Shepton Mallet is the town we work in more than any other, so this page is built around what we have actually done here this year: tripping circuits traced, old twin boards cleared out, showers swapped, kitchens wired and alarms fitted. If your problem looks like one of these, you will have a fair idea of how we would go about it before you pick up the phone.
One of this year's Shepton call-outs was an RCD that kept tripping. The obvious fear is that the house needs rewiring. In that case it did not. We isolated the circuits one at a time until the trip stopped happening, then worked through what was plugged into the remaining circuit. The culprit was a faulty kitchen appliance.
That is how most fault-finding goes: methodical elimination rather than guesswork. You can help before we arrive by noting when the trip happens. Is it at night, when the heating comes on, when the washing machine reaches a certain part of its cycle, or after rain? Those details shorten the search and save you money.
If the fault is in the fixed wiring, for example a damaged cable or a failed accessory, we tell you what it is and what the repair costs before we carry on.
A house that once ran night storage heaters on Economy 7 often still shows it in the meter cupboard: a second consumer unit for the off-peak circuits, sometimes with an RCD box bolted on later. When the storage heaters go, the extra boxes tend to stay.
This year we tidied one of these into a single metal RCBO board with surge protection on one supply, with new 25mm² meter tails, and tested the whole installation with a full EICR at the same time. One board, every circuit individually protected and clearly labelled, is far easier to live with.
If your cupboard has more than one board, or a board with no RCD protection at all, read our page on consumer unit replacement in Shepton Mallet. We fit RCBO boards only: a main switch and a Type A RCBO on every circuit, in a metal enclosure.
Planned work is quoted as a fixed price for the job. No two houses are the same, so we don't publish a price list: alarms depend on the layout, landlord work on the size of the installation and the number of circuits, and consumer units and rewires on what we find at the survey. You get the fixed price in writing before we start.
Kitchens are where the load is. A modern layout wants an oven, a hob, an extractor and a run of appliances, each needing the right supply in the right place. The kitchens pictured on this page were wired by us in Shepton Mallet, with the hob, oven, extractor and appliance points planned before the units went in.
Electric showers come next. We replaced one in town this year. When we swap a shower we also look at the circuit feeding it, because a new unit can draw more than the one it replaces.
Then alarms. In one house we fitted a mains optical smoke alarm in the hall and a heat alarm in the kitchen, linked by a cable run through the loft, and added a kitchen socket on the same visit. Heat rather than smoke in a kitchen stops cooking setting it off. Our smoke and heat alarm page for Shepton Mallet explains the options, and there is more on showers on our electric shower page.
Rented homes in Shepton range from Victorian stone terraces in the centre to newer houses on the edges. One five-year landlord EICR we carried out here this year was on a three-storey house with nine circuits and a garage supply; it came back unsatisfactory because of one C2, the lack of RCD protection, along with four C3 recommendations. Another EICR in town came back satisfactory.
A C2 has to be put right for the report to become satisfactory, and the law gives landlords 28 days, or less if the report says so. Details are on our landlord electrical compliance page for Shepton Mallet and our EICR page for Shepton Mallet.
Every one of these was in or right on the edge of the town.
Georgian townhouses on Town Street, Edwardian semis and the modern estates all have different needs. Where testing shows the cables themselves are failing, see rewiring in Shepton Mallet. Partial rewires are common where only some circuits need replacing. If you have off-street parking and want to charge a car at home, see EV charger installation in Shepton Mallet.
We also work just beyond the town: Croscombe, Pilton, Doulting, Cranmore, Oakhill and Evercreech. Our Shepton Mallet area page covers the town and those villages in more detail.
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.
Not necessarily. Random tripping is very often caused by an appliance, damp getting into an outdoor fitting, or one damaged cable. We find it by isolating circuits one at a time and testing. Only if testing shows widespread breakdown in the cable insulation would we talk about rewiring, and then we would show you the readings.
Often it makes sense to combine everything into one RCBO consumer unit, as we did for a Shepton customer this year. It removes old equipment, gives every circuit its own protection, and makes future work simpler. We look at how the supply and meter are set up before recommending it.
Yes. We prefer to be involved early so the oven, hob, extractor, appliance points, lighting and sockets are where the kitchen design needs them. We first-fix before the walls are finished, then come back to second-fix and test once the units are in. Cooker switches we fit are 2-gang.
Call-outs are in hours, Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 18:00. Parts are charged at cost plus 10%. Once we know what is wrong, any repair beyond that is priced before we do it.
No. We cover the town and the villages round it: Croscombe and Pilton along the roads towards Wells and Glastonbury, Doulting and Cranmore to the east, Oakhill up on the Mendips to the north-east, and Evercreech to the south-east. Several of those villages have their own pages on our site if you want more local detail.
Priced by the job, not by the hour. A written, fixed price after a survey, NAPIT certification on every notifiable job.
07889 334849