Outdoor electrics in Doncaster

Most outdoor jobs fall into one of a handful of shapes. If yours doesn't, phone and describe it — outdoor work is where the odd ones live.

Garden buildings have gone from somewhere to keep the mower to where people work four days a week, and the electrical requirements changed with them. An extension lead trailed across the lawn is not a supply — it's a trip hazard with a fault waiting on the end of it, and it won't run a heater, a monitor and a kettle without complaint.

The right job is a dedicated circuit from the house consumer unit, in steel-wire armoured cable, buried at a sensible depth in a trench with warning tape above it, terminated into a small consumer unit inside the building. From there you get proper sockets, proper lighting and proper protection — and if something faults out in the garden office, it trips out there rather than taking the house with it.

The cable is sized for the load you intend to put on it, not the load you have today. It costs very little more to run the right cable while the trench is open, and a great deal to dig the lawn up twice. Tell us if there's any chance of a heater, air conditioning or an EV charger later.

A hot tub is a person, sitting in water, in a garden. The wiring rules treat it as a special location for good reason: it needs its own circuit, RCD protection, and an isolator sited where you can switch it off without reaching over the tub.

The most common thing we're called to is a tub plugged into a domestic outdoor socket on a long lead, tripping the RCD every time it heats. Check what supply your tub needs before it's delivered rather than after — the manufacturer will state it, and it's much cheaper to get the circuit in before the tub is sitting on the patio.

Almost always for the same few reasons. Indoor-rated accessories used outside, so water gets in within a season. Cable that isn't armoured, buried too shallow, and eventually caught by a spade. Enclosures with the glands left loose or fitted upside down, funnelling water in rather than keeping it out. Joints made in a plastic box under a bush.

That's the fault that turns up every autumn: an RCD that trips whenever it rains, and a homeowner who's been resetting it for a fortnight. It's traceable, it's fixable, and it's much better prevented.

Where a new circuit is added, it's tested and certified on completion. Work carried out in line with applicable UK wiring regulations and good industry practice.

Outdoor jobs are mostly about the route: how far the cable has to go, what it has to cross (lawn is easy, a block-paved drive is not), and how much digging is involved. So we generally want to see it — a few photos of the house, the building and what's between them is usually enough to get you a sensible number.

Trenching is real work. We'll tell you honestly whether it's worth digging it yourself before we arrive, because on a long run across a lawn that can save you a meaningful amount of money, and it's a straightforward thing to hand over.