A proper local electrician for Aberdour.

Aberdour is a pretty conservation village on the Fife coast, a mile or two along from base in Dalgety Bay, so it is about as local as Jack's work gets. It is the village of Aberdour Castle, one of the oldest standing stone castles in Scotland, of St Fillan's twelfth-century church, and of the Silver Sands and Black Sands beaches, with Inchcolm and its abbey a quarter of a mile offshore and its own award-winning station on the Fife Circle line, opened in 1890 after the Forth Bridge. Historically it was two settlements, Wester Aberdour along the High Street and Easter Aberdour along Main Street, either side of the Dour Burn, and the housing matches that character: largely older, period, stone-built cottages and villas, with some newer homes mixed in. Around 1,700 people live here.

That older stock is exactly the sort that wants careful rewiring and considered lighting rather than a rushed job, alongside fuse-board upgrades to bring things up to current standards. Aberdour also carries a steady run of holiday lets and second homes, which keeps landlord EICRs ticking over: every let in Scotland needs a valid EICR at least every five years under the Repairing Standard, from £200, and Jack does the inspection and any remedial work himself. Being right next door he is there quickly, with everything tested and certified to BS 7671.

Aberdour is also one of the easiest places on the patch for Jack to reach in an emergency. He answers his own phone day or night, and a genuine emergency here, the whole house off, a board that trips as soon as it is reset, a smell of burning or a socket that has scorched, is a couple of minutes along the coast road from base. Period wiring that has been altered over a century is where the awkward faults tend to hide, and the job is to find the actual cause and put it right, not to reset and hope.

For planned work, a lot of older Aberdour property is still on a fuse board that predates RCD protection, sometimes an old rewireable fuse box behind a cupboard door, and a modern 18th-edition consumer unit with full RCBO and surge protection, from £700, fitted in a day and certified, is the sensible upgrade before anything else is added. Where the newer homes have driveways, an EV charger, Hypervolt, Zappi or Ohme from £900, is a straightforward day, with the board checked on the same visit.