Adding a Socket or Moving a Light: What Small Electrical Jobs Involve

Extending a circuit that is already there

When the new point is for small loads and a suitable circuit passes nearby, the circuit is extended: a cable runs from an existing point on it to the new position. The work stays in one room, the board is usually left as it is, and the route is short.

The nearest socket is not always the right starting point, which is why an electrician tests before he promises. Socket circuits come in two patterns, a ring that returns to its breaker and a radial that ends at the last point. How a socket may be added differs between them, and from the outside they look identical. The nearest socket may also be on a different circuit from the one you expect. Under the same regulations, circuits that supply a kitchen must not supply any other area, ceiling lighting apart (clause 7.6.5), so a socket on the kitchen side of a wall is no source for the dining room behind it.

Cables run between purpose-made termination points such as sockets, switches, junction boxes and the board. Joints between those points are prohibited, and junction boxes must stay accessible (clause 7.5.16). A cable is never spliced halfway along a wall and plastered over. If someone offers to 'tap into the wire in the wall', that is the shortcut this rule exists to stop.

A new circuit from the distribution board

A new circuit is its own cable, on its own breaker, from the board to the new point. It is needed when the appliance is large, when the nearby circuit already carries all it should, or when no suitable circuit runs near the new position.

Three things make it a bigger job. The board needs a spare position for another breaker, and not every board has one. The cable route is the full distance from the board, which is often near the entrance, to a kitchen or laundry area at the other end of the home. And the board itself is worked on, so more of the home is without power during the visit. A job at a board with no spare position is planned on site, not quoted from a photo.

Surface trunking

Trunking is a rigid plastic channel with a clip-on lid, fixed to the face of the wall and carrying the cable to a surface-mounted socket box. It follows straight lines: along the top of a skirting board, up a corner, under a row of wall cabinets. It is the quickest and cleanest way to add a point, and it comes off again with only screw holes to fill, which suits rented homes and points that sit behind furniture.

Its cost is appearance. Run along an edge and painted the colour of the wall, it is easy to overlook. Across the middle of a feature wall, it is not. Agree the exact route before work starts, and ask for it to be marked on the wall in pencil.

A chased wall: what it involves and why it is dusty

A chase is a channel cut into the plaster and the block behind it, deep enough to bury a conduit and a box for the socket. It is not a scratch in the plaster. The regulations ask for a plastic conduit inside a wall to be at least 50 millimetres below the surface, or for a metal conduit with 30 mA earth-leakage protection where it has to be shallower (clause 7.4.6). Cutting to that depth in blockwork takes a power tool. It is loud, and it makes a great deal of fine grey dust.

The sequence explains why a chased socket is rarely finished in a day. The channel is cut, and the conduit and box are fixed in it. The cable is drawn through, and the point is connected and tested. The channel is filled and plastered flush, the filler dries, and only then is the wall sanded and painted. The electrical part takes hours. The wall is back to normal some days later.

Concrete, tiles and stone

Not every wall should be cut. Columns, beams, the walls round a tower's lift and stair core, and the floor slabs are reinforced concrete. They hold the building up and already contain steel bars and other conduits. A channel in structural concrete is not an electrician's decision alone, and in a managed building it is the management's first. The practical answer is to go round: across a gypsum ceiling, along a block wall, or on the surface.

Tiled walls can be chased, but the tiles along the route are lost, and a match for tiles fitted years ago is rarely to be found. Unless you are retiling anyway, a point on a tiled or stone-clad wall is usually reached from above, from below or from inside a cabinet. How to tell which kind of wall you have is explained in TV wall mounting and drilling: what to check first.

Making good: plaster and paint

Making good is the trade's name for putting the surface back. It is the part most often left out of a quote and argued about afterwards. Ask three things. Does the price end at a filled, flush channel or at a painted wall? Who supplies the paint? And is the repair a strip or the whole wall?

The last question matters because new paint beside old paint shows, most of all on a wall that catches daylight from the side. On a recently painted wall, with the tin still in the cupboard, a touch-up can disappear. On an older wall, expect to repaint from corner to corner. Our wall painting service fills, patches and sands before painting, and colour-matches a touch-up where the original colour is known, or from a sample on site where it is not.

Gypsum false ceilings

A false ceiling is gypsum board hung below the concrete slab, with a void between the two. The void is the route. New cable crosses it in conduit, because lighting circuits in a false ceiling or void must be in conduit or trunking. Only a short flexible lead, under three metres, is allowed between the connection point and the fitting, and only where it can still be reached for maintenance (clause 7.3.8).

