Electrical work and repairs in Epping

What makes Epping's High Street different?

Epping's long High Street is lined with buildings that have stood for two or three centuries, most of them with a shop, a café or an office at street level and one or two floors of living space above. The frontages are protected within the town centre conservation area, and a good number of the buildings are listed. Electrically, that combination raises a set of questions that a modern estate house never does.

What should I know if I live or let above a shop?

The first question is where the supply comes from. In many of these buildings the incoming cable, the main fuse and the meters sit in the shop or in a shared hallway, and the flat is fed by a sub-main that runs up through the building. Sometimes the flat has its own meter; sometimes it was never separated and the flat's electricity is still metered with the shop. Finding out which is the case, and who can get to the meter cupboard when the shop is shut, is the first thing to settle before any electrical work.

The second is the fabric. Timber-framed walls, lath and plaster ceilings and floors that have moved over the centuries make chasing cable difficult, and a listed building may need listed building consent before original surfaces are cut into. Electricians often use existing voids, surface trunking chosen to be discreet, or routes through cupboards rather than cutting into historic plaster.

The third is fire. A flat above a commercial unit depends on the floor between them holding back fire, so recessed downlights, holes for cables and anything else that breaches that floor must be fire-rated or sealed properly. If you let the flat, the five-yearly inspection and the alarm rules apply to you as landlord, and the inspection should pick up any shared circuits or unprotected sub-mains.

What about the rest of the town?

Behind the High Street, Epping spreads out into Victorian and Edwardian roads, interwar houses, post-war council estates and newer developments towards the edges of the town and the M25. The electrical questions there are familiar ones. In the older houses, a lighting circuit with no earth or a board with no RCD protection prompts a rewire or a board change. In the interwar and post-war houses, extensions and loft conversions have added circuits to boards that are now full, and garden rooms and outdoor sockets are regular requests. Houses on the newer estates seldom need rewiring, but their owners still ask for extra sockets, outside lighting and a second board for a converted garage.

Is Theydon Bois any different?

Theydon Bois, south of Epping and also in CM16, is a village of mostly detached and semi-detached houses around a large green, many of them built in the first half of the twentieth century and extended since, with older cottages and a few listed buildings among them. Big plots mean long garden runs, so power to a summerhouse, a workshop or a home office is a common job, and each one is a new circuit that must be notified under Part P. Homes on the lanes beyond the village may have an overhead supply from a pole, and a few rely on an earth rod rather than an earth provided by the network, which makes RCD protection essential rather than optional. Say which arrangement you have if you know it.

Where do power cuts get reported?

Epping and Theydon Bois lose power from time to time when storms bring trees down onto overhead lines. If the whole street is dark, ring 105 to reach the network operator. An electrician can only help once the supply is back and a fault remains inside the house.

What helps with an Epping enquiry?

Say whether the property is on the High Street, elsewhere in the town or in Theydon Bois, whether it is a flat over a shop, and whether it is listed. A photo of the consumer unit and, for a flat, of the meter arrangement saves a lot of questions. With your agreement, one local electrician who covers CM16 receives the enquiry, if there is one. If nobody covers it, we say so and share nothing.