Renovation Order of Works: When Does the Electrician Come?

You line up a builder, you know roughly what a plasterer and a kitchen fitter do, and somewhere in the middle there is an electrician who has to turn up twice. This guide sets out the order a renovation runs in, where I fit into it, and the part that costs real money: which decisions have to be made before which walls close. It sits under the planning electrical work in York hub, and everything here applies whether it is your home, your business or a property you let.

First fix and second fix, in plain English

First fix is everything that has to happen while the building is open. Cable pulled through walls, floors and ceilings. Back boxes fixed into studwork or chased into masonry. Cable drilled through joists before the insulation goes in. The consumer unit position set, and the tails and earthing sorted. When first fix is finished a room looks like nothing has happened, apart from cable tails poking out of holes.

Second fix is the half you can see. Sockets, switches, light fittings, the extractor, the alarms. The board terminated, labelled and energised. Then every circuit tested, the results written down, the certificate issued and the work notified.

The gap between the two is not for me. It is for everyone else: the plasterer, the decorator, the floor layer, the kitchen fitter. And that gap is the whole point of this page, because the gap is when the walls close. Everything I can reach on the first visit, I can reach because the wall is open. After boarding and plaster, the same cable costs a chase, a repair, a repaint, or it goes on the surface in trunking.

Second fix, testing and certification I run as one continuous block, because an installation tested in pieces has to be retested. That is not fussiness, it is how the certificate works.

The order of trades, and where I slot in

Every job differs, but the spine is the same. The two fixes are steps 5 and 8. I am also on site, briefly, at one, three, four and ten.

1. Design and surveyThe stage most people skip. I walk the property, test what is there, and tell you whether your existing installation can carry what you are planning.
2. Strip out and enabling worksOld kitchen or bathroom out, temporary power and lighting in so the site is safe and workable.
3. Structure and weathertightSteels, openings, roof, windows. If the structural steel turns out to be an extraneous-conductive-part, I bond it and leave that connection reachable, so the position is agreed with the builder before any encasement or intumescent paint goes on.
4. Studwork and carcassingThe joiner and I agree back box positions in new studwork before it is boarded. Short conversation, expensive mistake if missed.
5. First fix electrics and first fix plumbingUsually running together. We are not in each other's way, we are in each other's floor voids, so we agree routes rather than take turns.
6. Insulation, plasterboard, plasterAcoustic quilt and insulation go in after the cables, not before.
7. Screed, floors, decorationFloor cables complete before boards go back down or screed is poured.
8. Second fix electrics and plumbingFaceplates, fittings, extractors, alarms.
9. Kitchen, flooring, snaggingKitchen fitted, floor laid.
10. Test, certify, hand overEverything tested, certificate issued, Building Regulations notification made.

Within first fix I work in a deliberate order too: the plant end first, because everything terminates there, then the roof spaces while access is still easy, then downward floor by floor so dust falls into rooms that are not yet finished.

What I need from your plasterer is not much. Chases can stand open indefinitely. What I need is to know a room is finished before he starts it, so I am not cutting into new plaster. A day's notice is plenty.

What genuinely blocks me is a room full of stored furniture, a floor I cannot lift, or a ceiling I cannot reach from either side where a run has to cross. I do not need a stripped house. Plaster still on the wall is fine, because I am cutting into it anyway.

The decisions that have deadlines

This is the table to take to your builder. For each decision, the last point at which changing your mind is free, and what it costs afterwards.

That last row is the single most useful thing I tell people. Take roof space ventilation units. Running power to a position is easy. Control is not. Some want a switched or boosted feed from each wet room they serve, some want a control run back to a controller. If you pick the unit after the walls are closed and it wants a boost signal from each bathroom, that signal cannot be run without opening finished work.

So: choose the units before first fix even though they are fitted later. You do not have to buy them, only decide them. And where you genuinely cannot decide, have me leave a coiled control cable at each position anyway, because the cost of leaving it is trivial and the cost of not having it is opening finished work.

