Electrician FAQs for Freshwater

We take a good look at what's needed and explain it in plain English before you decide anything. You get a written quote before we start, and that quote is locked in once you say yes.

No. Once we've shaken on a price, that's what lands on the invoice. If opening things up turns up a genuine surprise, nothing more happens until we've explained it and you've told us to go ahead.

No call-out fee applies to quotes. We come out, have a look, and confirm the cost in writing, with nothing owed if you decide not to go ahead.

Yes, quoting on site is free, always. There's no obligation to book once you've seen the price in writing, and we'd rather you shop around with the full picture than feel rushed into anything.

A safety switch (RCD) is the small device on the switchboard that cuts power fast if current escapes the circuit, the kind of fault old wiring and salty coastal air make more likely here. NSW rules require one on most power and lighting circuits, and if yours is missing one, it's usually a straightforward add at the switchboard.

We steer clear of the bargain-bin gear. Clipsal, Hager, SAL and Beacon Lighting go into every job, and it shows in fewer callbacks and fittings still doing their job a decade on.

AS/NZS 3000 sets the rules for how electrical work gets done safely in Australia, from the size of a cable to how a circuit is protected. Every job we finish is checked against it, and passing that check is exactly what a Certificate of Compliance confirms.

A Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work is the paperwork that proves notifiable work was done to standard and lodged with NSW Fair Trading. It's provided automatically once the work's checked off, nothing for you to follow up.

You'll speak to a real person, not a call centre, who wants to know what's tripping, sparking or dead before anything else. From there we book you in for a time that suits, turn up when we say, and give you a fixed written price before we start.

For genuine emergencies, we drop everything and get moving straight away. For standard bookings it's often same or next day, and we'll give you an honest time rather than a vague promise.

Sparking outlets, burning smells, exposed wiring, a switchboard that's hot to touch, or the power dropping out completely are all genuine emergencies. If in doubt, turn it off at the switchboard if it's safe to do so, then call us and we'll tell you exactly what to do until help arrives.

Yes. Standard bookings run across the week including weekends. Genuine emergencies still get seen to, day or night, any day of the week, so a Saturday fault doesn't mean waiting until Monday.

Freshwater sits inside our regular run, not somewhere we occasionally swing through. Our local team works this patch of the Northern Beaches every week, and (02) 9073 7836 is answered by someone who knows the suburb, not a call centre.

A good number of Freshwater's pre-war brick homes are still wired to their original ceramic-fuse switchboard, built well before safety switches were standard. Fuses like that don't trip fast enough to stop a serious shock, and boards that old are often maxed out the moment you add anything modern, which is why an upgrade means RCBOs and a safety switch on every circuit, tested to AS/NZS 3000.

We do. This suburb runs from solid double-brick homes from the pre-1940s building boom right through to 1960s-80s unit blocks and the newer builds going up now. Knowing the era of a place tells us what's probably behind the switchboard before we've even opened it.

Yes to both. With so many units and flats around here, strata jobs come up often for us, from shared switchboards to common-area lighting and getting sign-off from the body corporate. On heritage-adjacent properties, we work carefully around original brick and joinery, and salt air off the coast means older fittings often need a closer look than they would inland.