Emergency electrician

Before we arrive

What to do right now

If there is fire, smoke, or someone is in contact with electricity, ring 000 first. Do not touch a person who is being shocked. If you can safely reach the main switch, turn it off. Otherwise stay back and wait for emergency services.

5.0 from 215 Google reviews Registered Electrical Contractor REC 20101 25 years trading Before we arrive What to do right now If there is fire, smoke, or someone is in contact with electricity, ring 000 first. Do not touch a person who is being shocked. If you can safely reach the main switch, turn it off. Otherwise stay back and wait for emergency services. Find your main switch It is the largest switch on your switchboard, usually top left and labelled "Main Switch". Turning it off isolates the whole property. Learn where it is before you need it.
Check whether the street is out If your neighbours have no power either, it is a network fault and an electrician cannot fix it. Ring your electricity distributor. Their faults number is printed on your electricity bill and on their website.
If only part of your house is out, it is your installation Look at the switchboard. A tripped circuit breaker or safety switch will be sitting in the off or middle position. That tells us which circuit to look at.
Try resetting once, not repeatedly Unplug everything on the affected circuit, then reset the switch once. If it holds, plug appliances back in one at a time to find the culprit. If it trips again immediately, leave it off and ring us.
Stay away from water and fallen wires Never enter a flooded area where power may still be on, and never approach a fallen powerline. Treat every fallen wire as live and ring 000 and your distributor.
Stop using anything that smells or feels hot A burning smell at a power point, a switch or the board means switch that circuit off and leave it off. Heat and smell are the warnings that come before a fire.

Triage

What counts as an emergency, and what can wait until morning

Ringing at 2am costs more than ringing at 8am. These are the ones worth the call-out.

Ring now

Burning smell, smoke, or scorch marks at a power point, switch or the switchboard.
Sparking from an outlet, a fitting or the board.
Anyone has received a shock from an appliance, a tap or a switch.
Total loss of power to the property when the street still has supply.
Water into a switchboard, a ceiling with lights in it, or any live equipment.
A safety switch that will not stay on with everything unplugged.
Exposed or damaged cable anywhere a person or an animal can reach it.
A commercial site that cannot trade or cannot keep refrigeration running.

Book it for business hours

One circuit out, with the rest of the house working normally and nothing hot or smelling.
A single dead power point or light switch.
Downlights that have failed, or a transformer that has given up.
Hot water gone cold, unless you have no other heating and it is freezing.
A switchboard you have been meaning to upgrade for two years.
Quotes, inspections and anything to do with a renovation.
A street-wide outage. That is your distributor, not an electrician.

Straight answers

Response, cost and coverage, before you ring

How fast

Phone answered: Immediately, 24 hours a day, seven days, including public holidays.
On site, core suburbs: We aim to be there within two hours for genuine emergencies in the inner east and inner south.
On site, outer areas: Longer for Dandenong, Springvale and the Mornington Peninsula, particularly overnight. We tell you a realistic time on the phone rather than leaving you waiting.
Priority: Risk first. Anything sparking, smoking or leaving a property without power comes ahead of everything else.

What it costs

Call-out fee: A call-out fee applies outside standard hours, which are 7:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday. We tell you the amount on the phone before anyone is dispatched. You will never find out what it was from the invoice.
The work itself: Quoted before we start wherever the fault allows it. On a genuine emergency the first job is making the property safe, and we price the permanent repair once we can see what failed.
Making safe: Often we can isolate the fault, restore the rest of the property and book the full repair for normal hours. That is usually the cheaper path and we will say so.

Suburbs covered for emergency work

Emergency cover is a tighter radius than our standard service area, because response time is the whole point. Overnight we prioritise the inner east and inner south.

Outside that list, ring anyway. We cover the wider south-east for standard work and will tell you honestly whether we can get to you tonight or first thing.

Get it sorted

If it is urgent, ring. Do not fill in a form.

The form is for when you cannot talk, or when it can wait until morning. The phone is always faster.

03 9889 3341

Not urgent? Send the details and we will come back to you within one business day.

Questions

Emergency questions we get asked

The whole street has no power. Can you help?

No, and nor can any electrician. A street-wide outage is a network fault and only your electricity distributor can restore it. Their faults number is on your electricity bill. Ring us once your street has supply back and something in your property still is not working.

Do you really answer the phone at 3am?

Yes, 24 hours a day, seven days, including public holidays. You get a person who can tell you what to isolate straight away, which is often the most useful thing that happens in the first ten minutes.

What is the after-hours call-out fee?

A call-out fee applies outside 7:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday. We tell you the amount on the phone before dispatching anyone, so you can decide whether the job can wait until morning. Nobody should discover a call-out fee on an invoice.

My safety switch keeps tripping. Is that an emergency?

If it resets and holds, it can wait until business hours, though it should not be ignored. If it will not stay on with every appliance unplugged, ring now. That means the fault is in the fixed wiring rather than in something you can unplug.

Can you make it safe tonight and repair it properly later?

Usually, and often it is the cheaper option. Isolating the failed circuit and restoring everything else takes the urgency out, then the permanent repair happens in normal hours at a normal rate. We will tell you when that is the sensible path.

Do you attend commercial emergencies?

Yes. Loss of trade, failed refrigeration, dead three-phase supply and lighting failures that stop a site opening are all attended 24 hours. Tell us on the first call who authorises the spend and who can give us access, because that is what usually delays commercial jobs.