Lower and Upper Parkstone
EICR Parkstone: testing wiring that several owners have added to
Parkstone EICRs from £160
Parkstone houses rarely have one wiring story. A villa by the station may carry cable from four different decades. A terrace off Ashley Road may have a loft room nobody ever tested. We measure the lot and write it down in plain words.
Jump to: Cost · Two halves · Old and new cable · Loft rooms · Flats over shops · Penn Hill and Whitecliff · Renovating · What is measured · Reading the report · Questions · More pages
What a Parkstone EICR costs
We price by the circuits on your consumer unit. Not by bedrooms, not by postcode, and not by how grand the hallway is. A tall villa near the green and a two up two down off Ashley Road pay the same if their boards match.
| Circuits on the board | Often found in | Fixed price |
|---|---|---|
| 6 or fewer | Studio or flat above a shop | £160 |
| 7 to 10 | Terraced house or small semi | £210 |
| 11 to 15 | Extended family home or villa | £265 |
| 16 and up | Villa split into flats, or a shared house | £345 for the first 16, and £20 per circuit beyond |
Not sure of your count? Send a photo of the board. Each breaker or fuse is one circuit; the main switch and any surge device are not counted, and a second board adds its circuits. If the board shows more than the photo did, we price the true count from this table before testing.
Still on an old fuse box? £675 swaps it for a new board, EICR included
A modern consumer unit with surge protection, fitted and tested, with the condition report done as part of the same job. The detail is on our fuseboard changes page.
Two Parkstones, joined by a hill
Parkstone is one name for two rather different places.
Lower Parkstone grew up around the railway station at Ashley Cross, with Poole Park and the harbour edge close by. It has big late Victorian and Edwardian houses, many now divided into flats, beside streets of solid semis. Ceilings are tall, rooms are many, and the first cable runs have been extended, rerouted and patched for a long time.
Upper Parkstone sits up the slope, along Ashley Road and round Constitution Hill. It is tighter packed: terraces, smaller semis and flats over shops, with plenty of rented homes among the owner occupied ones. Boards here tend to be smaller but busier, because a little house with a loft room, an electric shower and a kitchen extension can run a lot of circuits for its size.
Both halves are a short drive from Pete's home in Poole, so neither side of the hill is a long trip for us.
Old cable meets new: layered wiring on a test
The usual Parkstone story is not one bad installation. It is several reasonable ones that were never properly joined up. On a test it shows in a few familiar ways:
- Lighting with no earth. Older lighting circuits were often run without an earth wire. That starts to matter the day someone fits a metal light fitting or a metal switch plate.
- Mixed generations of cable. Grey or white plastic cable from a later rewire joined to black rubber or lead covered cable from much earlier, sometimes in the same ceiling.
- Circuits borrowed from each other. An extension light fed from the nearest socket, or an appliance hung on the lighting circuit, because that was the cable within reach.
- Gaps in RCD protection. Many boards still leave some sockets or a bathroom without a residual current device, the part that cuts the power in a split second when current leaks away.
None of that makes the house a write off. It is why each code comes with a plain sentence saying what we found and where.
Loft rooms and rear extensions
Terraced and semi detached Parkstone homes have been extended upward and outward for decades. Each extension added circuits, and each was wired by whoever the owner of the day chose.
In a loft room we look at how the new sockets and lights are fed. A fresh circuit from the board is the tidy answer. A spur taken off an upstairs ring, buried in insulation and stapled along a rafter, is another answer, and the readings usually reveal which you have. In a rear kitchen extension we check what the cooker, hob and any underfloor heating run from, and whether each cable suits the breaker guarding it.
If a room was added and nobody tested it, the EICR is often the first time anyone has measured its wiring at all.
Flats over the shops on Ashley Road
Ashley Road, and the smaller parades at Ashley Cross and Penn Hill, have flats above their shops. These lettings need care, because two installations share one building.
- The flat is a home. When it is let, the landlord needs a satisfactory report at least every five years under the 2020 regulations, and the tenant gets a copy. That report is the one we test for. See landlords and letting agents.
- The shop is a business. Its wiring is a commercial installation with an inspection of its own, covered on our commercial page.
- The supplies can be tangled. In older conversions the flat's meter may sit in the shop's back room, or a flat circuit may cross the shop ceiling. We note where each one starts, so no tenant is left unable to reach their own main switch.
Tell us who holds the shop key and both sides can be done in one trip, each with a report of its own.
Penn Hill, Whitecliff and the harbour side
South of the railway, toward the water, Parkstone changes again. Around the Penn Hill shops and down to Whitecliff Harbourside Park there are interwar and postwar family houses, detached homes on generous plots, and newer flats looking over the harbour.
The work here is less about old cable and more about what has been added outdoors: garden offices, outside sockets, path lights and car chargers, all facing weather and salt from the harbour. We test outdoor circuits as closely as indoor ones.
Testing before you renovate
Plenty of Parkstone owners book an EICR at the start of a project, not the end.
