How long does an EICR take? Honest timings from the trade
In short: An EICR takes roughly 2 to 4 hours for a flat, 3 to 5 hours for a 3 bed house and most of a day for larger or older properties. The time goes on dead testing each circuit and inspecting accessories, so anything that increases circuits, limits access or raises the sampling rate extends the visit. Power is off for parts of the inspection.
Customers ask how long an EICR takes because they are planning their day. Electricians should care about the same number for a different reason: time is the honest cost of an inspection, and quotes that undercut the market only work by cutting the hours. Our EICR pricing guide covers the money; this is where the hours go.
Typical durations
| Property | Typical time on site |
|---|---|
| 1 to 2 bed flat, modern board | 2 to 4 hours |
| 3 bed house | 3 to 5 hours |
| 4 to 5 bed or pre-1980s wiring | 5 to 8 hours |
| HMO or commercial unit | a day or more, scoped first |
Where the hours go
Visual inspection of the consumer unit and a sample of accessories. Dead tests on each circuit: continuity, insulation resistance, polarity. Live tests: earth fault loop impedance, prospective fault current, RCD operating times. Then the part customers never see, which is writing it up: every circuit on the schedule of test results, every observation coded C1 to C3 or FI with its location. On a ten-circuit house, the testing alone is two to three careful hours.
What makes it slower
Circuits without labels, boards in cupboards under stairs full of vacuum cleaners, furniture in front of the sockets that were going to be sampled, extensions wired by persons unknown, and any reading that does not make sense and has to be chased. An inspector who finds a borrowed neutral does not get to un-find it; the tracing time is in the job whether or not it was in the quote.
The quick-EICR problem
A whole-house EICR in an hour means one of two things. Either the sampling rate was minimal and the extent and limitations section quietly says so, or readings were invented. The first produces a report that protects nobody; the second is the kind of thing that ends scheme registrations. If a price seems to assume an hour on site, that is the corner being cut.
For electricians: the write-up is the slow part you can fix
The site hours are fixed by physics and the regs. The hour of evening paperwork is not: filling the schedule as you test, on the phone at the board, with the readings sanity-checked as they go in, means the report is finished when the tools are packed. That is the difference between a 4-hour job and a 4-hour job plus an evening, which across a week is most of a working day reclaimed.
Common questions
Will the power be off during an EICR?
Partly. Dead tests require circuits to be isolated, so expect the power off in stages for an hour or two across the visit. The inspector should sequence it so the fridge and freezer are off for as little time as possible.
Can an EICR be done in an hour?
Not properly on a whole property. A one-hour EICR on a house means either heavy sampling with broad limitations written into the report, or boxes ticked without testing. Either way the report's value collapses.
Do I need to be home for an EICR?
Someone needs to give access, and the inspector needs to reach the consumer unit, a representative spread of sockets and switches, and ideally the meter position. Empty properties are often quicker than occupied ones.
SparkCerts runs the whole job for a UK sparky: quote it, fill the certificate in on site with readings checked as you type, and the invoice goes out with the cert attached. Three jobs free, then £12 a month.
Try it on your next job