Electrical work in Berlin

Electrics are where a renovation quietly goes wrong. It’s buried in the walls, it’s the one trade you genuinely can’t improvise, and in Berlin it sits in flats whose wiring has been extended, patched and rerouted by several decades of previous owners.

I’m a renovator who’s also a qualified electrician, and I do this part myself. That matters most for sequencing: on a bathroom or a kitchen, the electrics aren’t a separate contractor you have to chase, they’re just part of the same job.

What’s included

New circuits and rewiring, consumer unit replacement and upgrades, extra sockets and switches, lighting design and installation including recessed and track, supplies for ovens, hobs and extractors, bathroom electrics including extractor fans, network and TV cabling run at the same time as the power, and fault finding on circuits that trip for no obvious reason.

Anything on the supply side of the meter — the main connection, the meter itself, anything involving the network operator — is a separate matter, and I’ll tell you plainly where that line sits.

How the job actually runs

Electrics happen in two passes, and knowing that saves a lot of confusion.

First fix is everything that has to happen while the walls, floors or ceilings are open: running cable, setting back boxes, positioning the consumer unit. It’s dusty and it looks like nothing’s been achieved, because all of it disappears into the structure.

Second fix is the visible half: sockets, switches, light fittings, terminating the board. It’s quick, and it’s what people picture when they think of electrical work.

The consequence is that every decision about position has to be made before first fix. Where the bedside sockets go, which side the light switch is on, whether you want a socket in the cupboard for the router. Move one afterwards in a solid-walled Berlin flat and you’re chasing out plaster all over again.

Berlin electrics

Older Berlin flats throw up a fairly consistent set of problems.

Circuits with no protective earth are common in anything not rewired since the 1970s, and that’s why you can’t just swap a modern socket onto old wiring and call it done. Aluminium conductors turn up in some stock and want care at the terminations — they behave differently from copper under load and over time.

Consumer units are usually undersized for how people live now. A flat wired when a kitchen meant a fridge and a kettle is being asked to run an induction hob, an oven, a dishwasher, a washing machine and a home office. Adding a circuit is usually more sensible than piling more onto an existing one.

Then there’s the building itself. Solid brick and lime plaster means chasing, not dropping a cable down a stud void — slower, dustier, and more making good afterwards. High ceilings turn lighting work into a tower job instead of a stepladder job. And in Plattenbau, the panel construction limits where you can cut at all, which really does constrain where a socket can go.

How long it takes

Small work — sockets, switches, fittings, fault finding — is half a day to a day. A kitchen or bathroom first and second fix is two to four days, spread across the wider job rather than done in one block, because it has to fit around the other stages. A full flat rewire is weeks, and it only really makes sense when the flat is empty or being renovated anyway, because every wall gets chased.

What moves the price

• Access to run cable. Open walls and floors are cheap. Finished rooms aren’t — the cost is in the chasing and the making good, not the cable.
• How many circuits. Adding one properly protected circuit is a defined job. Upgrading a whole board is a different scale.
• The state of what’s there. Wiring that’s been extended over and over sometimes can’t safely be built on, and you’re better off hearing that early.
• Wall construction. Chasing solid brick is slow. Plattenbau panel has rules about where you can cut at all.
• Ceiling height. Three and a half metres changes how lighting work gets done.
• Making good. The plastering and decorating after the chasing is part of the real cost, and I’d rather show it than bury it.

If your lights flicker, the board trips when the kettle and the oven are both on, or you’ve just never been sure what’s behind the walls, send me a photo of the consumer unit to start with.