House
Rewiring
in
Melbourne

Plenty of Melbourne homes are still running on wiring installed when a house had a fridge, a radio and a few light globes. Insulation degrades, connections loosen and load has multiplied, and deteriorating wiring gives very little warning before it becomes dangerous.

Rubber or cotton braided cable in the roof space is the clearest marker of a home due for rewiring. Once rubber insulation goes brittle it cracks when disturbed, so even walking through the roof cavity to install a downlight can create a fault. Ceramic rewireable fuses with fuse wire date a board to before the 1980s in most homes, and no safety switches on power and lighting circuits usually places the installation before the mid 1990s.

Other signs to watch for: discoloured or warm power points, a burning plastic smell near an outlet or the switchboard, lights that dim when the kettle or air conditioner starts, breakers that trip on the same circuit again and again, and two-pin unearthed power points. Our guide to the signs your home's wiring is outdated goes through each one.

A full rewire replaces every circuit and the switchboard, and it is the right answer for homes with original rubber-insulated cable throughout. It is disruptive, so it is usually planned alongside a renovation or between tenancies.

A partial rewire replaces the worst circuits, typically kitchen, laundry and any unearthed lighting, while keeping sound circuits. Combined with a modern board it delivers most of the safety benefit with far less disruption. Before recommending either, we test every circuit for insulation resistance, earth continuity and RCD trip times, then give you a written report of which circuits are healthy, which need remediation and which must be replaced. That lets you stage the work over time if a full rewire isn't practical right now.

We stage rewires room by room where people are living in the property, so the house is never left without power overnight. Circuits are isolated one at a time, the new cable goes in, and each section is tested before it goes back on.

We tidy up as we go, patch neatly around new outlets where practical, and walk you through the finished work before we leave.

Every house type has its own challenges. Victorian terraces often still have original cabling in a tight roof space. Californian bungalows and inter-war brick homes have solid double-brick walls, decorative ceilings and original features, which means every cable run needs to be planned properly. Warehouse conversions can carry a mix of old industrial cabling and newer fit-out work.

In every case we plan the cable route before we start, use roof spaces and existing cavities wherever practical, and keep the character of the house intact. We do this work regularly in older housing stock in suburbs like Richmond, Northcote, Brunswick and Essendon.

Old circuits and an old board usually go together. In many homes the first step is a switchboard upgrade so every circuit gains RCD protection, followed by remediation of any circuit that fails testing.

Doing both together also prepares the house for what comes next. Old circuits cannot support induction cooking, ducted air conditioning, a home office or an EV charger, and every one of those upgrades stalls at the same question: is the existing wiring safe to extend?

Every quoted job includes the site assessment, the cable and accessories (Clipsal or HPM as standard), the labour, the testing and the Certificate of Electrical Safety lodged with Energy Safe Victoria. The price is agreed in writing before work begins, and booked jobs carry a $0 callout fee.

If the job uncovers older wiring that isn't safe to reconnect, we flag it and quote the remediation separately rather than certify work we can't stand behind.