Port Douglas · Douglas Shire · Cairns Northern Beaches
Electrical fault finding that ends with a cause, not a guess
No power, half the house out, or a breaker that keeps tripping. Fault finding is the single most common thing we get called for, and it is the work where experience shows up most.
- 5.0 on Google
- 24/7 emergency callout
- Licence 82270
How does an electrician find the actual cause of a fault?
Fault finding is the biggest single line of work in our job history: 8,840 of our jobs since 2020 involve locating a fault rather than installing something new. That is not a coincidence. In the tropics, water, salt and heat get into everything eventually.
How we actually go about it
We start at the board, work out what is and is not protected, then isolate by circuit. Test instruments and insulation resistance testing. The goal is to find the fault, not to guess at it and hand you an invoice for parts that did not need replacing.
What causes it up here
- Moisture in outdoor power points, garden lighting and pool equipment after heavy rain
- Salt corrosion in coastal fittings, particularly on beachfront and near-beach blocks
- Failing hot water elements, a very common cause of a safety switch that trips overnight
- Ants and geckos in outdoor enclosures. Genuinely one of the most common causes in this Shire
- Old rubber and cotton wiring perishing in ceiling spaces on the older Queenslanders
- Rodent damage in ceiling and subfloor spaces
A note on testing and the law
Under Queensland's amended electrical safety laws, testing is expressly a form of energised electrical work, including locating faults, measuring performance and verifying compliance with the Wiring Rules. It is licensed work, and it is not a job for a handy mate.
Source: WorkSafe Queensland, testing.
Sound familiar?
- No power to one room
- Safety switch keeps tripping
- Circuit breaker keeps tripping
- Lights flickering
- Power point not working
- Burning smell from a power point
- Half the house has no power
- Switchboard buzzing or humming
What we install
We use Fluke test instruments, and where a fault is intermittent we can leave a power quality logger on site to catch it.
- Fluke
- Clipsal
- NHP
Still working out what is wrong?
We have written up the faults that usually point to this work, and what each one means:
- Why your safety switch keeps tripping
- No power to one room but the rest of the house is fine
- Circuit breaker keeps tripping
- Why your lights are flickering
- Half the house has no power
- Corroded outdoor fittings and salt air damage
Who we do it for
We do this work for homeowners, businesses, property managers, body corporates and resorts.
How a fault actually gets found
Three steps, and guessing is not one of them
Anybody can replace a part and hope. Finding the cause means isolating it, and that is a process rather than a hunch.
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01Isolate the circuit
Split the board down and test each circuit on its own. Half the job is working out which part of the house is lying to you.
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02Find what is actually causing it
Rats, geckos, ants and water. Up here most intermittent faults have something living in them, and the fix is not a new breaker.
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03Prove it is gone
Where a fault is intermittent we leave a logger on it. You get the graph, not our word for it.
Straight answers
Electrical Fault Finding: your questions
Half my house has no power but the rest is fine. What is that?
Usually one circuit has tripped at the board, or one of the main phases has dropped. If you have reset it and it trips again straight away, stop resetting it. Something on that circuit is faulted and repeated resetting is how switchboards catch fire.
Why does my safety switch only trip at night?
Classic sign of an off-peak hot water element failing, because that is when it heats. Second most likely is irrigation or pool equipment on a timer.
Can you tell me what fault finding will cost before you come?
We will quote the attendance and the fault-finding time up front. What we cannot honestly do is quote the repair before we know what the fault is, so we agree a limit with you and come back to you before we go past it.
There is a burning smell near a power point. What do I do?
Turn that circuit off at the board and call us. Do not use the point. A burning smell means heat, and heat in an electrical accessory is how fires start.
Where
We do this from Cape Tribulation down to Smithfield
Electrical Fault Finding comes up most often at Port Douglas , Craiglie , Mossman , Oak Beach , Daintree and Mowbray . Every area we cover has its own page with the access and the local conditions on it.
Need a licensed electrician who turns up?
Leave us a number and we will ring you back, or send the whole job through and we will quote it.