We live in a 3-bed semi-detached dormer (chalet) bungalow that was built in
1965. The wiring is grey, flat twin & earth and physically looks to be in
good condition, ie, still flexible and not at all brittle anywhere that I
can see.

The kitchen was refurbished 2 years ago so all circuits in there (1 RCD
protected ring main, 1 non-RCD protected radial for fridge and freezer, 1
cooker circuit and the lights) are all new and fed from a new 12-way
consumer unit that we had installed with the idea of carrying on and
rewiring the whole house.

The rationale for doing this was that we are now 55 years old and the wiring
is 44 years old. We could afford to do it now [1] even though it doesn't
really seem to *need* to be done and so we would rather get it done and
dusted rather than wait another 20 years when it may well *need* to be done,
but we'll be mid-seventies and neither able to afford it, nor put up with
all the mess at that age.

[1] Unfortunately, since the kitchen was refurbed and we first thought about
the whole-house rewire, I've been retired from work on ill-health grounds
and where I used to have a take-home pay of about £20k/year, I'm now on an
occupational pension of just under £6k/year so we're now beginning to wonder
about the wisdom of getting the house rewired and spending money when it
perhaps isn't strictly necessary.

So, what is the expected life-span of the cabling in here? Say we live until
we're 80, the cables will then be 69 - is that feasible? Do we really need
to rewire now?

The only drawback I can really come up with is that at the moment the wiring
is not split into up/downstairs - it's a whole-house ring main and
whole-house lights (apart from the kitchen of course), oh, and we don't have
enough sockets where we want them so we use a couple of 4-way trailing
extension leads where necessary, ie, TV, Sky+ box, AV receiver/amp and CD
player in one alcove (plugged into a double socket) and my computer over in
the dining room uses anoither 4-way lead.

There's only the two of us, we don't have any high-load items (other than
kitchen stuff on new circuits anyway), and really don't see us ever
overloading any circuit with anything.

What's your views folks?

TIA,

Dave