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In this article we will discuss what house rewiring is, the benefits of it and how much does it cost to rewire a house. First of all, house rewiring can be explained as extracting every existing electrical wiring, cables, mounting boxes and circuits in your house room by room and rewire them according to regulations using modern technology.
Some lights, switches and sockets may be removed as well and get updated with new ones. This process might sometimes be hard to do and troublesome because the cables are hidden inside your walls, ceiling and floor which means that floor panels will need to be removed and walls and ceilings might need to get opened or channeled. Due to these complexities house rewiring should only done by qualified electrician and technicians in order to get done safely and finish as soon as possible because while house rewiring is being done you probably will not have access to electricity for a certain amount of time.
House rewiring might take days, or weeks depending on the situation of your house so you might consider staying somewhere else while rewiring is done. You may also speak with your contractor for an arrangement to stay in certain rooms of your house while the other rooms are getting rewired but this will most probably slow down the process. House rewiring might be bothersome and time taking but at the end it will definitely be worth it. You home will be safer, more modern, less energy consuming and have an increased property value if you ever decide to sell it.
If you are getting your wiring and electrical systems checked every 5 or 10 years, the electricians will check your wiring and tell you whether you need to rewire your house or not and the reasons for it. If you are not getting inspections periodically then you can call a professional electrician team and get it check. It is highly recommended to get the wiring checked when you are buying a new property especially if it is and old one so that you will not have any problems in the future and know that you are buying a safely wired house. An electrical wiring at a property usually has a lifespan of 20-30 years, so if you have not got it checked more than these years or live in a house that was built around the 1970’s or 1980’s you may need your house to get rewired.
Faulty wiring causes a lot of accidents, dozens of deaths and thousands of house fires every year, it is not an issue to ignore and it should be dealt by professionals.
The cost to rewire a house depends on many variables. First, do not forget that you can get a free cost estimation from our professionals to rewire your house. In the United States an average cost of rewiring a house is around $2000 – $2500 for a regular household. This price includes the materials, labor and the necessary permits but as we have mentioned before it will depend on many factors such as the size of your house, the age of your property (older properties mostly have higher costs), permission prices from the local government and the amount of wall, ceiling and floor opening required.
To provide average cost numbers to rewire a house in more detail it can be said that;
To state an average cost per square foot it can be said it costs $2 to $4 in average. To specify more in detail;
So, if you have a house that is around 1,000 square foot the cost to rewire it will be around $2,000 to $4,000. Of course this cost might be less or more depending on the accessibility of wires, whether you will upgrade your electrical panel or not, permit costs etc.
To provide and average cost depending on the number of bedrooms we can say that a 120 square foot bedroom cost around $190 to rewire if there are no exceptional issues. So;
In addition to these costs, if your electrical panel will need to get upgraded you can increase the cost around $1,100 to $2,500 depending on the situation (the amps of the electrical service panel).
To define what an electrical service panel is, we can state that it is the bridge between the wires in your house and the external wires coming from the street. There are many types of electrical service panels with features and amps (amperes). Old houses have smaller ampere values such as 30 to 100, houses today have electrical service panels with a range of 100 to 200 amps and in very large houses that has lots of electrical needs it might reach to 400 amps.
If you have an old house, to upgrade it to an electrical service panel of 100 amps it will cost around $850 to $1,100. To upgrade it to 200 amps, it costs around $1,300 to $1,600. Also, if the box needs to be new as well it should cost around $1,200 to $2,500 to place it.
The process of opening the walls, getting rid of the old wires, installing new ones and closing the walls again is likely to cost around $4,500 to $9,000 for a house which is around 1,200 square foot. If you live in a house is larger than 2,500 square feet you might expect the pricing range to be around $12,000 to $20,000 for the same process.
If the wires are planned to be run through the floor, attic, or an easy to access space such as basement the average cost is $3,000 to $5,000 for the same house.
For one outlet or switch, the cost of installing a new electrical circuit might be around $100 to $150. The more outlets or switches that will get installed, you will mostly get a better deal from the contractor. Many states require two to three outlets in order to meet the local code standards.
Cost to rewire a house might be expensive or not depending on the many factors that we have mentioned in our article but it is an issue that should not be overlooked due to safety reasons. Make sure to get it done by professional and experienced electricians and do not forget give us a call to get the best pricing for the best quality!
Justin is passionate electrician with 12 years experience in many small residential electrical to large solar projects the Salt Lake City Utah area.