How do you change the location of a socket without calling in the builders?

Your furniture—whether a sofa, headboard, or your new wardrobe—looks perfect in that corner of the room, and it doesn’t have to mean the early retirement of a socket that was in that corner, especially if that is the only socket or one of very few in the room.

As in any electrical work, no matter how small, it is advisable to use insulating gloves and mitts. And, of course, it is important to be extra careful if you are going to be working in the bathroom or kitchen, as these are areas of higher humidity where water can damage the installation.

But let’s take it step by step. The first thing we need to know is what tools and what parts are needed to change a socket. Once you have everything, follow the steps below. The result will be hidden inside a cable duct and hardly visible.

"As in any electrical work, no matter how small, it is advisable to use insulating gloves and mitts.”

What do I need to change a socket without chipping away at the wall?

The tools you need are a drill, with the right-sized drill bit, a hammer, a screwdriver, a measuring tape and a wire stripper or electrician’s scissors. In addition, it will be very useful to have a metal detector to check that there are no pipes inside the wall where you want to drill.

As for the materials, you will need:

• A surface-mounted wall socket. It is important that it is similar to the one you want to move. For example, if it is grounded, the new one should also be grounded.
• Nylon wall plugs and screws to fasten the socket base to the wall.
• Self-adhesive trunking to hide the cable.
• A safety plug or flat plug.
• 2.5 mm cable (or whatever size is appropriate for the use you intend for the socket).

A 2.5 mm cable will be suitable for connecting lamps and other electrical appliances such as a washing machine, a television or a vacuum cleaner. If this is the use you plan for your new socket, this type of cable will be more than enough. This cable will actually contain three other wires inside: brown for live, blue for neutral and green/yellow for the ground wire.

Step by step procedure for changing the location of a socket without calling in the builders

To move a socket without chipping away at the wall, the first thing you have to do is decide where to place the new socket. Once this is clear, mark the site on the wall with a pencil, using the socket you are going to put there as a stencil. To be sure not to drill the wall in places where there may be wires, pipes or metal inside the wall, in an ideal world you would check this with a metal detector.

Step 1: place the base of the new socket

Once you have checked that the new location is perfect and there is no risk of doing any damage when drilling, the next step will be to place the socket base. To do this, first place the nylon plugs in the wall with the help of the hammer, and then you can fix the base with the drill, the bit and the screws. Once this is done, connect the wire from the old socket to the new socket.

Step 2: first electrical connection

To connect the wire, first strip the tips with electrician’s scissors, so that they fit into the internal mechanism of the socket (always taking into account its polarity). The green and yellow wire is the ground wire and the blue and brown coloured wires are live and neutral.

Make sure the cable is perfectly embedded in the mechanism and the base of the socket so that you can later place the upper part or cover and have your new socket ready.

Mark the cable routing from one outlet to the other on the wall with a pencil. If possible, take it down through the skirting board, so that it is less visible, and from there back up to the new socket. To hide the cable, use a self-adhesive cable duct, cut to size using a measuring tape and scissors. Place the cable inside the duct and run the duct along the top of the skirting board.