Much of our recent work has been in and around Shepton Mallet: landlord inspections in the town, a doubled-up Economy 7 board replaced, fault-finding, alarms and a pub's heating controls, plus cottages and farmhouses out in the villages. Our own electricians do every job, priced by the job in writing, from the Market Place out to Pilton, Evercreech and the Mendip top.
The middle of Shepton Mallet is mostly Victorian stone terraces, with Georgian townhouses along Town Street and Edwardian semis a little further out. Modern estates fill the edges, and there are industrial units on the fringes and working farms in the parishes beyond. Each kind of building comes to us with a different set of questions.
In the stone terraces the walls are solid, so new cable routes are planned around floor voids and existing runs rather than chased wherever is quickest. Older boards with rewireable fuses, or one RCD covering every circuit, still turn up, as do circuits that have been extended several times without the board being updated. The Georgian townhouses are tall, which matters for alarms: each storey with living space needs one, and they should be interlinked so a fire on the top floor sounds in the kitchen. On the newer estates the wiring is usually in reasonable shape, and the work leans towards board upgrades, car chargers, outside power and extra sockets.
One five-year landlord EICR we carried out in Shepton Mallet this year was on a three-storey house with nine circuits and a supply out to a garage. It came back unsatisfactory on a single C2, because the circuits had no RCD protection, along with four C3 recommendations. Another EICR we did in the town this year came back satisfactory.
A C2 means potentially dangerous, and it has to be put right before the report can be satisfactory. Under the 2020 private rented sector regulations the remedial work must be done within 28 days, or sooner if the report says so, and the landlord then has 28 days from completion to give written confirmation to the tenant and the local housing authority. C3s are improvements we recommend, not failures. We write up the remedial quote alongside the report so the landlord knows the cost straight away.
Our landlord compliance page for Shepton Mallet sets out the full duties, and EICRs in Shepton Mallet covers the inspection on its own. A single-let landlord pack covers the EICR, smoke and heat alarms, a CO alarm where needed, and certification in one visit.
One Shepton Mallet house had ended up with two old consumer units and a bolt-on RCD box, left behind by an Economy 7 arrangement. We brought the lot together into one metal RCBO board with surge protection, on a single supply no longer split between day and night circuits, fitted new 25mm² meter tails and carried out a full EICR at the same visit. Night-storage wiring that has outlived its heaters is a familiar sight in the town's older houses.
Every board we fit has a main switch and a Type A RCBO on each circuit, so a fault switches off that one circuit and leaves the rest of the house running. The enclosure is metal, with Type 2 surge protection and arc fault detection on the bedroom socket circuits, every way labelled, and the whole installation tested and certified with Part P notification through NAPIT. Our consumer unit replacement page for Shepton Mallet explains what happens on the day.
A lot of what we do in town is not a project at all. This year that has included replacing an electric shower and chasing down an RCD that kept tripping, which turned out to be a faulty kitchen appliance rather than the wiring. Finding that by isolating one circuit at a time saved the owner paying for work the house did not need.
Sockets, lighting, outdoor power, cooker circuits with a 2-gang cooker switch, and extract fans on a timer or PIR-and-timer are all covered on our electrician page for Shepton Mallet. For interlinked smoke, heat and CO alarms, see smoke alarms in Shepton Mallet.
When an inspection shows the cable itself is past its life, we survey and price a rewire in Shepton Mallet. The price depends on the size, construction and access of the house, and is fixed in writing after the survey. We work circuit by circuit so most families stay at home, and a three-bed usually takes 5 to 10 working days. A partial rewire is often the better answer when only some circuits have failed.
On the estates, and anywhere with off-road parking, EV charger installation is priced on the charger you choose, the cable run and your board, and the written quote includes the charger itself. We fit Hypervolt, Zappi, Ohme and Andersen units and handle the network operator notification.
We also take on commercial work: shops, offices, pubs and industrial units. Details are on our commercial electrician page for Shepton Mallet.
Work runs out from the town in every direction: west along the A371 to Croscombe, south-west on the A361 to Pilton, east through Doulting to Cranmore, south-east to Evercreech and Ditcheat, and north-east to Oakhill, Stoke St Michael and the high Mendip villages beyond. Village houses are older and more often stone than those in town, with barns, garages and stables to feed as well, so the work is different. The notes below say how.
About 2 miles south-west of the town on the A361, Pilton is stone cottages, farmhouses and barns, with the tithe barn in the village and the Glastonbury Festival held nearby. At one Pilton cottage this year we fitted new light fittings and bathroom downlights, put two mains multi-sensor heat and CO alarms in the kitchen and living room, replaced a broken socket under the sink, made old shower cables safe and carried out an EICR. Small repairs plus an inspection like this are a sensible way to bring an older cottage up to date without a full rewire.
Croscombe is about 2 miles west of Shepton Mallet in the valley of the River Sheppey, with its stone cottages set close to the A371 and the river. Low-lying cottages near water are where we pay most attention to insulation resistance readings during an inspection, because damp finds its way into old cable joints and into accessories on outside walls. Meter positions and sockets on the road-facing walls are worth checking too. If a cottage here has never had a full EICR, that is the place to start, with any remedial work quoted in writing first.
Doulting lies about 2 miles east of town on the A361. Freestone quarried around the village was used to build Wells Cathedral, and there is a tithe barn here too. Its stone cottages and farmhouses have thick walls, and farm properties usually have barns or sheds fed from the house. Those feeds deserve a proper look, because an old buried or overhead supply to an outbuilding can easily end up coded on an EICR. We replace them with armoured cable on a dedicated RCBO and fit metal-clad sockets at the far end.
