Cost to rewire a house

[Isetech]

What would be a reasonable price to rewire a 3 bedroom house, as long as the piece of string?

It just got me thinking and boy does it make me feel old.

While I was an appy, we use to rewire houses on weekends for a couple hundred bucks, which could buy you a car or motor bike back then.

Once I qualified and got a bunch of experience, I decided to become self employed, to give you an idea of how long ago that was, there were no cellphones and if you had a 286 computer with a dot matrix printer, you were hi tech. My first bakkie cost less than R20k brand new.


The first project I did was a house rewire, and boy did I burn my fingers. I quoted the customer R2800 including material and labour, and thought I could do it alone, second mistake. I lost around R6000 on that project .

The customer wasn't interested in my mistake. It paid off in the long run, he told everyone about my silly mistake and everyone thought they could also catch me, I recovered from that mistake within months and from there on, never had time to smell the roses, for the next 10 year, I went form that silly R2800 project to multi million rand project within 3 years.

Now we looking at R100 to R200K for a pipe and wire using a registered electrical company not the builders or card board electrician and if there is nothing fancy (not a smart home), that is excluding alarm and CCTV, you adding another R 50 - 100k plus for a reasonable system, double that if you go with top end products.

Lets hear your thoughts and experiences.

[Andrew_van_Zyl]

What would be a reasonable price to rewire a 3 bedroom house, as long as the piece of string?

It just got me thinking and boy does it make me feel old.

While I was an appy, we use to rewire houses on weekends for a couple hundred bucks, which could buy you a car or motor bike back then.

Once I qualified and got a bunch of experience, I decided to become self employed, to give you an idea of how long ago that was, there were no cellphones and if you had a 286 computer with a dot matrix printer, you were hi tech. My first bakkie cost less than R20k brand new.


The first project I did was a house rewire, and boy did I burn my fingers. I quoted the customer R2800 including material and labour, and thought I could do it alone, second mistake. I lost around R6000 on that project .

The customer wasn't interested in my mistake. It paid off in the long run, he told everyone about my silly mistake and everyone thought they could also catch me, I recovered from that mistake within months and from there on, never had time to smell the roses, for the next 10 year, I went form that silly R2800 project to multi million rand project within 3 years.

Now we looking at R100 to R200K for a pipe and wire using a registered electrical company not the builders or card board electrician and if there is nothing fancy (not a smart home), that is excluding alarm and CCTV, you adding another R 50 - 100k plus for a reasonable system, double that if you go with top end products.

Lets hear your thoughts and experiences.

Recently did a VIR rewire on a 5 bedroom house. Material price was bang on but the job took 1.5 weeks longer. Fibre ceilings and conduit junctions that had been built over and kitchen cupboards that had to be dismantled to get to junction boxes...I built in a R30k contingency and I JUST made it. Just under R100k at the end of the day

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[Dylboy]

So far only done one partial rewire of material cable and had to use the existing boasl. It was ok but an eye opener. Material was good but the time is what caught up quickly.

Got another one in Jan, small house so will see how that goes.

But reading this I have been doff, I never put in a contingency! My old boss did but for some or other reason I have not. Going to be adding that in as often/always there are unknowns and it catches you.

Thinking to do a line item and state what the contingency may be used for, perhaps a document to reference and cover almost everything.

I am approaching the end of my first year on my own, managed to pay the guys as needed and service the car.

Not much left in the tank for me at the end of the month but always learning.

Next year changing it up a bit and pricing right and not being scared to get a NO from a client. People pleasing is in my nature but not good for business in the money side of things.

But back to topic of rewires, all I can add in my limited experience on my own with it is to double the time you think it will be. And newly learnt add a contingency!

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[Justloadit]

But back to topic of rewires, all I can add in my limited experience on my own with it is to double the time you think it will be. And newly learnt add a contingency!

Just be careful, now that you have doubled the time that you think it will take. Since you have added this extra time,, some how it seems that it was not enough.
After studying this I realised that it was me that was causing the time overrun. It became a psychological thing that because you have extra time you tend to do extra things, and before you know it your time is up.

[Dylboy]

Very valid point ! With the one I did it was not a rush as some other work was being done and you are correct I took on other smaller jobs.

It's a tricky one, especially if you are a very small team. It's only myself and 2 guys I get.

Another thing I need to be better at is to book time for a job, what I mean is that don't book another job after another one (sure depending what it is ) but that added time pressure causes havoc so you don't fully complete the one job as the other job is booked but then the next day can't return to either as another job is in.

As said, learnt and learning lots.

When I first decided to be a sparky I thought I would have cash coming out of my ears hahahaha, little did I know

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