What a consumer unit replacement costs in a house

What makes a house board different from a flat's

A flat usually has one consumer unit with a modest number of circuits, fed from a shared building supply. A house is its own electrical installation from the property boundary in. That often means a separate meter cabinet at the plot edge or on the wall outside, a supply cable running into the house, and a main board inside that has grown over the years as rooms, outbuildings and appliances were added.

Older houses in Harju county, especially those built or rewired in the 1990s or early 2000s, often have a board that has been extended piecemeal: an extra row of breakers added for a sauna, another for a garage, a spur for an outdoor socket. Sorting that into one properly organised board is usually part of what you are paying for when you replace it.

This is also why a house job is quoted separately from a flat job. The number of circuits, the length of cable runs, and whether there is an outdoor cabinet to deal with as well as an indoor board all add hours that a flat replacement does not have.

What a consumer unit replacement in a house usually costs

For a straightforward single-phase house board with a normal number of circuits, replacement typically runs from around 350 to 600 €. Larger three-phase boards, houses with a separate outdoor meter cabinet, or ones with several outbuildings on separate circuits tend to land higher, often 600 to 1000 € or more depending on how much rewiring the existing circuits need.

Our consumer unit replacement work starts from 350 € per job, and that figure is the base case: a board of ordinary size, reasonable access, and circuits that are in fit enough condition to reconnect without extra remedial work. Anything beyond that is quoted once we have seen the board or photos of it.

These are ranges, not fixed prices, because two houses with the same number of rooms can have very different boards behind the cover. The only way to get a number you can rely on is a fixed quote after a look at the actual installation.

What is normally included in the price

A standard replacement includes removing the old board, fitting the new enclosure, installing new circuit breakers and residual current devices, reconnecting the existing circuits, labelling everything clearly, and testing that each circuit works correctly before we leave. The old board and any damaged components are taken away.

It also includes the paperwork that goes with electrical work of this kind — the job is documented and the work carries our 24-month guarantee, which covers the work itself rather than normal wear or anything the customer supplied.

What it does not automatically include is rewiring circuits that turn out to be undersized or in poor condition once the old board is opened up, or work on a separate outdoor cabinet unless that was part of the original scope. Those get added to the quote if they turn up.

What pushes the price up compared to a flat

The main cost drivers in a house are the number of circuits, whether the supply is single-phase or three-phase, and how much cable needs to be run or replaced to reach outbuildings. A three-phase board with capacity for a workshop or an electric car charger takes longer to wire correctly than a simple single-phase flat board with a handful of breakers.

Surge protection is worth budgeting for separately if the existing board does not have it, since houses with an overhead or long underground supply run are more exposed to voltage spikes than a flat in a block. Adding it during a board replacement is straightforward but is a line item on top of the base job.

Access and condition matter too. A board in a dry, easily reached utility room is quicker to work on than one buried behind stored goods in a cellar, or one where the existing cables are brittle and need careful handling rather than a straight swap.

• Number of circuit breakers and residual current devices
• Single-phase versus three-phase supply
• Surge protection, if not already fitted
• Cable runs to a garage, sauna, well pump or other outbuilding
• Whether there is a separate outdoor meter cabinet to work on
• Condition and access of the existing installation

How a fixed quote for the job gets put together

A fixed quote starts with a description of the house: how many circuits the current board has, whether the supply is single or three-phase, whether there are outbuildings on separate circuits, and photos of the existing board and, if there is one, the outdoor cabinet. From that we can usually give a fixed price valid for 30 days.

If the scope is unclear from photos alone, a call-out to look at the board in person costs 25 € within Tallinn, deducted from the bill if the work goes ahead. For jobs further into Harju county the same principle applies but the visit is arranged directly.

General electrical work outside the fixed-price job, such as adding a new circuit for a heat pump or fixing a fault found during the replacement, is billed at 49 € an hour, minimum one hour, in 30-minute steps after that. Any materials we supply carry a 10 % handling fee, or you can buy them yourself.

When replacing the whole board makes more sense than patching it

A single faulty breaker or a nuisance-tripping RCD can often be fixed on its own without touching the rest of the board, and it is honest to say so rather than sell a full replacement where one is not needed. If the rest of the board is modern, correctly labelled and has enough spare capacity, a repair is the cheaper and sensible option.

Replacement becomes the better economy when the board is old enough that spare parts are hard to source, when there is no room left to add circuits for things like an electric car charger or a heat pump, or when the enclosure itself is an old fuse-based type rather than modern circuit breakers. Patching that kind of board case by case usually costs more over a few years than doing it properly once.

It is also worth replacing rather than patching if the house has grown its wiring in stages and nobody currently knows which breaker feeds which room. A proper board with clear labelling saves time on every future job, including the ones you do yourself.