An outdoor socket is a valuable addition to your home at any time of year. Whether you want to play music outside during those summer barbecues or need outdoor Christmas lights powering up for the festive period, an outdoor socket is vital to ensuring that your outdoor entertainment and party plans can happen.
Can I have an outdoor socket anywhere?
The good news is that you can have an outdoor socket almost anywhere. As your local ELECTRICIAN IN AYLESBURY, we have been installing outdoor electrical wiring, outdoor sockets, and outdoor lighting for years.
Often the best place to put an outdoor socket is near to where you will be using it the most. This is normally on the back wall of the house where the patio tends to be for most homes.
If you would like a socket at the bottom of the garden then this is also entirely possible, in fact, with Paradigm Electrical Solutions we can install as many sockets as you want, wherever you want them.
Do I need a special socket for outdoor lights?
There are many outdoor light kits on the market that you can buy to illuminate bushes, trees, and other outdoor features and many of them will come with a special plug. The plug itself usually contains a transformer which is somewhat bulky and will not allow the lid of a normal outdoor socket to close properly.
If you plan to use bulky transformer plugs with your outdoor socket then we may recommend a different type of outdoor socket that can accommodate this type of plug top and STILL allow the lid to close safely over the top.
Its important to protect electrical wiring and accessories from the weather and elements and we only use the highest quality products for our outdoor wiring and socket installations.
Can I have an outdoor socket in a shed?
It is possible to install an outdoor socket in a shed whether there is existing wiring in place or not. Electrical wiring can be run to an outdoor building in your garden and sockets installed. Why not have lighting installed at the same time to make the space more usable, to find things buried at the back of the shed or even use the shed as a versatile storage or work space.
What happens when you install an outdoor socket?
We check the existing electrical system to ensure that it meets current standards and is safe to ‘add on’ to.
We have to get a power cable to the outdoor socket from the inside of the property. This will usually involve finding the nearest suitably rated power source. This is often another socket.
Not every socket is suitable to take a new power supply from. There could be too many existing wires in the back of the socket for example or the donor socket could already by an extension of the plug socket circuit making further additions unsafe. We carry out some tests to check that the new addition will be safe.
Once we have a suitable power supply we will carefully drill through the wall and take a new supply to the outside. Don’t worry, we will make sure that water and insects can’t crawl into your home through the new hole.
We then install and wire up the new socket and carry out some further tests to makes sure our work is safe and correctly earthed.
What does it cost to have an outdoor socket installed?
The costs will vary depending upon exactly what you want, the age of the electrical system, the location of the socket and its proximity to internal wiring.
Generally speaking, new build homes with a socket ‘back-to-back’ on the inside wall will be the most straight forward, quickest installation with little to no system upgrading required to safely install the new outdoor socket. This will be the most cost-effective option.
Where the wiring system in the property has not been updated in several decades, the socket is at the bottom of a long garden, wiring / consumer unit upgrades are necessary and a new circuit is required in order to install the new socket safely, this is likely to seem very expensive.
As every home and electrical system is slightly different, please contact us, your local ELECTRICIAN IN AYLESBURY to arrange for a quote.
- Log in to post comments
