Renovation electrician, from open wall to final fit-off

Get the sparky involved at the plan stage, not the week the tiler is booked. Rough-in has to be done while the wall is open. Once the gyprock, waterproofing and tiles are on, moving a power point 300mm stops being a five minute job. We have done 1,701 kitchen jobs and 1,211 bathroom jobs since 2020, and the ones that run smoothly are always the ones where we walked the site before anything came off the wall.

Rough-in, fit-off, and where they sit in the programme

Rough-in is the cable, conduit, mounting blocks and boxes, done after framing and before lining. Fit-off is everything you see: power points, switches, lights, ceiling fans, exhaust fans, oven and cooktop connections, done after painting. Between those two visits the wiring sits in the wall doing nothing and the builder gets on with it. If you are project managing your own renovation, tell us who is doing the gyprock and when they start. That date sets ours. We work to builder programmes every week. We are a regular on one local builder's jobs, from rough-in right through to fit-off.

Opening a wall usually changes the scope

New work has to comply with AS/NZS 3000, the Wiring Rules, regardless of what was there before. That is where older houses get interesting. Open up a 1970s Queenslander in Mowbray or an old beach place at Cooya and you often find rubber insulated cable that has gone brittle, no earth on the lighting circuit, and a switchboard with no spare space in it. None of that is your fault and none of it means an automatic full rewire. It does mean we have to land the new circuits somewhere legitimate, so a switchboard upgrade sometimes comes into the job. We have done 1,006 switchboard jobs and 263 full rewires, so we can tell you fairly quickly which side of that line you are on. You get told before we do it, not after.

Smoke alarms and safety switches while the ceiling is open

Every existing Queensland home, townhouse and unit needs interconnected photoelectric smoke alarms to AS 3786-2014 by 1 January 2027. If we are already in your ceiling running cable, that is the cheapest that job will ever be. Same story with safety switches on the power point circuits. We have done 1,429 smoke alarm jobs and 1,353 safety switch jobs, and doing them as part of a renovation beats paying someone to go back up there in two years.

The tropical part, which is not marketing

Salt air eats hardware. On anything within cooee of the beach, the finish on outdoor power points, fan mounts and external light fittings matters more than the brand name, and we will steer you off gear that will look terrible in three wet seasons. Bathroom and laundry exhaust fans need to actually vent outside, not just into the roof space. In a Port Douglas February that moisture has nowhere to go. Outdoor enclosures need sealing properly. Ants and geckos getting into a weatherproof box is one of the most common faults we see up here. If your place is north of the Daintree ferry, we plan the day around the ferry rather than pretending it is not there.

What you get at the end

A Certificate of Testing and Compliance from us as the licensed electrical contractor, covering the installation work. Queensland Electrical Contractor Licence 82270, fully insured, four electricians and two apprentices. If something is not right after fit-off, you ring the same number and the same crew comes back.

Sources: Queensland Fire Department, smoke alarms and WorkSafe Queensland, issuing certificates of compliance.