Access is the practical question. An electrician reaches the void through openings that already exist: downlight cut-outs, an access panel, a removable AC grille. Where there is none near the route, an opening is cut and patched afterwards. The hole where the old light was needs the same treatment. That is gypsum and false ceiling work, which finishes a patch level with the ceiling round it and ready for paint. A ceiling shows a patch even more readily than a wall, so allow for repainting the whole ceiling of that room.

Solid concrete ceilings

Many apartments have no false ceiling in the living room or the bedrooms. The ceiling is the plastered underside of the slab, and the light point is where a conduit cast into the concrete comes out. That point cannot be slid along, and the slab is not chased. There are three ways round it: surface trunking across the ceiling, a pendant whose flex is long enough to hang from a hook at the new position while its connection stays at the original point, or a new section of false ceiling built to carry the wiring. New false-ceiling sections and cove-lighting features are part of our gypsum service and are scoped on site. Ask which of the three suits the room before you buy the fitting.

Heavy fittings, fans and chandeliers

Weight is a separate question from wiring. Gypsum board carries a downlight and little more. A ceiling fan, a chandelier or a heavy pendant has to be fixed to the slab or to a support above the board, and the regulations ask for light fittings to be installed with due consideration to the weight taken by their fixings and supports (clause 7.3.9).

We install ceiling lights, pendants, chandeliers and ceiling fans, wired to the existing circuit where it is compatible. Have the fitting on site before the visit, in its box, so that its weight, its fixing and its suitability for the circuit can be confirmed before anything is taken down.

Bathrooms

The usual request is a socket by the basin for a hair dryer. The answer is fixed: an ordinary socket is not permitted in a bathroom. A shaver socket is, because it is fed through a small isolating transformer and runs low-power items only. For a hair dryer, the workable answer is a socket outside the bathroom door or at a dressing table. Washrooms and toilets are treated as similar locations, so the same applies to a guest toilet. If the bathroom you have moved into already has an ordinary socket in it, mention it when you book a wiring check.

Kitchens

A kitchen combines the two hard cases: tiled walls and heavy loads. A new worktop socket has to keep its distance from the sink and be fed from a kitchen circuit with room for it. The route is the awkward part, because the wall above the worktop is normally tiled. Electricians look for a way round the tiles: down behind the wall cabinets, along the inside of the cabinets, or up from below the worktop. If you are replacing the kitchen or the splashback anyway, add every socket you will want then, while the wall is open.

Balconies, gardens and roofs

An outdoor point lives in heat, summer humidity and windblown sand. The fitting has to be a weather-protected type, protected by an earth-leakage device that trips at a small leakage current. An ordinary indoor socket screwed to a balcony wall fails on both counts, and fittings that let moisture in are a common cause of the trips that arrive with humid weather. Outdoor points are often given their own circuit, so that a wet fitting in the garden takes out the garden and not the fridge.

On a tower balcony there is another party to ask: the outside face of the building belongs to the building, and a fitting or conduit on it usually needs the management's agreement. Points near a swimming pool or a fountain have stricter rules and are specialist work from the start.

The licensed contractor and the distribution company

An added point is an extension or alteration to the installation, and the regulations do not treat that as a private matter. No extension or alteration may be made without prior notification to the distribution company or without approval, testing and certification (clause 3.3.1). A proposed increase of more than 10% in the connected load of the premises, or of any one distribution board, has to be approved by the distribution company (clause 3.3.4), which is one reason a second oven or an extra AC unit is confirmed on site first. All of that is the licensed contractor's side of the job, not yours. Your part is to ask, when the quote arrives, what notification or testing applies and what record you will be given at the end. Keep that record with the property's papers.

When you book electrical work with us, licensed electrical work is confirmed before the visit. Anything that needs a licensed specialist, or a permit from the building or the authority, is identified and confirmed with you before booking.

The landlord

In a rented home the wiring belongs to the landlord, and a new socket, a moved light or a line of trunking is an alteration to it. Ask before you book, by email, and describe what is proposed: the position, surface or concealed, and who will make good. Keep the reply. Tell us the home is rented when you book, since electrical work may need the landlord's confirmation first.

The building's management

Towers and managed communities set their own rules for work inside a unit: the hours for noisy work, whether a contractor must be registered or a work permit raised, which lift a ladder may travel in. Cutting a chase is noisy and dusty enough to fall under them. They differ from one building to the next, so ask your own management office and get the answer in writing. In apartments we also ask whether a job needs the building's permission or a shut-off by its maintenance team, because work there often touches shared systems. How access for visiting technicians usually works is described in visitor registration, service lifts and parking in Abu Dhabi towers. In a villa you own, the list is shorter: the conversation is between you and the electrician.

