Adding Plug Sockets in a Wimpey No Fines Property

If you are looking to have cables hidden and not in trunking the only solution is to cut away a chase in the wall, using an angle grinder or breaker, It would be best to place cables in conduit - there will be dust.

Unless you are doing a complete kitchen refurb, the walls could be boarded out.

Does the house have a brick exterior skin installed at a later date?

I have just done some work in a similar house and it took over 2 hours just to core a 40mm hole. Drilling is a nightmare as the drill bit deflects and ends up somewhere else.

 

The pebble dash is the original exterior of the building, there are a lot of these type of house near my way, when in council ownership, a new brick single leaf wall was built with a cavity with insulation. There are still some houses dotted around which were brought up by previous occupier so these didn't have the brick outer leaf.

If you are planning on doing the kitchen, it would be best to wait until then. In the mean time you could use surface mounted trunking to enclose the wiring a cables.

 

What does ''no fines'' mean with respect to the Wimpey house Tempest?

 

No fine aggregate ie big pebbles in your concrete.

 

U on the lash Chip? - flipping eck m8

 

That was the first sober advice I have given in years

 

Just an amateur but the answer is no it would not be. I think you have a few alternatives.
I really don't know what the practicalities and problems are of cutting chases in a "nofines" wall and I really don't think many will unless you have many such houses in your area, then a local electrician should know best what he is doing.
Jitender has worked on one though so he will know what he is talking about.
There is normal plastic surface trunking and plastic sockets or for a more industrial look you could use metal sockets and boxes with either cicular metal or plastic conduit

http://www.screwfix.com/p/mk-13a-2-gang-dp-switched-plug-socket-metal-clad/49437

Just an idea.

 

Thanks Tempest and Chips. I now understand exactly what the houses are, have a good day m8.

 

We never finish learning do we JP, i'd never heard of the "no fines" business before!

 

I had heard of them before. There are also "Cornish" houses and other of a non- standard concrete construction on which it can be hard to get a mortgage.

Of course it could be that the builder had not received a fine as he had the concrete mix correct.

 

I admit I was thinking of some sort of legal implication when I first read the post Paul!

 

hi Sen. For those who don't know on a large construction site they have to have the concrete mix tested now and again. They have to send a specific sized cube of concrete to a laboratory to have a crush test done on it to make sure it is up to standard I believe.

 

Concrete lintels in houses on a 1980s estate by me are crumbling. People are having the lintels replaced, and the old ones can literally be broken into rubble and bagged up!

 

This is a link to a project I carried out in a similar house, the house had an external brick leaf wall built at a later date.

You can see the pebbledash which formed the original exterior wall, the concrete was formed using pebbles bonded together. A Titan breaker was used to make the hole through the concrete, much quicker than core drilling.

 

The Romans had concrete but they didn't skimp on the cement!