Electrician in Reading

A railway town that grew fast

Much of Reading's housing dates from the 19th century, when the Great Western Railway arrived and the town's brewing, biscuit and seed businesses expanded quickly. Street after street of brick terraces went up to house the workers, and many of those houses are still standing in areas such as Redlands and Southcote.

Houses of that age have usually been rewired at least once, but the work was often done in stages. It is common to find an older consumer unit without RCD protection on every circuit, kitchen circuits added on top of original lighting runs, or cellars and lofts with cabling that nobody has looked at for years.

Flats and rented homes across the borough

Census 2021 figures for the Reading Borough Council area show 33.4% of homes are flats and 31.9% are privately rented, both high compared with the rest of the region. Terraced houses make up a further 28.2%. In practice that means a large number of landlords who need an Electrical Installation Condition Report at least every five years, and a lot of converted houses where several flats share a building supply.

For converted terraces, the condition report often picks up the same handful of issues: missing RCD protection, undersized earthing or bonding to gas and water pipes, and accessories damaged by years of tenant use. We explain each code in plain English and quote separately for any remedial work.

See: landlord EICRs.

Conservation areas and older streets

Reading has a long list of conservation areas, including Market Place and London Street, Redlands, Christchurch, Alexandra Road, Eldon Square and St Peter's in Caversham. Inside these areas the outside of a building is protected more closely, so electrical work is normally kept internal: cables are routed under floors and through voids rather than clipped to the face of the building, and external lights or sockets are chosen with care.

Suburbs north of the river such as Caversham and Emmer Green, and those to the east and west such as Earley, Woodley, Tilehurst and Whitley, have a wider mix of inter-war, post-war and later homes across RG1, RG2, RG4, RG30 and RG31.

Offices and units on the M4 corridor

Reading sits on the M4 between London and the west, and its business parks and town-centre office blocks see regular changes of tenant. A new occupier usually wants lighting re-zoned, small power moved to suit a new desk layout and data cabling run to a fresh patch panel, with the IT equipment then installed by the customer's own IT team.

Industrial and trade units on the edges of town need distribution boards, three-phase supplies for machinery and replacement lighting. We price these from a site visit and work to a programme agreed with the landlord or building manager.

What we offer in Reading

Because Reading is further from our office than the Vale towns, we mostly take on landlord testing, rewires, consumer unit upgrades and commercial jobs here, rather than one-off small repairs. For businesses, see our commercial pages; for homes, see our domestic services.