How long does an EICR take?

For a typical two or three bedroom home with one consumer unit, allow half a day on site, somewhere between two and four hours, plus the time it takes to write the report up afterwards. A one bedroom flat with a handful of circuits can be done in a couple of hours; a large house with two boards, outbuildings and an EV charger can swallow a whole day. Anyone quoting a fixed forty-five minutes for every property is not testing every circuit.

How long by property type?

Rough planning figures, before the condition and access factors below move them:

Property	Typical time on site
One-bed flat, single board	1.5–2.5 hours
Two/three-bed house, single board	2–4 hours
Large house, multiple boards or outbuildings	Half a day to a full day
Commercial unit	Scoped from the circuit count, not the floor area

What actually decides the time

The honest answer is that an EICR takes as long as the installation demands, and four things drive it:

• The number of circuits. Every circuit on the schedule needs its details recorded and its tests carried out: continuity, insulation resistance, polarity, earth fault loop impedance, and RCD operation where fitted. Twelve circuits is not twice the work of six, but it is not far off.
• The condition you find. A clean, well-labelled installation flies. One with unlabelled ways, buried junction boxes and three generations of alterations means investigation before you can even say what the circuits are.
• Access. Furniture over sockets, lofts boarded shut, tenants who need every power-down negotiated. Occupied properties reliably take longer than empty ones.
• The sampling agreed. The extent and limitations of the inspection are agreed with the client before you start. A higher sampling rate on accessories and connections means more time, and a report that says so.

Why the paperwork is the hidden half

The testing is only part of the job. A proper EICR carries the schedule of inspection outcomes, the full schedule of circuit details and test results, and a classified observation for every defect found, each with the code that says how urgent it is and the regulation it offends. Written up by hand at the kitchen table, that is easily another hour or two after the tools are packed away, which is exactly the part worth doing on a phone at the board instead: record each reading as you take it, and the report is effectively finished when the testing is.

Can it be done faster without cutting corners?

Yes, within reason. Preparation is most of it:

1. Get the fuse board location, circuit count and any known problems from the client before the visit, so you price and plan for the property that exists.
2. Agree power-down windows in advance for occupied or commercial properties.
3. Test methodically board by board rather than room by room, and record as you go. Going back to re-check a reading you forgot to write down is the classic time leak.
4. Use an instrument you know, with current calibration, so nothing has to be re-tested for confidence.

What does not speed it up is skipping tests and marking them as limitations. Limitations exist for genuine access problems agreed with the client, not for saving twenty minutes. An EICR that silently under-tests is worth less than no report, because somebody will rely on it.

What this means for pricing

Time is the cost, so anything that shortens the write-up changes the economics of inspection work. If the schedule fills itself in as you test, the observations carry suggested wording and regulation references instead of being composed from scratch, and the finished report is a PDF the moment you sign it, the same day fits more inspections, which is the difference between EICR work being worth taking and not.