Most people in Arncliffe do not go looking for an electrician until something has already stopped working. The light in the hallway starts flickering, the board trips every time the kettle goes on, or there is a smell near a power point that was not there yesterday. By that point you are not comparing five quotes, you want someone who answers the phone and can tell you what is actually wrong.
Arncliffe is inside our normal run, as are Rockdale, Brighton-Le-Sands, Tempe. We quote the whole job as one number before we start, and we do not charge to come and look at it.
Arncliffe has the mix you find across a lot of Sydney: older homes still running the board they were built with, sitting next to places that have been renovated two or three times. Both throw up their own problems, and both are jobs we do every week.
If your place in Arncliffe still has ceramic fuses or a board with no safety switch, that is the first thing worth sorting. It is also the thing insurers ask about most.
A renovation is the only time the walls are open, which makes it the cheapest moment in the life of a house to fix its wiring. Doing it later means cutting into finished plaster and paying twice.
The common mistake is designing the layout around where the outlets already are. Work out where furniture, benches and appliances will actually go first, then place the outlets. It costs almost nothing extra at rough in stage and everything later.
If the house around Arncliffe still has its original board or any cloth insulated wiring, a renovation is the point to deal with it. Adding a new kitchen to sixty year old wiring just moves the problem.
Age is the biggest single factor. Wiring installed decades ago was sized for a very different household, and insulation on older cable gets brittle and cracks, particularly in roof spaces that heat up through summer.
Rodents are a genuine cause and an unglamorous one. Possums and rats in the roof chew cable insulation, and the fault that follows can be intermittent and hard to trace.
There is no honest way to put a single figure on this page, because the price depends on what is behind your wall. Anyone quoting you a firm number over the phone without seeing the job is guessing, and the gap between the guess and the invoice is usually yours to pay.
What we can promise is the shape of it. We come out and look for nothing, we work out what the job actually needs, and we give you one fixed number for the whole thing. If we find something unexpected once we are into it, we stop and talk to you rather than adding it to the bill. The number you agreed is the number on the invoice.
Plenty of electricians around Arncliffe charge by the hour. It sounds cheaper and often is not, because you are carrying all the risk. If the job takes longer than expected, that is your problem. If someone is slow, that is also your problem.
We price the job, not the time. That means we carry the risk of it taking longer, which is a good incentive for us to turn up prepared. It also means you can say yes or no with the full number in front of you.
Almost nothing, and that is not us protecting our own work. In New South Wales it is against the law for an unlicensed person to do fixed electrical wiring, and the insurance consequences of a fire traced back to unlicensed work are severe. Replacing a plug top on an appliance or changing a lamp is fine. Anything behind the wall or inside the board is not.
What you can usefully do is narrow it down before you ring. Note which circuit trips, whether it trips straight away or after something specific gets switched on, and whether it started after a storm or a new appliance. That saves time on site.
If you rent, electrical repairs to the property itself are the owner's responsibility, and urgent electrical faults fall under urgent repairs in New South Wales. Talk to your agent first. If it is genuinely dangerous, say so clearly, because that changes how quickly it has to be dealt with.
If you manage a strata block around Arncliffe, we can work on common property and bill the body corporate directly, and we can keep the same electrician on your building so nobody is relearning the site every visit.
