House Rewiring in Melbourne

The decisive measurement is insulation resistance. We isolate the installation and apply a test voltage between conductors and earth, then read how well the insulation is holding. Healthy modern cable reads in the hundreds of megohms. Degraded rubber-insulated cable from the 1940s and 50s can read well under one megohm, which means current is leaking through insulation that has gone hard and cracked.

We combine that with a physical inspection. We look at cable in the roof space and subfloor, at the condition of the sheathing where it enters the board, at whether lighting circuits have an earth at all, and at how many alterations have been layered on over the decades. A house with sound TPS cable and a bad switchboard needs a board, not a rewire. A house with brittle rubber cable in the ceiling needs a rewire regardless of how well it appears to be working.

A full rewire replaces every circuit, the switchboard, and all switches and outlets, and it is the cleanest outcome. It is also the most disruptive and the most expensive.

A staged rewire tackles the circuits that have failed testing or that carry the most risk, usually the lighting circuits in the roof and the kitchen and laundry power circuits, and leaves sound circuits in place until a renovation gives easier access. Staging works well when the house is going to be renovated room by room anyway. It works badly when the wiring is uniformly degraded, because you end up paying twice for access.

A single-storey weatherboard with a good roof space and accessible subfloor is the easiest case, and a three-bedroom house of that type typically takes three to five working days. A double-storey solid brick house with no subfloor access takes considerably longer, because every cable to the ground floor has to be routed through walls that were not designed to be opened.

Power is off during working hours and reconnected at the end of each day wherever we can. Most people stay in the house through a rewire. The practical inconveniences are dust, ladders, furniture moved away from walls and a few days of no power to parts of the house during the day.

Rewiring is priced by access and by point count, not by floor area. Two houses of identical size can differ by many thousands based on what is under the floor and above the ceiling.

A rewire should leave you with a Certificate of Electrical Safety covering the work, a labelled switchboard with RCD protection on every final subcircuit, compliant smoke alarms, and a written list of what was replaced and what was left in place if the job was staged.

You should also get a circuit schedule that means something. Kitchen and dining power, rather than Power 2. It costs us nothing extra and it saves the next electrician, and you, an hour of guessing every time something trips.