House rewiring, staged so you can keep living in the house

Most houses we look at do not need a full rewire. They need part of one, done in the right order. Rewires are a small slice of what we do, and most of them get staged rather than done in one hit.

How to tell if your house is due

Old Queenslanders and post war houses around Port Douglas, Mowbray and Mossman were wired in rubber with cotton braid. Rubber has a service life and it has well and truly passed. It goes hard, then it cracks, and when a sparky moves a cable in the roof the insulation falls off the copper in flakes. It can look tidy from the manhole and still be finished.

Signs worth a look:

• Black rubber or fabric covered cable visible in the roof space or under the house
• The same circuit tripping over and over. Fault finding is our biggest category at 8,840 jobs, and a fair few of those end up being a perished cable
• Lights dimming when the air conditioner or the kettle starts
• Warm switch plates, browning around a power point, or a burnt smell near the switchboard
• Two or three power points serving a whole room, with double adaptors doing the rest
• A ceramic fuse board with no safety switches on the power circuits

Up here the roof space is what kills old cable. A steel roof through the build up sits a long way above the outside air. Decades of that heat, plus wet season humidity, ages rubber faster than it would down south. On coastal blocks salt air gets into terminals and older unsheathed cable. Ants and geckos nesting in outdoor enclosures cause real faults too, and they pick tired old gear long before they bother new gear.

Full rewire or partial

A full rewire means every circuit replaced from the switchboard out. New cable, new power points and switches, new light points, new earthing and bonding, and a new switchboard with safety switches across the lot. A partial rewire replaces the circuits that are actually shot and leaves sound cable where it is. Plenty of houses had a kitchen or an extension done in the nineties, so half the place is already in modern flat sheathed cable.

We tell you which one you need after we have been in the roof and under the floor, not over the phone.

What the work involves

Rough-in first. New cable pulled through the roof space, wall cavities and under the floor, which is where a highset Queenslander makes life easier for everyone. Then fit-off: points, switches, fittings and the board. Some wall chasing and patching is unavoidable in a lowset block house or a rendered wall, and we show you where before anyone picks up a grinder. Power comes off in sections rather than for the whole job, so most people keep living in the house while it happens.

Why we usually stage it

Staging lets you deal with the dangerous circuits now and the rest when the bathroom or kitchen gets done and the walls are open anyway. It also spreads the cost. We keep notes on what has been replaced and what is still original, so the next visit picks up where the last one stopped, even if that is two years later.

Who is actually doing the work

Four electricians and two apprentices, working out of Craiglie under Queensland electrical contractor licence 82270, fully insured. When the work is finished you get a Certificate of Testing and Compliance, which we issue as the licensed electrical contractor for installation work. Keep it with your house papers, because insurers and conveyancers ask for it.

Source: WorkSafe Queensland, issuing certificates of compliance.