Electrician Hawthorn

Hawthorn has two electrical histories running side by side. Large Victorian and Edwardian houses that were carved into flats during the 1960s and 1970s, and the brick walk-up blocks built next to them in the same period. Both are now supplying a load nobody imagined when the meter box went in.

Period houses converted to flats

A single-family house split into three or four dwellings usually kept one set of consumer mains and gained a bank of meters. Decades later each flat runs a heat pump, an induction cooktop and a dryer. The individual boards look fine. The shared supply behind them is the constraint, and that only becomes obvious when two tenants cook at once. Before adding anything substantial, the question is what the mains can carry, not what the flat’s board looks like.

1960s and 1970s walk-up blocks

The three-storey brick blocks off Glenferrie Road and around Auburn were wired before residual current devices were required. Many still have none. Because the common property board and the individual unit boards belong to different parties, upgrades stall on who authorises the spend. Get the owners corporation position clear before quoting, because that is what delays these jobs rather than the work.

Student rentals near Swinburne

The rental stock around the university carries a particular signature: power boards daisy-chained off a single outlet per bedroom, because the house was wired when a bedroom needed one lamp. The circuit is not faulty, it is simply outnumbered. Adding power points on a properly sized circuit is cheaper than the callouts that come from not doing it.

Heritage overlay along the river side

Between Yarra Boulevard and the streets running down to the river, much of the housing sits under heritage controls. That does not stop a rewire, but it changes how cable is routed, because surface conduit on a visible elevation is usually not acceptable. It is worth raising at the quote stage rather than discovering it when the first run is planned.

Glenferrie Road retail

The shop-top dwellings along Glenferrie Road frequently share a supply with the business below. When the tenancy downstairs changes and a new fitout lands, the flat above can be the thing that starts tripping. If that has happened to you, the fault is usually not in your flat.

Getting to you

We are a suburb away in Hawthorn East, so Hawthorn is one of the quickest runs we make. Faults reported in the morning are normally attended the same day. For genuine emergencies we aim to be on site within two hours and the phone is answered 24 hours. We also cover Kew, Camberwell and Richmond.