“Wimborne is the most varied patch we cover. In one week last spring I did a 1972 split-load swap on a Colehill semi (£550, in and out before lunch), a 14-way RCBO upgrade with EV-charger circuit on a 2008 Merley detached, and a heritage-finish job on an East Borough listed townhouse where the customer rightly didn’t want plastic trunking visible behind the panelling. The thing that ties it together: Wimborne homeowners ask better questions. They’ve usually had an EICR back, or they’re planning an EV charger or solar PV, and they want to know what’s really involved before they commit. So I always survey before quoting — never quote off a phone call. The right board for a Pamphill farm with three-phase isn’t the right board for a 1970s Colehill semi.”
— Tim Collier, Founder & NICEIC Engineer
Wimborne Consumer Unit Upgrade Pricing
Fixed price after a free 15-minute on-site survey. Every figure includes the new board, all RCBOs, labour, full test schedule, NICEIC certificate, and Building Control notification.
| Board type | Price (fully fitted) |
|---|---|
| 6-way RCBO board (small flat / annex) | From £450 |
| 10-way RCBO board (Colehill semi, 1970s detached) | From £550 |
| 14-way RCBO board (Merley 4-bed, period townhouse with extension) | From £750 |
| Heritage-finish containment (Minster-area listed properties) | + £120–£250 |
| Add SPD (surge protection — rural BH21 4 / 5 overhead supplies) | + £95 |
| Add EV-future spare ways (32 A 6 mm² future circuit terminated) | + £65 |
| Three-phase board (Pamphill / Witchampton farms) | From £1,200 |
Most BH21 properties land in the 10-way bracket. Merley homes built post-2000 are the exception — they’re usually candidates for a 14-way upgrade with EV-future provisioning, because that’s the next thing the household will need.
Which Board Do You Need?
The decision aid below covers the property types we see most often around BH21. The price column is the all-in fitted cost, not just the board.
| Property type | Recommended board | All-in price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Period townhouse near the Minster (1 RCBO per circuit, no surface trunking) | 10-way RCBO | From £600 | Heritage-finish containment if any new cabling is needed |
| 1960s–80s semi or detached in Colehill | 10-way RCBO | From £550 | Most common Wimborne job — straight swap of an old Wylex or MK board |
| Modern Merley family home (already on RCBO but undersized) | 14-way RCBO + spare ways for EV future | From £750 | Future-proofs for EV charger and PV inverter circuits |
| Period rural farmhouse / village cottage with extension | 14-way RCBO + SPD | From £900 | Surge protection on overhead-fed BH21 4/5 supplies |
| Pamphill / Witchampton listed cottage with rewire | 10-way RCBO + new tails | From £900 | Often paired with a partial rewire — combined quote saves day rate |
| Three-phase farm supply (BH21 4 & 5 farms) | Three-phase distribution board | From £1,200 | Common for grain dryers, milking parlours, machine stores, EV charger banks |
Send a photo of your existing fuse box on WhatsApp — we’ll come back with a recommendation in under an hour.
How a Lilliput Wimborne Consumer Unit Upgrade Works
Three steps from first call to a fully certified board. No call centre, no subcontractors — you deal with Tim or Oscar throughout.
1. Free survey & fixed quote
We come to your Wimborne property, photograph the existing board, check the supply arrangement (TN-S, TN-C-S or three-phase for rural farms), inspect meter tails and main earth, document each circuit, and for Minster-area listed properties we walk through cable routing options before we leave. Fixed-price written quote within 24 hours.
2. Booked install day
Most BH21 jobs are booked 1–2 weeks out. We arrive 8:30 AM, isolate at the cutout (we coordinate with SSEN if a meter seal pull is needed), fit the new RCBO board, re-terminate every circuit, label clearly, and run the full test schedule. Power back same afternoon. Three-phase farm jobs run on the same day but we plan the milking-parlour shutdown window with you in advance.