Before a kitchen or bathroom refit, find out whether the board is fit to take the new room. Soon after buying, follow up the survey's electrical remark; our buying and selling page explains the timing.
If the wiring turns out to be near the end of its life, we price the work from our published price list, up to a full rewire if it comes to that. Owner occupiers will find more on the home owners page.
What is measured, and what is not
An EICR is a measured inspection of the fixed wiring against BS 7671, the national standard. In a Parkstone house that means:
- The consumer unit: its age, its casing and the protective device on each circuit.
- Insulation resistance, which shows whether old cable is breaking down.
- Earth fault loop impedance, proving a fault would trip the breaker quickly enough.
- RCD operation, timed with an instrument rather than a press of the test button.
- Earthing and bonding to the gas and water pipes where they come in.
- A sample of accessories opened up: sockets, switches and joints.
Outside the scope of the report:
- Plug in appliances, which belong to portable appliance testing.
- The boiler, the gas pipes or anything that is not electrical.
- Cable hidden in walls that cannot be reached without damage. We test it electrically, but we cannot see it.
Each reading is explained on what an EICR is. Tell us about parking when you book, as Upper Parkstone streets fill early. A flat over a shop is often done in a couple of hours; a large villa with a second board can fill most of a day.
How to read your Parkstone report
The front page says satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Inside, every item found gets one of four codes:
- C1 Danger present. It could hurt someone now. We make it safe before leaving, and the report is unsatisfactory.
- C2 Potentially dangerous. Not an instant risk, but it becomes one if something else fails. Unsatisfactory until fixed.
- C3 Improvement recommended. Safe today, short of the current standard. It does not fail the report.
- FI Further investigation. Something does not add up and needs tracing. Unsatisfactory until resolved, and quoted separately.
In older houses C3 items are common, and they are advice rather than a fail. Every C1, C2 and FI comes with a written quote, and you choose who puts it right. If we do that work, the retest is included and we update the report ourselves. Our fee for the inspection is the same whatever it finds, so nothing is coded to make work.
Parkstone EICR questions
Asked by owners, landlords and buyers on both sides of the hill.
Do you cover both Lower and Upper Parkstone?
Yes, and every road in between. Pete is based in Poole, so Ashley Cross, Penn Hill, Whitecliff and the streets off Ashley Road are all a short drive. The price comes from the circuit table on this page, whichever side of the hill you are on.
Other parts of the town are on the Poole EICR page.
My Victorian house was partly rewired years ago. Will it fail?
Not automatically. A partial rewire is common in Parkstone and many of them pass. What we look at is where the newer cable joins the older cable, whether the older parts still test well, and whether every circuit has the protection it needs. Anything that falls short is listed with its own code, so you see exactly what needs doing instead of being told the whole house is bad.
I let a flat above a shop on Ashley Road. What do I need?
A report on the flat's own installation at least every five years, with a copy for your tenant, and for the council if it asks. The shop below needs its own commercial inspection, which is a separate report. If the flat's meter or main switch sits inside the shop, tell us who holds that key so we can reach it on the day.
We have just added a loft room. Should it be tested?
Yes, if nobody tested it when it was finished. A loft room usually brings new sockets and lights, and sometimes a shower or a heater. An EICR measures those new circuits along with the rest of the house and shows whether they were connected in a way the board can protect.
Can you test a big house with two consumer units?
Yes. The circuits on both boards are added together and priced from the same table. Past sixteen circuits, each extra one is a fixed amount shown in that table. We count before we start, so the figure is agreed in writing first.
Do I have to stay in all day?
No. Someone needs to let us in and show us the board, and we need to reach every room. Plenty of Parkstone customers leave a key, or a neighbour lets us in, and we lock up when we go. We phone before switching off anything that matters, such as a freezer or a home office.
Will an old fuse box fail the report on its own?
Not always. Age by itself is not a fault code. What decides it is how the board and its circuits test, whether RCD protection is there where it is needed, and the state of the casing. If it is near the end of its life we say so plainly and price a replacement, but nobody makes you change it to get a report.
How long does the report stay valid?
For a rented home the law sets a maximum of five years, or sooner if the report says so. For a home you live in, ten years is a common gap, or whenever the house changes hands. The report itself states when the next inspection is due.
We are buying a period house in Parkstone and the survey mentions the wiring. Can you help?
Yes. Ask the seller whether we can test before exchange. You get a list of items, each with a code and a price, which is far more use in a negotiation than a surveyor's general remark. If access is not possible, book us for your first days in the house, before the furniture and carpets arrive.
A circuit keeps tripping. Is that an EICR job?
No, that is a fault rather than an inspection. A fault finding visit traces the cause, makes it safe where it can, and leaves you a written repair price the same day.
Our fault finding visit is a fixed £149.
Book a Parkstone EICR
Choose your circuit count, see the fixed price, and send it to us. We reply with dates, and we can work around a tenant or a shop's opening hours.