Can You Live in Your House During a Full Rewire?

Jamie Cowman · Electrician · Safe Electric Registered

Last updated 18 June 2026

Short answer: yes, most people stay in the house for a full rewire — and most of them get through it grand. But I'm not going to pretend it's nothing. A rewire means floors lifted, walls chased, dust everywhere, and the power going off in one part of the house at a time. So the honest answer is "yes, but here's exactly what you're signing up for." That's what this guide is for — so there are no surprises when the dust sheets go down.

How Long Does It Actually Take?

A standard three-bed semi takes a team of two roughly 5 to 8 working days from start to certification. The smaller end is a tidy house with easy access and no surprises; the longer end is a bigger or older property, solid walls, awkward floors, or extras like extra sockets, outdoor circuits or EV pre-wiring. The job splits into two halves: first fix (lifting floors, chasing walls, running all the new cable back to the board) and second fix (fitting the sockets, switches, lights and the new consumer unit, then testing). First fix is the messy, disruptive half. Second fix is tidier — most of the dust is behind you by then.

If you want the day-by-day version of the whole job, I've written it out in what to expect during a full house rewire. This article is the companion to it: not the process, but what it's like to actually be in the house while it happens.

Is the Power Off the Whole Time? No.

This is the question I get asked most, and it's the one that worries people the most — and the answer is reassuring. The power is not off for 5 to 8 days straight. A rewire is done circuit by circuit, zone by zone. While we're working on the upstairs lighting, the kitchen and downstairs sockets can stay live. When we move to the kitchen, we power that down and bring the rest back. We plan it so you almost always have at least one working socket circuit and one lighting circuit in the house at any given time.

The exception is changeover day — when the old consumer unit (the fuse board) comes out and the new one goes in. For that, the main supply is off for a few hours while everything is reconnected and tested. We tell you the day before so you can plan around it: charge phones and laptops, do the big freezer shop another day, and don't pick that morning to work from home on a video call. By evening you're back on, and on a far safer board than you started with.

The Dust Is Real — Here's the Honest Version

To run new cable, we have to get to where the old cable lives: under floors and inside walls. That means lifting floorboards, and chasing channels into plaster for cables and back-boxes. Chasing a wall makes fine plaster and brick dust, and it travels. We use dust sheets, seal off rooms where we can, and tidy up at the end of each day — but I'll be straight with you: a rewire is one of the dustiest jobs in the building trade, and it's why a rewire is almost always paired with redecoration afterward. Walls get made good, but they'll want filling, sanding and painting once we're gone.

What this means for living in it: pack away or cover anything you don't want a film of dust on — soft furnishings, the contents of open shelves, the good crockery. If anyone in the house has asthma or a chest condition, take the dust seriously; it's the single biggest reason people choose to stay elsewhere for the worst few days.

Floors and Ceilings: What Comes Up

To run cables horizontally, the most direct route is under the floor — so floorboards come up, and on the ground floor we may lift sections of chipboard or get at cables from below. Upstairs cables often feed down through the floor void to sockets on the floor below, which is why upstairs floors get lifted to wire downstairs rooms. Where there's no floor access — a concrete ground floor, or a finished room we don't want to tear up — we run cables in the ceiling void above or surface-chase the walls. Carpets get rolled back; fitted carpets may need a carpet fitter to re-stretch them afterward, which is worth budgeting for.

None of this is permanent damage — boards go back down, walls get patched — but for a week or so the house feels like a building site in the rooms we're working in. We work room by room precisely so the whole house isn't open at once.

What a Normal Day Looks Like for You

We're typically on site from around 8am to 4–5pm. You don't need to be home all day, but someone should be reachable, and we'll need access and a chat each morning about which zone we're powering down. A few practical things that make the week easier:

• Kettle and microwave on a known-live circuit. Tell us where you want a working socket each day and we'll keep it live so you can still make a cup of tea.
• Fridge and freezer. Flag these on day one. We keep them powered wherever possible and warn you before any cut that affects them.
• Broadband router. If you work from home, tell us which socket the router is on so we keep you online — or plan the off-hours around your calls.
• Heating. Modern boilers and immersions are wired into circuits we'll be touching. Expect short interruptions; on cold weeks plan for it.
• Parking and a clear path. We're carrying drums of cable, a board, tools and a vacuum in and out all day. A clear hall and a parking spot speed the whole job up.