Keeping the dust under control

Cutting blockwork makes a fine dust that settles in the next room as well as this one. A careful electrician uses a cutter with dust extraction, sheets the floor and the furniture that cannot be moved, and keeps the door shut. Before he arrives, clear the wall and the floor in front of it, take down or bag nearby curtains and cover the sofa. Switch off the AC in that room while the cutting is done and for a while afterwards, so that the unit does not draw dust into its filter, and wash the filter when the work is over.

The order that avoids doing things twice

Where more than one trade is involved, the order is fixed by which job spoils which. If you plan to repaint this year, have the electrical changes made first. Preparing for the paint itself is covered in how long repainting takes and how to prepare the rooms. Moving in is the natural moment, with the rooms empty: the new home maintenance checklist puts sockets and switches on the list before the furniture arrives. After chasing in several rooms an ordinary weekly clean will not shift what is left, for the reasons given in what the first clean after building work involves.

1. 1Electrical first: every channel, conduit and new point, connected and tested.
2. 2Gypsum and plaster next: channels filled, ceiling openings patched, everything sanded flush.
3. 3Paint once the filler is dry.
4. 4Cleaning last, when no more dust is being made.

Settle the positions before anyone cuts

Moving a socket a second time is the whole job again, so settle the furniture plan before the electrical one. Mark where the bed, the desk, the sofa and the television will stand, then place the points. Sockets for normal use sit at a standard height of 300 or 450 millimetres above the floor, or 100 millimetres above a worktop, and the normal height for a switch is 1.3 metres (clauses 7.1.7 and 7.2.5). Ask for a double socket where you were going to ask for a single.

If the point is for a wall-mounted television, have it fitted before the screen goes up. Mounting the television is handyman work. The socket behind it is electrical work, and it comes first.

On the day

Electrical work needs access to the distribution board, the power to that circuit switched off during the job and a clear area round the fitting. If the circuit feeds the fridge, the router or a home office, expect them to be off for part of the visit, and ask beforehand how long if anyone at home depends on equipment that must stay on.

The circuit is isolated at the breaker before any fixture, socket or switch is opened. The work is done to the agreed scope with proper connectors and fittings, and the circuit is tested before the breaker goes back on. The electrician then tests every circuit and fitting worked on with you before leaving.

What to check before the electrician leaves

Five minutes at the end saves a return visit.

• If a wall was chased, photograph the conduit in the open channel before it is filled. It is the only record of where the cable runs, and the next person to drill that wall will want it.
• Plug something in at every new point, and work each new switch several times.
• Look at the faceplates and any trunking: level, flush to the wall, lids clipped on.
• Ask which breaker the new point is on, and for it to be written on the board's list of circuits.
• Ask when the filled channel can be painted, and who is doing it.

Can a new socket simply be taken from the nearest one?

Sometimes. It depends on which circuit that socket is on, what the circuit already carries and what the new point is for. An electrician finds that out by testing, not by looking. A large appliance needs a circuit of its own, wherever the nearest socket is.

Can the handyman add a socket while he is here for other jobs?

No. A handyman's work stops at the faceplate, and a socket added as a favour by someone who is not an electrician is untested wiring inside your wall. Book the point as electrical work and the fixing jobs as handyman work, and send both lists together. Where the line falls is set out in what a handyman does and what needs a licensed trade.

What if something unexpected is found once the wall or ceiling is open?

You should hear about it at once. Our rule for quoted repairs is that if a technician opens something up and finds that the job differs from the photographs, work stops and you get a revised figure before anything else is done. A fault traced to a wider wiring problem beyond the original job is explained to you clearly, not left unresolved.

What does it cost to add a socket or move a light?

The starting price is AED 99 for a visit: one electrician for the first hour on site. Beyond that there is no single figure for a new point, because the same request can be a short visit in trunking or a new circuit with plaster and paint to follow. The quote is built from the type of job, the number of fittings, whether a new circuit or additional wiring is needed, access to the wiring and the board, and the parts, which are agreed with you before the visit. A quote from photos is free, and so is a site visit where the job has to be seen. Every price includes VAT, and no call-out fee is added. Payment is online by card from My bookings on this website once the price is confirmed, and a quoted job of AED 1,000 or more takes a 30% advance by that link.

How soon can it be done?

Straightforward socket, switch and fitting jobs can often be scheduled quickly. Work that involves a new circuit may need a site visit first, and a job that needs the landlord's or the building's agreement waits for that.