3. Certification & aftercare
NICEIC Electrical Installation Certificate on the day, digital copies within 5 working days, Building Regulations compliance certificate via Dorset Council Building Control auto-notification — no paperwork on your end. Six-year workmanship guarantee on every board we fit.
Recent Consumer Unit Upgrade in Wimborne
A representative BH21 job: a 2002 detached in Merley where the owners had just taken delivery of a new EV and wanted a charger fitted. The existing board was an 8-way Hager dual-RCD unit — functional but with no spare ways and a 30 mA Type-AC RCD, which doesn’t meet the regulations for EV-charger circuits (you need Type-A or Type-F minimum). We surveyed Wednesday morning, quoted £695 the same evening for a 14-way RCBO upgrade with the EV charger circuit terminated and ready, and fitted the new board the following Monday. The Ohme charger went in two days later, hot-wired straight to the spare way. Total downtime for the household: half a day.
What Actually Changes When You Upgrade
For most Wimborne customers the £450–£1,200 spend turns into four practical changes worth understanding before we start.
From split-load to RCBO-per-circuit protection
- Old split-load boards (typical 1990s–2010s Wimborne housing stock) have one RCD covering half the house. Trip one and you lose the lights, the freezer, and the upstairs sockets all together.
- Modern RCBO-per-circuit boards isolate faults to the single offending circuit. Kitchen socket trips don’t take the boiler off.
- Each RCBO disconnects in under 40 ms when it detects 30 mA earth leakage — the difference between a tingle and a serious shock.
From plastic to metal enclosure (BS 7671:2018)
- The 18th Edition (2018, amended 2022) requires consumer units in dwellings to be in a non-combustible enclosure or a 30-minute fire-resistant cupboard.
- Old plastic boards melted and propagated fire — the regulation change followed serious incidents in the early 2010s.
EV-future and PV-future provisioning
- Spare ways: most modern Wimborne households add an EV charger within 2–3 years of moving in. Specifying the right number of spare ways now saves another board change later.
- Type-A or Type-F RCD/RCBO: required for EV charger circuits. Old Type-AC RCDs don’t handle the DC residual current that EV chargers can produce.
- Battery storage: same logic — if you’re likely to add solar PV with battery in the next 5 years, a 14-way board with spare ways is cheaper now than two upgrades in sequence.
EICR codes that drive Wimborne upgrades
- C1 — Danger present: immediate risk; the board is made safe before we leave.
- C2 — Potentially dangerous: 28-day fix window for landlords. “No RCD on socket circuits” is the most common C2 finding on older Wimborne stock.
- C3 — Improvement recommended: not legally required but strongly advised. Plastic enclosure or no SPD typically scores C3.
If your EICR has any C1s or C2s on the consumer unit, an upgrade is the cleanest single fix.
What Wimborne & BH21 Customers Say
"I have used Lilliput electrical for about 11 years. Tim wired my kitchen extension, and put in a consumer unit when I moved into my home. More recently he has carried out a number of smaller jobs including moving a socket and advising about and fitting lighting. He is always courteous and very helpful. This firm is very trustworthy and the work is tidily completed. I have no hesitation in recommending them as genuinely no job is too big or too small."
Google Review
"Absolutely brilliant electrician. Always on time, tidy, good price, and top-quality work. Highly recommend."
Google Review
"Fantastic job from Tim & the team. Would highly recommend."
Google Review
BH21 Coverage — Postcodes & Drive Times
Same fixed pricing across every BH21 postcode. Drive times measured from our Poole base at Unit 45 Balena Close (BH17 7DY) via the A349 / A341.
| Postcode | Areas covered | Drive time |
|---|---|---|
| BH21 1 | Wimborne Minster town centre, the Square, East Borough | 20 min |
| BH21 2 | Colehill, Cowgrove, Stanley Green | 22 min |
| BH21 3 | Merley, Canford Magna, Lake | 15 min |
| BH21 4 | Pamphill, Sturminster Marshall, rural BH21 | 25 min |
| BH21 5 | Witchampton, Hinton Martell, north Wimborne villages | 32 min |
Outside BH21? See all Dorset coverage or jump to our Wimborne area page for full electrical service details.
