Milsons Point Electrician
The 2021 census recorded no separate houses at all among Milsons Point's occupied homes. Not one. Ninety nine per cent of them are flats or apartments, the great majority in concrete buildings, and a striking number of those were built to do a completely different job.
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Nothing here was built for what it does now
Start with the census, because it is blunt. 2,529 residents and 1,263 occupied private dwellings, of which 1,250 are flats or apartments, six are semis, and none at all are separate houses. The median age is 44, households average 1.8 people, and 54.9 per cent of homes are rented. Then the figure that surprises everyone: 335 of the suburb's private dwellings, 20.9 per cent, were unoccupied on census night. The census does not say why, and neither will we.
The reason the suburb looks like this is that most of the old one was removed. North Sydney Council's own heritage walk records around 3,000 people losing up to 500 homes and shops across Milsons Point and Kirribilli to the bridge resumptions, with dozens of buildings cleared on the east side of Alfred Street. The Ferry Arcade, built in 1886, came down in 1924. The first Milsons Point station, opened in 1893 with one of its two platforms built on piles out over the water so passengers could step from the train straight onto a ferry, was vacated in 1915 and never came back. What stands there now went up afterwards: the present station in 1932, still the only intact station built as part of the bridge and on the State Heritage Register since 1999, then Luna Park in 1935 and the Olympic Pool in 1936, both on the bridge's own former workshop sites.
Then the towers, from the 1980s onward. Council's Lavender Bay planning controls describe Milsons Point as a large concentration of mixed residential and commercial towers, stepping down from the maximum heights on the ridge along Alfred Street between Lavender Street and Dind Street to ten metres on the shores of Lavender Bay. The part that matters to us is what those towers were built as. Eighty eight Alfred Street was a sixteen level hotel until it was converted to 123 apartments, completed in 2018. Sixty eight Alfred Street South is a late 1980s office building with demolition and residential replacement proposed. And Greenway on Ennis Road, 309 flats built between 1948 and 1954 and described by council as the largest residential flat building project in the southern hemisphere at the time, is still social housing, owned by Homes NSW and managed by a community housing provider. One postcode, four completely different sets of assumptions about how a building would be used.
Four surfaces, and only two of them will take a cable
Almost every disappointment in an apartment job traces back to this drawing. It is worth two minutes before you decide where you want something.
Scroll to see the full plan →
What it means: in a house you can put a point more or less where you want it, because the walls are hollow and the roof space is yours. Here the two best-looking walls are the two you cannot use: the glazing has no cavity and nothing to fix to, and the concrete is structure. Everything therefore starts at the riser and works outward along the lightweight partitions, which is why an apartment quote is really a route-finding exercise. It is also why we ask what you want to achieve rather than where you want the socket. The answer is usually available. It is just rarely in the spot the furniture suggests.
What your building was built as, and what that leaves behind
A building's services are laid out around the way it was expected to be used. When the use changes, the layout does not.
| The building | Built as | What that leaves behind | What we get called for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greenway, Ennis Road, 1948 to 1954 | 309 flats of social housing, and still is | Steel frames in the tall blocks, concrete frames with thick load-bearing brick in the low ones. More than seventy years of service life | Ageing common area work and boards, coordinated through a community housing manager rather than a strata committee |
| The ridge towers, 1980s and 1990s | Commercial office floors | Riser positions, floor distribution and metering arranged around an office day rather than a residential one | Understanding what the building can carry before anyone plans an addition to it |
| 88 Alfred Street, converted by 2018 | A sixteen level hotel, now 123 apartments | Conversions can carry hotel-era thinking: central plant, room-sized circuits, and corridors planned around housekeeping rather than residents | Apartment upgrades inside a building that was never planned around them |
| The recent builds | Apartments, from the first drawing | Post-tensioned concrete, full height glazing, and very little wall you can actually use | Everything in the plan above, on more or less every job |
The scan that happens before the drill
You cannot tell a post-tensioned slab from a conventionally reinforced one by looking at it, and plenty of buildings have no usable as-built drawings either. That matters because a post-tensioned slab has steel tendons running through it stressed to roughly 70 to 80 per cent of their ultimate tensile strength. Cut one and it releases that energy instantly, which is a safety problem for whoever is holding the tool and a structural problem for the building afterwards.
So the sequence in a concrete building is not negotiable for us, and it is not us being precious: the area gets scanned with ground penetrating radar before any core or deep penetration, and the structural engineer approves the location in writing before anyone drills. This is industry practice and risk control rather than a clause you can look up, which is exactly why it gets skipped. We also do not chase structural slabs or columns, and nobody should without a structural engineer's assessment, because the concrete cover over the reinforcement is a designed dimension rather than spare material. If a trade offers to core your ceiling this afternoon without any of that, it tells you something useful about them.
