This is Ben Carpenter with Integra Electrical, Master Electrician and an electrician for the last 31 years. So a lot of times we'll hear the question, how much does it cost to rewire an entire house? So how would you answer that?

What's the Cost to Rewire a House?

Well, that is really a good question. So rewiring a house can be exhaustive or it can be very minimalist. We could say, we're gonna come through and remove every single part of the old wiring system and put all the new wires in. This would be much like, someone saying, I want my whole cardiovascular system in my body replaced. I want everything single vein and every single artery taken out. I want them all replaced. And the reality is sometimes you can just replace one major component of that system and get an amazing function out of that and maybe add a couple of aspirin on top of it, and have a system that is in very good repair.

So the way I would look at this, if I was to start at the top solution and say a top solution was replacing every single artery, every single vein, the heart, the lungs, everything in the entire home there would be two primary ways that this could be done. One would be much faster than the other. And I'll explain that. So if we are gonna go in with an entirely new system, much like if you bought a brand new house, you would have a brand new electrical system. There'd be two ways that we could get this done. One would be a situation where all the sheet rock and or plaster in the home is removed from the walls, so we have easy access into the house that the price to do that is gonna be about half, maybe even a little less than half than  if all of the plaster and sheet rock and drywall stays in place, and we try to be the least amount intrusive as possible.

So to give you an idea of what we're talking about, in a home, there is electrical going to every single plug, every single switch, every single light fixture in the home. There is a different type of wire that goes to almost every single thing. And so in one bedroom, for example, you could have upwards of 10 or 12 different components that need to be rewired just in one bedroom alone. Let's say maybe a typical house would have three or four bedrooms a kitchen and a living room and hallway and maybe a couple of bathrooms.

We would typically be looking at a rewiring cost of somewhere in the ballpark of 25 to 30 dollars per square foot. That could be on the high range, maybe on the low range, depending on how many different plugs and switches and light fixtures need get installed, your home has one light picture in the middle of every room versus a home that has 10 recessed can lights in every single room. Obviously, the cost is gonna be quite a bit different. But if we leave all the sheet rock on, all the plaster and we leave everything in place, you could expect somewhere in the ballpark at 25 to 30 dollars per square foot to rewire that home.

Now on top of that, typically there is a price to replace the main electrical service at the same time replace the main electrical service, that would be the heart and the lungs of the system. And so to provide that in combination of rewiring the home, so not only replacing the veins in the artery, scale every bedroom into the kitchen, into the living room. We would also replace the heart and lungs. That would be the breaker panel and the meter socket, the utility connection system and the voltage Protection system. To replace both of those, you could be looking somewhere in the ballpark of 10 to maybe $25,000.

That would be an addition to rewiring. The reason I break those out is sometimes we, in fact, many times, we go into a home and the heart and the lungs were updated. Maybe last year, the year before, somebody knew that they needed to get update and those were already done. And so now the customer is ready to go through and replace the wires or the veins and the arteries of the system, which are the plugs and switches.

What Do I Look For That Tells Me I Need My Old Home Rewired?

Can you tell me what would clue someone into thinking that they needed to replace all of the veins? Let's say they already updated the breaker panel, the heart and lungs, the service. What would clue them into the idea that they might need to start thinking about replacing the wiring?

Well, that's a really good question. So you can imagine, let's say we've got a 30 or 40, maybe 50 or 60 year old house. This, the way that customers were utilizing the electrical system, let's say 50 years ago is completely different than the way that customer was utilizing that electrical system today. So for example, 50 years ago, people were still using wind up alarm clocks. Today, every single person has chargers in their bedrooms for their cell phones. They have electronic alarm clocks. They've got radios. They've got a myriad of different devices to just go into the bedroom alone. And back in the day, there wasn't the need for plug in devices.

So many times they need more electricity. A good example is the EV or electric vehicle charging center. There's now so many of our customers are moving to an electric vehicle. You can imagine the veins in the arteries to the garage to support an electric vehicle just aren't enough.  Back in the day, the only thing you needed was maybe a garage door opener and maybe a freezer, a deep freeze or something like that in the garage. Maybe you were plugging in a weed whacker. Now, we're gonna charge a vehicle that's gotta go hundreds of miles down the road. That's gonna be a completely different circuit or completely different vein, if you will, or artery that needs to go to that.

What Can Happen if My Electrical System Isn't Updated?

In a situation where someone buys an electric vehicle, I know there are different sizes of charges that allow customer to charge that car faster or slower. Imagine what happens when we put extra demands on a circuit that is 50 years old. It's been there for ages. And now that circuit that has only had to maybe take care of an electric weed whacker or a table saw, something where you're only using it for a few seconds. Now we're gonna plug in an electric vehicle charger. Do you know how long an electric vehicle can take to charge on a standard plug on the wall? That one plug could take 24 to 48 hours to charge that one electrical vehicle. So that plug that you see in your garage, for example, they used to only have to work for a minute or two minutes at a time. Now you're asking that plug to work for 24 to 48 hours at a time. You could be presenting some pretty serious challenges for that plug.

What Are The Visual Indicators?

Probably the easiest visual symptom you could see would be broken plugs or switches. Do you see plugs that maybe only have two prongs on them, for example? That would be very indicative of 50 year old or 60 year old wiring methods that weren't done quite up to part of the way we do them today. You might see burning on the plugs. That would be a pretty strong indicator that there's been a lot of heat build up in it. Of course, if there's heat build up at a plug, it degrades the plastics in it and the metals in that plug. They just don't work correctly anymore. Not only did not work correctly anymore, they can pose a serious safety issue.

What's The Cost to Rewire My House?

Okay, so to go back to the original question, if all the sheet rock and plaster stays in place, and our goal is to not disturb any of that, so we can lead you in a situation where could live in your home day in and day out, that house rewire may cost somewhere in the 30 to 45,000 dollar range. This depends on how many circuits and how many different devices there are in each room