Rewire sequencing

A rewire is the cleanest version of the two visit pattern, because the whole house is the job. The order is: test first, first fix, plaster, second fix, test and certify. Full detail is in the house rewiring guide, and the service page is house rewires in York.

The step people miss is the first one. I test the existing installation before anything is disconnected, so any fault that would stop a new board energising turns up before I have taken the old one off the wall. On a recent kitchen job I ran the condition report on the morning of first fix for exactly that reason. Nothing came up, which is worth as much as a fault would have been: the existing installation is fit to be added to, so nothing on that front is going to surface part way through and hold your programme up.

Two points specific to older York stock. In an occupied house I work area by area over several weeks rather than all out, so you keep lighting and a working socket circuit every night. That time on site is the largest part of the cost, and it is why a rewire is scoped on a visit rather than over the phone. And a house wired across two eras has both red and black and brown and blue conductors in it, so every conductor has to be positively identified before it is reterminated. On one board change I added an hour to the estimate for exactly that.

Loft conversion sequencing

A loft conversion is where the timing argument bites hardest, because the new floor is built, boarded and finished very quickly once it starts. Ask your builder when the ceiling is going up, and work backwards from that date.

Decide the lighting split first. This is the one people regret most, and it cannot be fixed later without opening the new ceiling. If every downlight in the loft is on one switch, the room is either bright or dark, and there is no in between. Two switched groups costs a few pounds at first fix and is close to impossible afterwards.

Then the board. A third storey means an extra floor of rooms, and the cable has to climb an extra level. That usually adds circuits, and the consumer unit has to have the ways for them. If your existing fuse box is a six or eight way with nothing spare, that is a decision to make before the loft is boarded, not after.

Then the alarms. On a loft conversion the fire detection usually has to be looked at across the whole house, not just the new room, so this can mean electrical work in rooms downstairs you were not planning to touch. Your building control officer sets the grade and the coverage for your conversion, and I am not going to guess at it in print. What matters for your programme is that it is settled before first fix, because the cable for it runs through ceilings that are about to be closed. More on interconnected smoke and CO alarms.

Two more, from real jobs. The loft bathroom extractor either vents through a wall, which is mine to core, or up through the roof slope on a tile vent, which is the roofer's. That needs settling while the roofer is still on site. And on an inspection of an existing conversion in York I recorded recessed downlights that were not fire rated, discharging into a small enclosed roof void. Not a breached fire barrier, and no signs of overheating, but heat can build up in a confined void, so it went on the report as an improvement I recommended. Somebody chose those fittings at the end of a job, when the decision looked cosmetic.

If you are not converting yet but think you might, the cheap version is this: run the circuit at first fix and terminate it in a clearly labelled junction box in the loft, left isolated at the board and not energised, with a decent coil of spare cable in it. Whoever does the conversion opens a labelled box and has enough cable to reach wherever the new circuits end up. Full detail on the loft conversion electrics page.

Extension sequencing

An extension follows the same spine, with three extras worth knowing.

Cables behind the external wall lining go in before the lining does. Oval conduit fixed to the masonry, back boxes for external wall sockets and switches in place. Once the insulated lining is on, adding a socket to that wall means taking it off again.

The outside work is nearly free while the ground is open. External sockets, garden lighting, a supply to a shed or garden room, a duct for something you have not decided on yet. All of it is a fraction of the price while there is a trench, and expensive once the patio and the turf are down.

Capacity gets asked about twice, and both answers matter. The first question is whether the consumer unit has spare ways. Adding a circuit does not automatically mean a new board, and I will tell you honestly if yours has room. It depends on spare ways, the board type, its condition and what protection the existing circuits have. The second question is the one almost nobody asks: whether the incoming main fuse can carry the extra load. That one goes to the network operator, and it is worth asking early rather than discovering late.

