The hardest part of getting electrical work done in Ashfield is not the work. It is finding someone who shows up when they said they would, tells you the price before they start, and does not leave you chasing them for a certificate afterwards.
Ashfield is inside our normal run, as are Summer Hill, Haberfield, Croydon. We quote the whole job as one number before we start, and we do not charge to come and look at it.
Ashfield 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.
Renovating in Ashfield is usually when the wiring gets looked at properly for the first time in decades. Better to know before the walls close up.
The part people underestimate is the mounting, not the wiring. A fan puts a constant vibrating load on the ceiling, so it has to be fixed to something structural. Screwing a fan into plasterboard alone is how they end up wobbling and eventually coming loose.
If you are replacing an existing light with a fan, there is often no separate switch for the fan speed, so that needs running or a remote fitted. Worth knowing before you buy the fan.
In older Ashfield homes the ceiling rose may not be in the middle of the room, which matters more with a fan than with a light. We can usually move it, but it is easier to know that before we start.
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.
Water gets in more often than people expect. A roof leak above a light fitting, condensation in an outdoor outlet, or a subfloor that stays damp will all eventually cause tripping.
The real answer is that it depends on the condition of what is already there. That is not a dodge, it is why we come and look before quoting rather than pricing blind over the phone.
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.
The usual model in this trade is a call out fee plus an hourly rate plus parts. You find out the total when it is finished. We think that is backwards, so we quote the job instead of the clock.
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 Ashfield, 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.