Cranmore is about 3 miles east of Shepton Mallet, past Doulting, with the East Somerset Railway heritage line in the village and Cranmore Tower up on the ridge. Homes out this way often come with a garage, workshop or stable some distance from the house, and getting safe power there is typical work: armoured cable, its own RCBO at the board, metal-clad sockets and decent lighting at the far end. For an older property we usually suggest an EICR first, so any board or circuit work is priced against what is really there.
Evercreech, about 3.5 miles south-east, is a large village under St Peter's church tower, and Evercreech Junction was once a stop on the Somerset and Dorset railway. This year we replaced an older Wylex board with two shared RCDs in the village with a metal RCBO board and surge protection, upgraded the earthing and bonding, fitted interlinked smoke and heat alarms and ran a new armoured supply to the garage. Testing that garage feed uncovered an old cross-polarity fault, which we corrected. Faults like that can sit unnoticed for years.
Ditcheat is a racing-stables village about 2 miles south-west of Evercreech and about 2.5 miles north-west of Castle Cary. Yards, stables and tack rooms need wiring that copes with dust, damp and knocks: IP-rated light fittings, metal-clad sockets and supplies in armoured cable on their own protected circuits. With an RCBO board at the house, a fault in a stable block trips only that circuit, not the kitchen. Outbuilding circuits on a working yard wear faster than anything indoors, so regular inspection of them makes sense.
Oakhill sits about 2.5 miles north-east of the town, a Mendip village of stone cottages, farmhouses and converted barns. Converted barns bring their own challenges: high ceilings, lights over stairwells and open voids, and long two-way switching runs. In one Oakhill house we replaced a stairwell light that could only be reached with large access ladders set up over the stairs, on two-way switching. Jobs like that need the right access equipment more than anything else, and we bring it so the fitting is done properly rather than bodged from a stepladder.
Stoke St Michael is about 3.5 miles north-east of Shepton Mallet and under 2 miles east of Oakhill, a high Mendip village of stone cottages and farms in quarrying country. Houses on the Mendip top are exposed, so outside lights, external sockets and cable entries are among the first things we look at during an inspection. Farms need sound supplies to their sheds and barns. For the cottages, the sensible order is an EICR to establish what is there, then a board change or partial rewire only if the report calls for it.
Leigh-on-Mendip is the furthest of these villages from town, about 5 miles north-east of Shepton Mallet and about 3 miles east of Oakhill. Its stone cottages and farmhouses are typical of quarrying country, with solid walls. Where a house has been extended over the years, each extension can bring its own wiring and sometimes its own small board, leaving circuits that cross from old to new with no clear record. Labelling, testing and, where needed, bringing everything back onto one RCBO board makes the installation understandable and safer to live with.
Binegar is about 3.5 miles north of Shepton Mallet and under 2 miles north-west of Oakhill, one of the high Mendip villages, with stone cottages and farm properties. Where a cottage has had a new kitchen or bathroom fitted without anyone looking at the circuits behind it, that is worth putting right. New appliances can overload an old ring final circuit, and bathroom circuits need RCD protection. We add dedicated circuits for ovens and hobs with a 2-gang cooker switch, and extract fans on a timer or PIR-and-timer.
Gurney Slade sits about 3.5 miles north of Shepton Mallet and under 1.5 miles north-west of Oakhill, in the quarrying country of the high Mendips, among stone cottages and farms. In an older cottage the first job is usually finding out what you actually have before spending money. An EICR records every circuit, tests insulation and earthing, and gives a written list of anything coded. From there we can price a consumer unit change, or a partial rewire of only the circuits that need it.
A few of this year's jobs, described without names or addresses.
Leave your details and a line about the job. We will ring you back to talk it through and arrange a survey or a written price.
Yes. We work across the BA4 and BA3 parishes around the town, including Pilton, Croscombe, Doulting, Cranmore, Evercreech, Ditcheat, Oakhill, Stoke St Michael, Leigh-on-Mendip, Binegar and Gurney Slade. The prices are the same as in town: every job is priced in writing after a survey, or after a phone consult with photos for smaller jobs, with VAT shown separately.
Usually, yes. We have recently replaced two old consumer units and a bolt-on RCD box in a Shepton Mallet house with a single metal RCBO board on one supply, with new meter tails and a full EICR. Whether your old night circuits can be removed or reused depends on what the inspection finds, so we test first and then give you a fixed price for the board change.
A three-bed semi is typically two and a half to three hours on site, and a typical three-bed has six to ten circuits. Taller houses with more circuits, or a garage or outbuilding supply, take longer. If everything is satisfactory the certificate is issued the same day. If we code anything, you get the report with a written quote for the remedial work so you can plan within the 28-day deadline.
No. We price by the job, in writing, after a survey or a photo-based phone consult for small work. The one exception is a fault-finding call-out, where nobody can know the answer before we start.
Yes. On solid stone walls we plan cable routes before we start, using floor voids, existing routes and lifted floorboards wherever possible, and making good any small chases. For a listed or heritage property the inspection is priced after a walk-round rather than at the standard rate, because circuit counts and access vary so much in older buildings.
Priced by the job, not by the hour. A written, fixed price after a survey, NAPIT certification on every notifiable job.
07889 334849