Electrician in Thornbury

A weatherboard from the early 1900s was wired for lighting and very little else. Even where a previous owner has updated the board, the circuits feeding the front rooms are often the originals, spliced and extended each time a room was repurposed. Rubber-insulated cable that has gone brittle in the roof space is a regular find during testing.

The interwar bungalows further north tend to have slightly better bones but the same problem at the board: rewireable fuses, one or two overloaded power circuits, and no RCD protection covering the whole house. Once a family adds a second fridge, a workshop in the garage and ducted heating, the limits show up quickly.

Rear extensions are the other constant here. Where a kitchen and living space has been added, the new work is frequently fed from an old circuit rather than a new one, so a single breaker ends up carrying the busiest part of the house.

Switchboard upgrades come first in most of these homes. Replacing fuses with breakers and adding RCD protection to every circuit is what makes an older weatherboard safe to live in, and it gives you the capacity to add circuits later without touching the board again.

Lighting and power work is the everyday request: downlights and pendants in a renovated kitchen, ceiling fans in bedrooms that get hot under a tiled or tin roof, extra power points so extension leads stop doing the job of fixed wiring, and outdoor points and lighting for a back deck. In an older ceiling, the trick is planning fitting positions around existing joists and any old cabling before cutting.

Where circuits trip repeatedly or lights flicker, we test rather than replace parts on a hunch. Degraded cable, a failing neutral or moisture in an old outdoor fitting all present similarly, and the fix is only correct once the cause is confirmed and documented.