Wimborne Consumer Unit FAQs
A standard domestic consumer-unit upgrade in Wimborne starts from £450 fully fitted — that includes the new RCBO board, all labour, the full test schedule, the NICEIC certificate, and Building Control notification. The Wimborne factor that occasionally moves the price is heritage work: if you're in a Minster-area listed property and any new cabling needs heritage-finish containment (brushed brass or painted steel rather than plastic trunking), or if a Pamphill / Witchampton rural property needs three-phase, the quote will reflect that. Either way, it's a fixed price after a free 15-minute survey — no estimates that change on the day.
Yes. Colehill (BH21 2), Merley (BH21 3) and Canford Magna are all under 25 minutes from our Poole base via the A349 / A341. Same fixed pricing as central Wimborne, no per-mile surcharge, same 1–2 week typical lead time. Merley specifically tends to be 1990s-2000s housing stock — already on RCBOs but often undersized, so the typical job there is a 14-way RCBO upgrade with spare ways for an EV charger circuit you'll want next year.
Often, yes. A 7.4 kW EV charger needs its own 32 A circuit and a Type-A or Type-F RCD. If your current Wimborne board is a 6 or 8-way split-load with no spare ways and only a 30 mA AC-type RCD, adding a charger circuit means either swapping that RCD or adding a separate enclosure — both are messier than upgrading the whole board. We see this a lot in Merley and Colehill: home-EV growth in BH21 has been visible since 2023. Doing the consumer-unit upgrade first lets us put the charger circuit in cleanly, gives you spare ways for a future battery or PV inverter, and turns two visits into one. Bundle pricing usually saves £150–£250 vs sequential jobs.
The board itself is internal so listed-building consent isn't normally required for a like-for-like replacement. What does change for Wimborne Minster / East Borough properties is cable routing: we don't surface-mount plastic trunking on visible interior walls of period properties, we re-use existing routes wherever possible, and where new cabling is genuinely needed inside a listed property we use heritage-finish containment (brushed brass or painted steel). We've worked on properties around the Square, on East Borough, and on West Street that all came through with no conservation concerns.
Yes. Three-phase boards are common on the BH21 farms (Pamphill, Witchampton, the dairy farms toward Hinton Martell) for grain dryers, milking parlours, and machine sheds — and increasingly for EV-charger banks once farms add staff vehicles. We fit three-phase distribution boards from £1,200 fully fitted. The survey takes a little longer than a single-phase job because we test each phase's earth-loop impedance and balance the loads; but the install day is still a single day for most farm boards.
A straight single-phase swap is one day, typically 4–6 hours from supply isolation to re-energising. We arrive 8:30 AM, isolate at the cutout (we coordinate with SSEN — Wimborne is on the SSEN network — if a meter seal needs pulling), fit the new RCBO board, re-terminate every circuit, label clearly, and run the full Electrical Installation Certificate test schedule. Power back same evening, usually mid-afternoon. Three-phase farm jobs are also typically one day but we'll confirm on survey.
The Colehill estates and the older parts of Lake / Merley are dominated by 1960s–80s detached and semi-detached housing — much of it still on the original Wylex or MK split-load board. We see four common findings on these surveys: (1) the main earth conductor is undersized to current standards (10 mm² minimum needed), (2) the meter tails are 16 mm² where today we'd specify 25 mm², (3) the existing RCD is a single 30 mA AC-type covering everything, and (4) there's no SPD or AFDD coverage. The board upgrade is the cleanest fix for all four — and it stops the nuisance trips that everyone in Wimborne with a 30-year-old MK board complains about.
Yes. Every consumer-unit upgrade we do comes with a full Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC) issued under our NICEIC enrolment, plus the Building Regulations compliance certificate from Building Control via the competent-person scheme. Both are accepted by Dorset Council Building Control (formerly East Dorset DC), by mortgage lenders, and by buyer's surveyors when you sell. We email digital copies within 5 working days; the original hard copy stays in your house file.