Everything else runs the ordinary way. We work to AS/NZS 3000, we keep accessories out of the bath zones, which run 0.6 metres horizontally out from the edge of the bath and 2.25 metres up from the floor, with a further zone beyond that where ingress protection and residual current rules apply, and every job that requires it is certified: a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work lodged within 7 days of the electrical test, through the BCNSW eCert portal, which has been the only accepted route since 1 July 2026.
Living against an amusement park, and what that does to a flat
Luna Park opened on 4 October 1935 and has been on the State Heritage Register as a precinct since 2010: the Entrance Face and Towers, the Midway, Coney Island, the Crystal Palace, the Wild Mouse, the Rotor, the quarried sandstone cliff face and the fig trees. Its address is 1 Olympic Drive, Milsons Point, though it fronts Lavender Bay and council groups it into the Lavender Bay planning area, which is the sort of detail that only matters when someone is arguing about a boundary.
The arrangement around noise is genuinely unusual and worth knowing if you live on Glen or Northcliff Street. Section 19A of the Luna Park Site Act 1990, inserted by the 2005 noise control amendment, sets a maximum permissible level of 85 dB(A), measured as LA10 over fifteen minutes at the closest residential facade. That is a measurement method rather than a time limit: LA10 is the level exceeded ten per cent of the time across the sample. Noise that stays within it is then declared not to be a public or private nuisance, with no criminal proceedings, civil proceedings or noise abatement action available. Noise above it is not covered. A planning assessment for the park put external ride noise along those two streets at 66 to 76 dB(A) once the Big Dipper was removed, with peaks as high as 80 dB(A) at property boundaries in some conditions. General information only, not legal advice.
That design is where it becomes our problem rather than an acoustic consultant's. Apartments here are built sealed, with acoustic glazing that does not open, and a sealed apartment puts the entire comfort load onto mechanical systems. Ventilation and air conditioning circuits matter more here than in a house where the answer is a window. Blackout and acoustic blinds come up constantly, and their motors split three ways: low voltage at 12 or 24 volts DC, which needs a power supply and a fixed feed at the head box; 240 volt motors, which are hardwired; and rechargeable battery motors, which need no wiring at all. The first two have to be planned before the ceiling closes. And the other neighbour is about to reopen: North Sydney Olympic Pool returns on 7 August 2026 after more than five years and roughly $122 million, against an original estimate of $64 million.
The jobs the phone rings about in Milsons Point
Not a generic service list. This is what actually comes in from a suburb of concrete apartments.
Apartment switchboards
The board in the hallway cupboard, brought up to current protection, labelled so the next person can read it, and sized for what the apartment actually runs.
Switchboard upgradesLighting in concrete
Track, bulkhead and perimeter solutions for ceilings you cannot chase, plus the dimmer and driver matching that stops the flicker people assume is normal.
Lighting installationCommon property and strata
Risers, common area lighting, main switchboards and written scopes a committee can vote on rather than a verbal number nobody can minute.
Strata electricianData and comms
Hard-wired points in an apartment where the walls are concrete and the router is wherever the builder happened to leave the lead, by a registered cabler.
Data cablingBathroom heat and extraction
Heating and ventilation in a wet area with fixed clearances and no easy duct route, which is the apartment version of a simple job.
Bathroom heatersSurge protection
A large share of damaging transients are estimated to start inside the building, which in a tower of a hundred apartments means a great deal of switching.
Surge protectionStreets and places we work in
The ridge along Alfred Street, the streets that run down to the water, and the buildings between the bridge and Lavender Bay.
- Alfred Street South
- Alfred Street Exit
- Lavender Street
- Glen Street
- Northcliff Street
- Burton Street
- Burton Lane
- Cliff Street
- Dind Street
- Fitzroy Street
- Harbourview Crescent
- Mary Wollstonecraft Lane
- Olympic Drive
- Olympic Place
- Paul Street
- Ennis Road
- Greenway
- Bradfield Park
- Luna Park
- North Sydney Olympic Pool
- Milsons Point station
- Milsons Point wharf
Milsons Point and Kirribilli share postcode 2061 and a few people share the streets between them. If you are not sure which side you are on, the address will tell us.
Milsons Point electrical questions
Can I get a power point on the window wall?
No, and it is worth knowing why rather than just being told no. A full height glazed wall is not a wall in the electrical sense: there is no cavity to run a cable in and nothing to fix a box to, and the mullions between the panes are structural framing rather than spare space. So the answer is always a redesign rather than a refusal. Floor boxes where the slab allows them, a low level outlet on the return wall, a joinery-integrated point in a cabinet, or bringing the circuit down the one internal partition that faces the right way. Tell us what you are actually trying to plug in and we will find the honest option.
