Electrician and EICR in Gravesend

Older houses, tested properly

Just over a third of the homes in Gravesham, 35.4% on the Valuation Office’s 2026 count, were built before 1945, with 5,960 from before 1900 alone. That is close to the England figure, 34.6%, and it means a great many houses that have been rewired at least once since they were built, often in stages. That is what an inspection in an older house has to untangle: a kitchen rewired in the nineties, an upstairs that was not, an extension on its own circuit, a loft conversion fed from wherever was nearest. The inspector checks each circuit on its own merits. Older lighting circuits can lack a protective conductor, so metal light fittings and switches are looked at closely; bonding to the gas and water pipes is often missing or has been cut through by later plumbing; and a board that has been added to over the years may have devices that no longer suit the cables they protect. Old wiring is not automatically unsafe, and the report does not assume it is. It tests it, circuit by circuit, and says which parts pass.

Pre-1945 = bands pre-1900 + 1900-1918 + 1919-1929 + 1930-1939 (VOA has no 1940-1944 band); VOA counts are rounded to the nearest 10; denominator includes 160 unknown-build-period properties.