Worth correcting one thing you may be told on site. There is no consumer unit mounting height in the wiring regulations. The 1350mm to 1450mm figure comes from Approved Document M of the Building Regulations ^[4] and is measured to the switches on the board. Approved Document P describes mounting a board at that height as one way of complying with Part M rather than a rule you must follow ^[3]. Approved Document M says its own recommendations apply to newly erected dwellings and dwellings undergoing material alteration, and do not apply to the extension of a dwelling ^[4]. An Approved Document is guidance in any case, and says so in its own front matter ^[3]. What the regulations do care about is that you can reach the board, to switch it off in a hurry and for me to test it.

Moving a board is real money for no safety gain: new meter tails, the earthing arrangement redone, and making good afterwards. So the first question is whether yours needs to move at all. If it is somewhere genuinely awkward, boxed into a cupboard or up above a stair, I will tell you what moving it involves and price that separately so you can decide.

Kitchen refit sequencing

This is the one people get wrong, so here it is plainly. The electrician comes before the kitchen fitter, and then again after. Cable cannot be run once the units are in without core drilling the cabinets or running trunking across a brand new kitchen.

The sequence that works: strip out the old kitchen, then first fix while the walls are open and the board is off, then plaster, then the kitchen goes in, then I come back for second fix, faceplates and fittings, and test and certify. I price it as one job and time it around the kitchen fitter's programme, and I confirm the final socket positions on site once the existing kitchen is removed, because that is the first moment anyone can see the wall.

What I need from you before first fix is the appliance list. Not the brands, the positions and the types. Where the oven goes, whether the hob is gas or induction, where the dishwasher, washing machine and fridge sit, which are integrated, and whether there is an island. Those decisions set the circuits, and the circuits set the board. A cooker circuit, a socket circuit that will carry the appliances, an extractor and under cabinet lighting is more than an older fuse box usually has spare.

One more: if the walls are being tiled, the back boxes have to project the right distance for the tile depth, so I need the tile thickness confirmed before I set them. That is a two minute question at the right time and a mess at the wrong one.

And a real cost, from a York kitchen job earlier this year. The old kitchen was supposed to be out before I arrived. It was not, and nothing could start until it was. Rather than lose the day, I had my second pair of hands strip it out while I tested and planned the circuits in parallel. Two hours of labour at my hourly rate that nobody had allowed for. That is what a sequencing failure by somebody else costs. For heights and positions there is a fuller piece on where sockets and switches should go.

Garage and outbuilding conversion

Garages, annexes and garden rooms have a decision the others do not: the supply is a separate job from the fit out, and it comes first. Getting power out there usually means armoured cable in a trench, sized for the load and the distance, feeding a small board in the outbuilding. That is a new circuit, so it is notifiable work ^[2].

The sequencing hook is simple. The trench has to go in before the slab is poured and before the landscaping goes down. Ask me before the drive is relaid, not on the day the plasterboard goes on inside the garden room. There is a full walk through in getting power to a garage in York, and outdoor work generally sits on the outdoor electrical installation page.

Two honest notes. An extension lead across the garden is not a supply, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. And if the plan is to work out there, heat it, or charge a car from it, say so at the start: all three change the cable size, and none can be retrofitted into a trench that is already backfilled. If an EV charger is anywhere in the picture, that belongs at design stage too.

What calling me in late costs

Let me be straight about the evidence. I have not had to reopen somebody's finished wall on one of my own jobs, because I ask these questions at survey. So this is not a war story. It is the list of costs I price against, and the reason I ask early.

