County Wexford
House Rewires in Wexford. Most Houses Here Do Not Need One.
48.1% of Wexford’s 57,764 homes were built between 1991 and 2010, and that stock almost never needs rewiring. It needs the board doing. Knowing which of those two you are looking at is worth several thousand euro.
Why Wexford Quotes Vary So Much
Electrically, Wexford is two counties
Gorey took 854 new homes between 2023–2025, more than Wexford town itself. That end of the county is Dublin commuter belt now, and its housing is the newest in Wexford. Enniscorthy took 652 over the same period and New Ross 276, against stock that is materially older. The result is that the same county needs close to opposite work at either end. In Gorey the common job is adding capacity to a board that was never sized for a car charger. Around New Ross it is far more likely to be a board with fuse wire in it and no earth-fault protection anywhere. A quote that does not know which end of the county you are in is guessing at the job.
Find Your Era
What each era means, and what it looks like in Wexford
The wiring rules are national. What changes the job is the decade. Each row links through to the full detail for that era.
Usually a genuine rewire
Concentrated in the older town cores and the farmhouses inland. Rubber-insulated cable with a finite life, and lighting circuits that frequently have no earth at all.
Depends which end of the band
The bungalows you see all over rural Wexford. PVC cable so it reads as modern, but often a rewireable fuse board with wire carriers and no RCD anywhere in the installation.
Almost never a rewire
Nearly half of every home in the county. The estates that went up around all four towns during the boom. Sound cable, an earth on every circuit, and a board at its upgrade point.
Capacity, not replacement
Mostly around Gorey. Nothing is degrading. The board was specified before anyone in the house owned an electric car.
Source: CSO Census 2022, table FY033A, period of construction of occupied dwellings in County Wexford. Completions from CSO new dwelling completions 2023–2025. Data pulled 2026-08-05.
How We Quote It
Three things that decide a Wexford rewire quote
We test before we quote, and we tell you when the answer is cheaper
Insulation resistance, earth continuity, loop impedance and RCD trip times, circuit by circuit. It takes about twenty minutes and it is the difference between a recommendation and a guess. You get the readings themselves rather than a verdict, including when they show the work is not needed. On a county where nearly half the stock is 1991 to 2010, that last part matters more than it sounds.
Rural sites carry circuits a town house does not
A house outside a town boundary usually runs its own wastewater treatment plant and often its own well. Both are pumped, both run continuously or on demand, and both need their own protected circuit. When we test an older rural property in Wexford we test those too, because they are frequently the newest thing on an otherwise dated board and they are frequently the reason it trips.
Making good is the number that separates two quotes
Chasing cable into a solid wall means cutting the plaster, laying the cable, and putting it back. Whether that last part is inside the price is the single commonest reason two Wexford quotes on the same house look thousands apart. Ours states which it is. Ask every other quote the same question and the comparison becomes possible.
| The job | Typical range | What moves the price |
|---|---|---|
| Fuse board upgrade, sound wiring | See the fuse board page | Ways, board position, surge protection |
| Partial rewire, targeted circuits | Quoted from test results | How many circuits actually fail |
| Full rewire, 3-bed semi | €7,000 – €12,000 | Spec, making good, occupied or empty |
The figures above are indicative ranges for guidance only. They are not a quote and not an offer. Rewiring varies enormously with floor construction, wall type, circuit count, access and the condition of what is already behind the plaster, and none of that can be judged from a photograph or a phone call. Jamie gives you an accurate fixed price in writing after the installation has been tested.
Who You’re Dealing With
Why this job is safe with us
J Cowman Electrical Contractors is based in Wexford and covers Wexford as part of our Leinster service area. Same crew, same registration, same certificate on completion.
Safe Electric registered
Registration A6700
Verifiable on the public register
Public liability insurance
Up to €6.5M
Cover in place on every job
Crew size
10 electricians
Trading since 2021
Fixed-price quote
Within 48 hours
WhatsApp replies within the hour, Mon–Fri
Rewires in Wexford: what we get asked
How much does a rewire cost in Wexford?
