Doulting is a stone village on the A361 a couple of miles east of Shepton Mallet, made up largely of cottages and farmhouses. The electrical work here tends to follow the buildings: old boards that need replacing, supplies out to barns and stores, earthing that has never been brought up to date, and alarms for houses with wood burners. We price each job as a fixed figure and certify everything we do.
The freestone quarried around Doulting was used to build Wells Cathedral, and the same stone makes up the village's cottages, farmhouses and its tithe barn. That gives Doulting homes a lot in common with each other: deep walls, stone floors in some ground-floor rooms, timber floors above, and outbuildings that have been put to new uses over the years.
From an electrician's point of view, stone is honest but unforgiving. Cables cannot simply be pushed through a cavity, so every route is either chased into the wall, run on the surface, or taken through the floor and roof spaces. Older work often shows the shortcuts people took: cables clipped along skirting, extensions taken from the nearest socket, and outbuildings fed from whatever circuit was closest to the back door. Part of our job is to sort the sound work from the shortcuts and leave the house with a clear, labelled, tested installation.
Many Doulting properties have a barn, a store or a workshop that has power. In a lot of older set-ups that supply was added long after the house was wired, sometimes with ordinary twin-and-earth cable buried in the ground or strung between buildings. Over time that cable gets damaged, water gets into joints, and faults appear that are hard to trace.
When we put in or replace a supply to an outbuilding we use armoured (SWA) cable, buried at a sensible depth or fixed where it cannot be damaged, with RCD protection at the house end and a proper way to isolate the building at its own end. Inside, metal-clad sockets and lighting suited to the space. If you also want to charge a car at the barn or at the end of a long drive, the same principle applies; see our EV charger page for the Shepton Mallet area. More on outdoor work on our garage electrics and garden electrics pages.
Old outbuilding supplies can also hide wiring faults that have been there for years. At a house in Evercreech this year we found and corrected an old cross-polarity fault on a garage supply while installing a new armoured feed.
A good number of older houses still have a board where some circuits have no RCD protection at all, or where one RCD covers half the house so a single fault takes out everything on that side. Our replacement is always the same design: a main switch plus a Type A RCBO on every circuit, so one fault only switches off one circuit. The enclosure is metal, a Type 2 surge protection device is fitted, bedroom socket circuits get arc fault detection, and the meter tails are replaced with 25mm² flexible cable.
Before the new board goes in we check the main earthing and the bonding to incoming services, because a new board on a poor earth is only half a job. The power is off for most of the day while we change over. At the end every circuit is tested, the ways are labelled, and you receive an Electrical Installation Certificate with the work notified under Part P through NAPIT. Read more on our fuse board replacement page.
For a cottage that has not been looked at for years, an inspection is the sensible first step: our EICR page explains what it involves. If the report shows the wiring is near the end of its life, our rewire page covers how we sequence the work in a lived-in house, and heritage rewires covers older and listed buildings. Alarm work is on our smoke, heat and CO alarm page, landlords will find the legal requirements on our landlord compliance page, and day-to-day repairs, lighting and sockets are on the domestic electrician page.
The A361 runs east from Shepton Mallet through Doulting. The village is about two miles east of Shepton Mallet and about three miles south of Oakhill, so it belongs with our Shepton Mallet area page and is close to the Mendip villages on our Oakhill page. We cover it from our Mid Somerset base.
Cranmore is about three miles east of Shepton Mallet and about three miles north-east of Evercreech, home to the East Somerset Railway heritage line, with Cranmore Tower up on the ridge. Homes there with gardens, sheds and workshops need the same care over outdoor supplies as Doulting's, and the jobs we would expect are inspections, board replacements and properly protected feeds out to those buildings.
Evercreech sits about three and a half miles south-east of Shepton Mallet. One of our more complete jobs this year was there: a new metal RCBO board with surge protection, earthing and bonding brought up to date, interlinked alarms, loft lighting and power, and a new armoured garage supply. Stoney Stratton, Chesterblade and Evercreech Junction are all part of the same parish. Prestleigh, nearby, is in Doulting parish.
Stoke St Michael is a high Mendip village of stone cottages and farms in quarrying country, about two miles east of Oakhill and around three and a half miles north-east of Shepton Mallet. Houses up there face more weather than those in the valleys, so external fittings, outdoor sockets and supplies to farm buildings need to be chosen and fixed with that in mind.
Oakhill lies about three miles north of Doulting and about three miles north-east of Shepton Mallet. It is a village of stone cottages, farmhouses and converted barns. At a former vicarage there we swapped an older plastic consumer unit for a metal RCBO board, and on another visit replaced a stairwell light on two-way switching, using large access ladders set over the stairwell.
Real work from this year in the villages and town around Doulting, anonymised.
We don't publish a price list, because no two houses are the same. The price depends on the number of circuits, the access and anything found on the day, and for a charger, the model you choose and the length of the cable run. You get a fixed written figure before work starts.
Leave your details and a line about the job. We will ring you back to talk it through and arrange a survey or a written price.
Not automatically, but it should be tested. If it is ordinary indoor cable buried in the ground or slung between buildings, or if it has no RCD protection, it is likely to need replacing with armoured cable and a proper isolator at the barn. An insulation resistance test shows how the existing cable is holding up. We will tell you what we find and give you a fixed price for any new supply.
Most of the day. We isolate the supply, remove the old board, fit and connect the new one, replace the meter tails and then test every circuit before handing back. Where earthing or bonding needs upgrading we do that on the same visit. If something on the old installation needs attention we tell you before we go further, so there are no surprises on the bill.
Not always. In Shepton Mallet this year a tripping RCD turned out to be a faulty kitchen appliance. We find the cause by isolating circuits one at a time and testing, then unplugging appliances on the affected circuit. It could be an appliance, damp in an outdoor socket, or a damaged cable. Once we know, we fix that specific thing rather than guessing.
An arc fault detection device watches for the electrical signature of arcing, the kind of small, sustained spark you get from a damaged cable or a loose connection, and switches the circuit off. Arcing like that can start a fire without ever tripping an ordinary breaker or RCD. Bedrooms are where people are asleep and least likely to notice early signs, so every board we fit has AFDD on the bedroom socket circuits.
Often, yes. Long runs use armoured cable, taken through a duct or along a wall, and we check whether the supply needs load management so the charger does not overload the house. We check the earthing at survey, notify the DNO for you, and set up the app before we leave. The price depends on the charger you choose, the cable run and the board, and the written quote sets out exactly what is included, charger and all.
Priced by the job, not by the hour. A written, fixed price after a survey, NAPIT certification on every notifiable job.
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