Fault Repairs & Safety Check

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Faults & Safety

Repairs and Inspections

Buying an older house can sometimes come with older and unsafe electrical equipment. This can lead to electric shock, fires or unsafe conditions, putting your family at risk. To mitigate that risk, we provide Safety Checks and reporting on your electrical systems, and can advise on what needs to be repaired, replaced, or upgraded.

Switches and Power Points

Unsafe equipment could include broken and cracked power points or light switch fittings.

Bulging switches on power points and light switches are dangerous as there are live electrical parts just behind them and if they pop out, you will be at risk of electric shock as you can see in the photos to the right.

The last thing you would want late at night is to go for the light switch to find the plastic has popped out, which may result in you getting an electric shock from the terminals below. Certainly, if you see damage like this or if things just don’t work properly you need to give us a call.

Rodents, Pests and Weather Damage

Always switch off the main switch before entering the roof space. Sometimes we have unwanted visitors in the walls and ceiling that like to gnaw on cables and can lead to an unsafe situation in your roof. Any damaged cables and electrical items need to be repaired or replaced.

There may also be water damage from a roof leak or leaky pipes that affect electrical items creating a unsafe situation. A good indication of damage can be when a circuit breaker trips and you cant get it to turn back on. This could indicate that you have some kind of Rodent, Pest or Water damage.

Termites also cause all sorts of structural and electrical issues. We have in the past, found where a nest has been built in the wall next to a power point. As termites create moisture-rich nests, the nest then trips the power circuit and then the circuit breaker or safety switch will not reset. We started our diagnosis and found the power point with termites active in the wall. The owner was informed of our findings, there was extensive damage which was not discovered until they had power issues.

Safety Switches.

Did you know you need to test your Safety Switches every 3 months?

This does not mean you need to have an electrician come by and test your Safety Switches, instead its a simple case of pressing the “Test” Button on the front of the Safety Switch. This is because some safety switches have become frozen in the ‘On’ position after internal parts have not moved for a long time. In this case the safety switch may stay on during a fault and will not protect you. It will need to be replaced as soon as possible. Don’t forget you may have more than one safety switch!

Testing of the safety switch will detect this condition. A frozen or ‘Sluggish’ safety switch should be replaced. Our testing will also uncover faulty fixed appliances if they are present. These can then be repaired if possible, or replaced with new items with new warranty.

The ESO have good guidelines and recommendations regarding safety switches – Playing it safe with safety switches

In older homes, there may be rewireable fuses. These are still legal to have in conjunction with a safety switch, but are not legal to be installed in new homes today. This is because they are in no way as good as a circuit breaker. To find out the reasoning behind this, and why you should upgrade to circuit breakers or RCBO combination devices, please visit the Switch Board Upgrades page.

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We work so well as a team, you will be surprised how quickly a high-quality job can be done. We look forward to working with you.

CORRECT TOOLS FOR THE JOB

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