€7,000 to €12,000 is a realistic range for a three-bed semi, and the spread is genuine rather than vague. Size and circuit count, whether the house is occupied or empty, whether chasing and making good are included, floor construction and spec all move it. Those figures include VAT and the Safe Electric certificate. They are an indicative range for guidance rather than a quote: the accurate number comes after the installation has been tested, and what you get then is a fixed written price. Before you price a rewire at all, it is worth establishing whether you need one, because on Wexford stock the honest answer is often no.
My house is in a Gorey estate built in 2006. Does it need rewiring?
Almost certainly not. A house of that age was wired in PVC twin-and-earth with a protective conductor on every circuit, into a board with miniature circuit breakers. That is the same family of installation being fitted today. What has moved on is protection and capacity: most boards of that era use one or two RCDs covering groups of circuits rather than an RCBO per circuit, and nobody in 2006 allowed a way in the board for a car charger. That is a board upgrade and a few added circuits rather than a strip-out. The only way to be certain is a test, because the answer lives in the readings rather than in the age.
Do you cover the whole county, or just around Wexford town?
The whole county. We are based in Wexford, which is why the response times are shortest here, and we work from Gorey down to New Ross and out to the coast. The practical difference is not distance but the type of property: an estate house in Gorey, a bungalow outside Enniscorthy and a farmhouse near the Carlow border are three different jobs, and we quote them differently because they are.
The house is from the 1970s. Is that a rewire?
It depends which end of the seventies and what has been done since, which is a genuinely different answer to the one you get for older or newer stock. Houses from that band span the changeover from rubber-insulated cable to PVC, so two houses ten years apart can need completely different work. What settles it is insulation resistance circuit by circuit, earth continuity, and whether the lighting circuits have a protective conductor. Where the cable is PVC and tests sound, this is usually a fuse board job. Our guide to houses built between 1961 and 1990 goes through the three things you can check yourself first.
Can I stay in the house while it is done?
For a board change, yes, with the power off for the few hours it takes to swap it over and test the circuits back in, typically a morning. For a partial rewire, yes, working room by room with power available everywhere else. For a full rewire most people move out or move into one part of the house, because floors come up and the power is off for extended periods. A three-bed is typically five to eight working days for a team of two. We give you a day-by-day plan with the quote so you know which rooms are affected when.
Will I get a certificate?
Yes, on the day the work finishes rather than posted afterwards. A Completion Certificate is legally mandatory for electrical works other than minor works, and only a Registered Electrical Contractor can issue one. Ours comes with the test results attached rather than a one-line pass. Keep it: a buyer's solicitor will ask for it, and so will the next electrician who works on the house.
There is a wastewater treatment plant and a well. Does that change anything?
It adds two circuits that a house on mains services does not have, and both matter on a rewire. A treatment plant runs a pump and an aerator, a well runs a pump and a pressure vessel, and each needs its own protection. On an older rural property they are often the newest additions to an otherwise dated board, wired in by whoever installed the plant. We test them alongside everything else, because a leaking pump motor is a very common cause of trips that people spend weeks chasing indoors.
Do I need a rewire before selling?
No Irish law requires an electrical certificate in order to sell a house. What happens in practice is that a surveyor flags an older installation, the buyer's solicitor asks for a certificate, and the sale slows under a closing deadline. Getting the installation tested before the house goes on the market turns that from a chain-holding emergency into a small planned job, and on Wexford's stock profile it frequently shows the wiring is sound and only the board is dated. If work was done previously and the certificate is missing, that is the thing that actually stalls sales.
Where to go next
Written and checked by
Jamie Cowman, Registered Electrical Contractor
Jamie runs J Cowman Electrical Contractors and holds Safe Electric registration A6700, which is what allows a Completion Certificate to be issued on this kind of work. Everything on this page reflects how the job is actually priced and sequenced on site, not a generic specification.
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