Every summer weekend across the North West, a lawnmower lead runs through a kitchen window, over a worktop, and out across wet grass. An outdoor socket installation ends that ritual for less than the price of the mower. A weatherproof double socket on the back wall powers the mower, the strimmer, the pressure washer, and the pizza oven without a single lead through a window. It is one of the smallest jobs we do and one of the most used afterwards. Here is what good looks like, and what it costs in 2026.

What a proper outdoor socket installation involves

The right product is an IP66 rated weatherproof socket with a lockable cover that keeps the rating even with a plug inserted. Cheap covers that only seal when closed defeat the point, because the socket spends its working life with something plugged in during rain showers. Position matters too: high enough to clear splashback from the patio, away from the hosepipe arc, and close to where the leads actually need to reach.

Behind the faceplate, the circuit needs 30 mA RCD protection without exception. Most installations spur from the kitchen ring or run from a spare way in the consumer unit. A competent domestic electrician checks which circuit can take the load before drilling anything, because a kitchen ring already feeding a washer, dryer, and dishwasher needs assessing, not assuming.

Think about how many outlets you genuinely need before the electrician arrives. A double socket by the back door covers the mower and one extra; households with a pressure washer, an electric barbecue, and garden speakers fill both gangs immediately. Specifying a second double by the shed or seating area during the same visit costs a fraction of a separate call-out later.

RCD protection: the part that saves lives

Cutting through a mower lead on damp grass is the textbook scenario an RCD exists for. The device detects current leaking to earth and disconnects in milliseconds, fast enough to prevent a fatal shock. Electrical Safety First attributes a steady share of garden electrical injuries each year to unprotected outdoor power, almost all of it improvised.

Older houses often have sockets with no RCD anywhere in the chain. If your consumer unit has rewireable fuses or a single isolator switch and no test buttons, assume nothing outdoors is protected. The fix can be as simple as an RCD fused spur feeding the new socket, or as thorough as a board upgrade that protects the whole house at once.

Testing the protection is a habit worth building. Every RCD carries a test button, and pressing it quarterly confirms the mechanism still trips. A device that fails its own test button is telling you, politely, before a real fault has the chance to ask the question less politely.

Costs and regulations in 2026

A single weatherproof double socket spurred from a nearby internal circuit typically costs £120 to £200 fitted, including the RCD protection and testing. A second socket added during the same visit is usually £60 to £90 more, because the access and testing are already paid for. Runs to detached garages or the far end of a garden cost more, since they become buried armoured cable jobs.

Adding a socket to an existing circuit in a garden is work that must meet BS 7671, and new outdoor circuits are notifiable under Part P. Either way you should receive a Minor Works or Installation Certificate. The Health and Safety Executive guidance on electricity is written for workplaces, but its core point applies at home: most electrical injuries trace back to work done without testing.

Garages and sheds follow the same logic with one extra step: a detached building should take its supply through buried armoured cable rather than a festoon of leads over the fence, and once that cable exists, adding lighting to the same building costs very little. Plenty of June jobs start as one patio socket and sensibly grow into a tidy little garden installation.

Getting more from the same visit

Call-out economics favour bundling. The same visit that adds a patio socket can fit a second one by the shed, replace a tired security light, or add an outside tap feed pump connection. Customers planning outdoor and garden lighting often have the socket added while the lighting cable is being run, sharing one set of access work across both jobs.

One more candidate for the same visit: that socket in the kitchen that has never quite worked, or the breaker that trips when the kettle and toaster run together. Booking electrical fault finding alongside the outdoor work turns two call-outs into one and usually answers a question that has been nagging for years.

Socket, circuit, or full garden supply: choosing the right size of job

A single double socket by the back door is the right answer for most households, and it is deliberately the lowest-cost option. If your garden kit list runs to a mower, a pressure washer, and occasional festoon lighting, one well-placed IP66 double covers it without further thought.

A dedicated outdoor circuit makes sense once the garden starts working harder. Workshops, ponds with pumps and filtration, and serious garden entertaining setups all benefit from their own way in the consumer unit, so a fault outside never darkens the kitchen. The step up in cost is modest when planned as one job, and it leaves headroom for whatever the household buys next.

The full submain to an outbuilding is the third tier, and it is the right call for garages, large sheds, and anywhere with heating or machinery. The choice is easier to make once, with the whole garden in view, than socket by socket over five summers. A good electrician will ask what the garden needs to do before quoting what the wall needs to hold.

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