Most people in Sydney 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.
We work across Sydney and the suburbs around it, including Sydenham, Sydney, Sydney Olympic Park. The price is agreed before anything starts, coming out to look costs nothing, and the labour is guaranteed for as long as you own the place.
Sydney 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.
Older wiring around Sydney was never designed for the load a modern kitchen puts on it. Add an induction cooktop or a second fridge and the weak point shows up quickly.
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.
Storms take a toll, especially on anything overhead. A surge through the supply can quietly damage a board or an appliance and the symptoms show up weeks later.
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 Sydney, 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.
