also had a long time to collect small changes. A socket added behind the television. An outside light on the garage. A shower fitted in the nineties on whatever cable was nearby.
None of that means the house fails. The EICR puts every change through the same tests, so you know which parts are fine. If the board has no RCD, the device that cuts the power when current leaks to earth, the report says so plainly.
Owner occupiers can find more about why and when to test on the home owners page.
Booking a report for an older relative
If you are booking for a parent in Ferndown, that works well. Tell us who will be in, and we will explain to them on the day why the power goes off. Mention anything that needs power, such as a stairlift, a riser chair or an oxygen concentrator, and we plan each short break around it. If carers use a key safe, give us the code and we lock up the same way, then email the report to you.
Selling a Ferndown house, or clearing a parent's home
Buyers of older bungalows often ask about the wiring, and a surveyor's general comment rarely answers them. A current EICR on the table does. It shows what was tested, what was found, and what each item would cost to put right, so a buyer is negotiating over facts rather than worries.
Executors often have an empty house, nobody living nearby, and an agent asking for paperwork. We can collect the key from the agent and send the report to you both. Please keep the power on at the meter.
The timing of a report around a sale is set out on our buying and selling page.
Renting out a Ferndown home
If you let a house, bungalow or flat in Ferndown, the 2020 private rented sector regulations ask for a satisfactory report at least every five years. Your tenant needs a copy within 28 days of the inspection, and the council can ask for one with seven days to answer.
Lettings here are mostly whole houses and small flats rather than rooms let one by one. If you do let a shared house, the 16 and up row in the table applies, and we count every circuit on every board. Agents and landlords with several homes can read how we work on the landlords and letting agents page.
West Moors, West Parley and the rural edges
Away from the middle of Ferndown, the houses spread out. West Moors runs north toward the forest, West Parley sits beside Parley Cross and the road to the airport, and Longham and Hampreston look out over fields and the Stour valley.
Out here we often find a detached garage with its own small board, a workshop down the garden or lights along a long drive. Each is part of the installation, so each is tested and listed.
Some older or more rural homes take their earth from a rod in the ground rather than from the supply cable. If yours does, we measure that rod properly, because the safety of every circuit depends on it.
Units on the Ferndown industrial estate
Workshops, trade counters and small factories on the estate need a commercial report of their own, often with three phase boards to plan around. Our commercial page and industrial page explain how we test without stopping production.
What we test in a Ferndown home, and what we leave out
The report measures your fixed wiring against BS 7671, the national wiring standard. On a typical visit we check:
- The consumer unit itself: its condition, its casing and the breaker or fuse on every circuit.
- Insulation resistance on each circuit, which tells us whether cable sheathing is breaking down.
- Earth fault loop readings, so we know a fault would trip the protection fast enough.
- Every RCD, timed with a test instrument rather than just pressed.
- Main earthing and bonding where gas and water pipes come into the house.
- Sockets, switches and fittings, with a sample opened up to look inside.
The report does not cover kettles, lamps and other plug in items, which is portable appliance testing, or the boiler and plumbing. Cables sealed in walls are tested electrically, but we never cut into plaster to look.
Every reading is explained on what an EICR is.
What the codes on your report mean
The first page gives an overall result of satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Each thing we note inside carries one of four codes:
- C1 Danger now. Someone could be hurt today. We make it safe before we leave, and the result is unsatisfactory.
- C2 Potential danger. Safe for the moment, but one more failure would make it dangerous. The result stays unsatisfactory until it is fixed.
- C3 Worth improving. It meets an older standard but not the current one. A C3 on its own never fails a report.
- FI Needs a closer look. A reading or a finding we cannot explain on the day. Unsatisfactory until it is traced, and priced as a separate visit.
Older bungalows commonly pick up a few C3 notes, and those are advice, not a fail. Every C1, C2 and FI comes with a written price to fix it, and you are free to use any electrician. If we do the remedial work, the retest is included and we update the report. Our inspection fee is the same whatever we find, so we have no reason to find work that is not there.
Ferndown EICR questions
The questions owners, families and landlords in and around Ferndown ask most.
Do you cover West Moors, West Parley and Stapehill as well as Ferndown?
Yes. We cover the whole of the BH22 area and the villages beside it, including Tricketts Cross, Ameysford, Longham and Hampreston. The price comes from the circuit table on this page, wherever in the area you are.
My bungalow has never had an EICR. Is that a problem?
No, it is very common. Plenty of homes go decades without one, because owner occupiers are not required by law to have a report. A first EICR simply gives you a starting point, and the report says when the next one is due.
I am booking for my mother. Does she need to do anything?
Only let us in and show us where the board is, or leave a key or a key safe code with us. Tell us when you book about anything she relies on that needs power, so we can plan each switch off around it. We can email the report to you rather than to her.
Can you test an empty house that is being sold by executors?
Yes. We can collect the key from the estate agent, test while the house is empty, and send the report to the executors and the agent together. The electricity supply must still be on at the meter, so please do not ask the supplier to cut it off before we have been.
Will the report pass if the house has storage heaters?
Storage heaters do not fail a report on their own. We test the circuits that feed them, along with the off peak switching, in the same way as every other circuit. Any fault we find is coded and priced like anything else.
Do you test garages, workshops and garden rooms?
Yes. Anything wired into the house supply is part of the installation, so a garage board, a workshop or a garden room is tested and appears on the same report. Each extra circuit is counted when we work out the price.
How often does a rented home in Ferndown need a report?
At least every five years under the 2020 regulations, or sooner if the last report says so. Your tenant gets a copy within 28 days of the inspection, and the council can ask for one at any time.
What happens if the report comes back unsatisfactory?
You get a written list of what needs doing, each item with a price. You can choose who carries out the work. If we do it, the retest is included and we issue the updated report, so you are not paying twice.
Lights keep flickering and a breaker trips now and then. Should I book an EICR?
Book a fault finding visit first. An EICR is a full inspection of everything, while a fault visit goes straight to the problem, makes it safe if it can, and gives you a fixed repair price the same day.
Our fault finding visit costs a fixed £149.
Book a Ferndown EICR
Pick your circuit count, see the fixed price and send it over. We come back with dates, and we are happy to fit around a carer's visit or an agent's key.