No legal duty, still worth knowing
An EICR on your own home, so you actually know
Nobody makes a home owner have the wiring checked. The reason people do it anyway is simple: the electrics are the one part of the house you cannot see, and the fuseboard in the hall cupboard has been quietly doing its job for years without anyone asking how.
Old fuse box? £675 replaces it and includes the full safety report
A modern consumer unit with proper trip and surge protection, fitted, tested and certified - and the whole-house electrical safety report included in the same price. One visit, one flat £675, agreed before we book the day.
You end up with the safest board available and written proof of the state of every circuit in the house.
Three reasons home owners book one
Different starting points, same report at the end.
Peace of mind on older wiring
Plenty of Dorset housing stock is Victorian, Edwardian or interwar, and plenty of it has been extended, converted and part rewired by different hands. An EICR tells you which parts are sound and which are living on past reputation.
Before or just after buying
A survey will often say the electrics need further investigation and stop there. Book the check before you exchange if you can, or in the first month after you move in, before the money has all gone on carpets.
Something for the insurer
If a policy or a renewal question asks when the fixed wiring was last inspected, a dated report signed by an electrician is a straight answer. Keep the PDF with the boiler service and the deeds.
Signs worth acting on
None of these are proof of a problem on their own. Two or three together are usually worth a report.
- The board has fuse wire in it rather than switches, or there is no test button anywhere on it.
- Sockets feel warm, buzz, or are scorched round the pins.
- Lights dip when the shower or the kettle goes on.
- Something trips now and then and nobody has ever worked out why.
- Old cable in the loft: black rubber, fabric braid, or lead sheath. That sort of cable is well past its working life.
- Extension leads doing permanent work because there were never enough sockets.
- Nobody knows when it was last inspected, which is the most common answer of all.
Coastal Dorset has its own habits
Salt air and damp are hard on outdoor fittings, garage supplies and anything fed to a shed or a summer house. Along the front at Weymouth, Swanage and Southbourne we see corroded outdoor sockets and garden cable that was buried without protection more often than anywhere inland. Conversions are another one: a lot of larger houses in Boscombe, Parkstone and Bridport were split into flats at some point, and split supplies get untidy.
None of that is a scare story. It is just the sort of thing testing finds, and most of it is a small remedial rather than a big job.
What if it comes back unsatisfactory?
You get a written quote against each item, and you decide what gets done. A C3 is only an improvement and does not need action at all. Plenty of homes come back satisfactory with nothing more than a couple of C3 notes.
What it costs and what happens
No surprises, either side of the visit.
Fixed price first
EICRs start from £160. Tell us the postcode, the size of the property and roughly how many circuits, and the price is agreed in writing before we book.
The visit
The power goes off in stages while we test, so plan around anything that needs to stay on. We look inside the board and open a sample of accessories.
The report
A signed PDF by email with a satisfactory or unsatisfactory outcome, and any codes written out in words rather than jargon.
Want to know what is behind the board?
One visit, one report, one clear answer. Anywhere in Dorset, from Lyme Regis to Highcliffe.