Our building used to be an office. Does that change anything?
It can, and it is unusually common in this postcode. Several of the towers along Alfred Street were built as commercial floors in the 1980s and 1990s, and one of them was a sixteen level hotel until it became apartments in 2017. A building's services are laid out around the way it was expected to be used: where the risers run, how the floors are distributed, how the metering is arranged, and what simultaneous load the design assumed. None of that is wrong after a conversion, but it is worth understanding before anyone plans an addition. When we work in a converted building the first thing we do is find out what it used to be.
Why do you have to scan the ceiling before drilling one hole?
Because in a concrete tower you cannot tell what is in the slab by looking at it. Many are post tensioned, which means steel tendons run through the slab stressed to something like 70 to 80 per cent of their ultimate tensile strength. Cut one and it releases that energy instantly, which is a safety problem and a structural one, and the repair is not small. Older buildings frequently have no usable as-built drawings either, so the control is the same regardless: scan the area with ground penetrating radar first, and get the structural engineer's written approval of the location before anyone cores. That is industry practice and risk control rather than a clause in a standard, which is exactly why some people skip it. It adds a step. It also means nobody is guessing about somebody else's floor.
We want motorised blinds. What is actually involved?
More planning than product. Blind motors come three ways. Low voltage ones run on 12 or 24 volts DC, which means a power supply and a fixed feed near the head box rather than a power point behind the couch. Mains voltage motors at 240 volts are hardwired. Battery motors need no wiring at all. For the first two the cabling wants to be in before the ceiling or the bulkhead closes. In an apartment with a glazed wall that is the whole job: getting a supply to the top of the glass without chasing structure. If the room is already finished it is still doable, but the route matters and the honest conversation is about where the cable can go, not which motor is quietest. For a single window a battery motor sidesteps the whole question and is often the sensible answer.
More than a fifth of the dwellings here were unoccupied on census night. Does that affect getting work done?
It affects common property work more than it affects your own apartment. The census found 335 of the suburb's private dwellings unoccupied on census night, which it does not explain: it counts anyone simply away that night alongside investor-owned lots, second homes and places between tenancies. For anything inside your own lot it changes nothing. For work in the risers, the common areas or the main switchboard it can slow the approval down, because owners corporations with a lot of absent owners take longer to get decisions made and longer to get access arranged. If you are on a committee, the useful thing we provide is a written scope the meeting can actually vote on rather than a verbal quote.
Can we move the light in the middle of the living room ceiling?
Sometimes, and the constraint is the slab. Your ceiling is the underside of the floor above, so a new position needs either an existing ceiling void to run through, a bulkhead or track to run along, or a surface route done properly rather than apologetically. What we will not do is chase a structural slab to hide a cable. The good outcomes in apartments usually come from working with the geometry instead of against it: a track from the existing point, a run inside a bulkhead, or lighting moved to the perimeter where the internal partitions give us somewhere to go.
Luna Park is loud. Is there anything electrical that helps?
We are electricians rather than acoustic consultants, so the honest answer is that the soundproofing itself is somebody else's trade. What we can tell you is how the noise shapes the electrical side. Apartments here are built sealed, with acoustic glazing that does not open, and a sealed apartment puts the whole comfort load onto mechanical systems, so ventilation and air conditioning circuits matter more here than in a house where you would just open a window. Blackout and acoustic blinds and their motors come up constantly for the same reason. Worth knowing too: section 19A of the Luna Park Site Act 1990 sets a maximum of 85 dB(A), measured as LA10 over a fifteen minute sample at the closest residential facade, and provides that noise staying within that limit is not a public or private nuisance. Noise above it is not covered. That is general information rather than legal advice, and worth checking with someone qualified if it matters to you.
How does your pricing work?
Attending your job is a chargeable callout. We confirm what it costs when you book, and the price for the work itself is agreed before we start, so there are no surprises on the invoice.
We also cover the rest of the lower North Shore
Kirribilli is the same postcode and a completely different building stock, which is worth a read if you are comparing the two.
- Kirribilli
- North Sydney
- McMahons Point
- Lavender Bay
- Waverton
- Wollstonecraft
- Crows Nest
- Neutral Bay
- Cremorne
- Sydney CBD
See the full list of locations we service, or start at the residential hub for how the whole supply chain fits together.
Need an electrician in Milsons Point?
Upfront pricing, with the price agreed before we start. Tell us the building and what you want to achieve, and we will work out the route.