Full Rewire vs Partial Rewire: A Big Difference in Disruption

Not every job is a full rewire. A partial rewire replaces specific circuits — say the kitchen and bathroom, or one floor of an extension — while leaving sound existing wiring in place. Because we're only opening up part of the house, a partial is far less disruptive: fewer floors lifted, fewer walls chased, days rather than a week, and often no need to move out at all. The trade-off is that a partial only makes sense when the rest of the wiring is genuinely in good condition and tests clean. If the cabling is rubber-insulated, cloth-covered, or the consumer unit is an old rewireable-fuse board with no RCD protection, a partial is usually a false economy — you're decorating around wiring that'll need doing in a few years anyway.

The honest rule of thumb: if your house still has its original wiring from the 1970s or earlier, or you've no RCD on the board, plan for a full rewire. If the bones are sound and only a couple of areas are tired, a partial keeps both the cost and the disruption down. A proper test inspection is the only way to know for sure — which is exactly what an Electrical Installation Condition Report is for.

Who Should Think About Moving Out?

Most people stay. But "most" isn't "everyone," and there are households where a week somewhere else is the kinder choice. Consider staying with family or in short-term accommodation for the worst of it if:

• There are very young children in the house. Lifted floors, trailing leads, tools and dust are not a toddler-friendly combination, and you'll spend the week refereeing rather than relaxing.
• Someone is elderly or has limited mobility. Stepping over open floors and around dust sheets is a genuine trip hazard, and intermittent power and heat are harder on older bodies.
• Anyone is unwell, recovering, or has a respiratory condition. The dust alone is reason enough; asthma and COPD don't mix with plaster dust.
• The whole house is being done at once with no usable kitchen or bathroom. On larger or empty-before-moving-in jobs, it's often faster and cheaper to do the lot in one uninterrupted go while you're elsewhere.

If the house is empty between tenants or before you move in, that's the ideal scenario — we can work faster without zoning around your daily life, and it usually shaves time off the job. There's no grant in Ireland that covers temporary accommodation during a rewire, so if moving out is the right call, budget for it yourself.

A Quick Word on Grants — Because People Ask

I get asked whether there's a "rewire grant" to soften the cost, and I'd rather be straight than have you chase something that doesn't exist. Ireland has no general homeowner grant specifically for rewiring. Rewiring is only ever covered indirectly, as part of a wider scheme: the Housing Aid for Older People scheme and the Housing Adaptation Grant for a Disability (both run by your local authority), and the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant for doing up a long-vacant home. If your job qualifies under one of those, electrical work can be part of what's funded. Grant rules and amounts are set by the Department of Housing and administered by your local authority, and they change — confirm current figures with gov.ie and your council.

Why It's Worth the Week of Hassle

It's disruptive — I won't dress it up. But a full rewire is a once-in-40-years job, and at the end you've a system built to IS 10101, the national wiring standard, with individual RCBO protection on each circuit so a fault on one doesn't black out the house. You get a Safe Electric completion certificate, which is the document your insurer, a future buyer, or a letting agent will look for. And you'll have the headroom for an EV charger, a heat pump, or a proper kitchen without the old wiring tapping out. A week of dust buys you decades of not thinking about your electrics. That's a fair trade.

So — Stay or Go?

For a typical fit, healthy household doing a standard three-bed rewire: stay. It's dusty and it's noisy and you'll be sick of dust sheets by Friday, but it's manageable, and you'll save the cost of accommodation. For households with the very young, the elderly, the unwell, or where the whole house is open at once with no working kitchen or bathroom: seriously weigh up a few nights elsewhere, at least for the messiest first-fix days. Either way, the more we plan it together up front — which zones, which days, which sockets stay live — the smoother your week will be.