• Chasing a finished wall. The electrical work is the cheap part. It is the chase, the fill, the plasterer back for a patch, the decorator back for a whole wall, and the mismatch between new paint and old paint that you notice for the next two years.
• Lifting a new floor. First floor cables have to be complete before the boards go back, because at that point the boards are the finished floor. Engineered oak or laminate laid over the top makes it worse, because it does not come up and go back down invisibly.
• Surface trunking in a decorated room. The fallback when the wall cannot be opened. It works, it is safe, and it looks exactly like what it is.
• A consumer unit that will not take another way. Discovered at the end, this turns a straightforward new circuit into a board change plus new tails plus a notification, at the point in the project where the budget has the least give.
• Remobilisation. A continuous run broken into "come back when the plasterer's done" four separate times adds days that are pure travel and setting up again, not work. That is why I stage jobs in continuous blocks and say so in the estimate.
• Bonding after fire protection. Where structural steel turns out to be an extraneous-conductive-part, I bond it and leave that connection reachable. So the position is agreed before encasement or intumescent paint goes on. Once it is coated, there is nowhere compliant left to land it.

There is a cheaper version of all of this that I use constantly: when a decision is genuinely undecidable, fit it on a visit that is happening anyway. On the kitchen job above, an earth bonding clamp had to land on a pipe run the plumber was about to replace. Fit it that day and it is either scrapped or left on a dead leg, so it waits for the second fix visit that is already in the diary and costs nothing extra. Where a planned visit will do the job, there is rarely a case for a dedicated return trip.

What to have ready before you ring me

You can do all of this today, and it makes the first conversation about ten times more useful.

• A photo of your consumer unit with the door open, and a photo of the main fuse and meter. That tells me the board type, how many ways are used, whether anything is spare, and roughly what the supply is.
• What each room is for and, roughly, where the bed, the sofa, the desk and the TV are going.
• The appliance list for any kitchen or utility, including which are integrated.
• Whether there is a shower or bath in any new room, because that changes the circuits and whether the work is notifiable.
• Your builder's programme, or even just the two dates that matter: when the studwork gets boarded, and when the plasterer starts.
• Anything you might add within five years. EV charger, ventilation, air conditioning, a garden room. You do not have to commit, you just have to mention it.
• Drawings if you have them. A sketch with rough dimensions is genuinely fine.

Send me the fuse box photo and those two dates and I can tell you most of what you need to know before I have set foot in the house. Everything else I confirm on the survey, in writing, before anything starts. How I scope and what is included is set out on the pricing page.

The regulations bit, kept short

Three things are worth knowing, and none of them should be used to frighten you into work you do not need.

Some of this work has to be notified. Under the Building Regulations in England, notification is required where the work consists of installing a new circuit, replacing a consumer unit, or any addition or alteration to existing circuits in a special location such as the zone around a bath or shower ^[2]. A loft conversion and an extension almost always involve at least one new circuit. A kitchen refit sometimes does and sometimes does not, because a like-for-like accessory changeover on existing circuits is not notifiable on that limb, and I will tell you which yours is when I survey it. I am registered to self certify notifiable work under Part P, so I certify and notify it myself ^[7], and you get the certificate and the compliance notification without arranging anything with building control. Keep both. They are what a solicitor asks for when you sell.

A new consumer unit goes in a metal enclosure. That has been the rule in homes since 1 January 2016, and it came in under Amendment 3 to the 17th Edition of the wiring regulations, not the 18th, whatever you read online ^[5]. The reason is fire containment. But if you already have a plastic fuse box, that on its own is not a reason to rip it out. The rule applies to what I install today, not retrospectively to what is already on your wall, and Electrical Safety First says the same in as many words ^[6]. I will tell you whether yours needs doing. If somebody has told you that you need an 18th edition consumer unit, that page unpicks the phrase, and the consumer unit guide goes through the job itself. Fuse box, fuseboard and consumer unit all mean the same thing.

Nobody can honestly tell you the regulations force AFDDs on an ordinary house. An arc fault detection device watches for the small persistent arcing that starts fires but is far too small to trip an ordinary breaker. In a standard family home they are recommended, not required. The regulations only make them compulsory on socket circuits rated up to 32 A, and only in four types of building: high rise residential blocks, houses in multiple occupation, purpose built student accommodation, and care homes ^[1]. I am glad to fit them if you want them, and I will tell you straight what they add to the price. I am not going to sell you one by implying the law demands it. For the wider picture there is a homeowner's summary of the current wiring regulations.