Southern Sydney Electrician

It depends on where the fault is, not on who noticed it. The broad rule in NSW is that anything serving more than one lot is common property and the owners corporation's responsibility, and anything serving only your lot and sitting inside it is yours. So the main switchboard, the meter room and the rising mains are the building's problem, and the circuits, points and fittings inside your unit are yours. The genuinely arguable part is your own submain and board where they sit outside the lot. Our job is usually to find the fault and tell you clearly which side of the line it landed on, in writing, so nobody has to guess.

The rising mains, which is the cable running up through the building feeding every unit's meter. In a block of that age it is often around fifty years old, was sized for a household with far fewer appliances, and has spent all of that time in a riser nobody opens. It rarely fails suddenly. It gets warm, then it gets hot at a termination, and the symptoms show up as flickering, as one unit's lights dimming when a neighbour's appliance starts, or as a smell in the stairwell. This is the single most worthwhile thing for an older strata committee to have looked at, because it is common property and it affects every lot in the building.

Usually yes, but it needs the building's agreement, not just an electrician. Because the charger and its cabling sit on common property, you generally need a by-law under section 108 of the Strata Schemes Management Act, which is a special resolution passed if no more than 25 per cent of the votes cast are against it. Where the works are treated as sustainability infrastructure the threshold is easier. In an existing car park a charger may also be exempt development under the planning rules, though councils vary. The practical work is usually a metered supply so your charging is billed to you rather than to the building.

Not if everyone installs a full-speed charger on its own circuit and no thought is given to it, which is exactly how most buildings get into trouble. The sensible approach is to plan the building once rather than approve chargers one at a time, and to use load management so the available capacity is shared rather than exceeded. Doing that early is far cheaper than a supply upgrade later, and it stops the fifth owner being told no after the first four were told yes. This is worth raising at a committee meeting before it becomes a queue of individual applications.

Yes, and the duty is stricter than most committees realise. Section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act requires the owners corporation to properly maintain and keep in a state of good repair the common property, and to renew or replace fixtures and fittings in it. It is a positive obligation rather than a reactive one, and it is not avoided by saying there is no money in the fund. If an owner suffers loss because it was not done, they can take it to NCAT. In practice that means a known electrical defect on common property is not something a committee can safely leave on the agenda for two years.

Yes, and we plan those jobs differently. Nearly half of Sutherland Shire is national park, and Bundeena and Maianbar sit inside it on the southern shore of Port Hacking, reached either by road through the park or by the ferry from Cronulla. It is a long way from anywhere in either direction. What that means practically is that we would rather scope the work properly, bring everything in one go and do the lot, than make three trips. If you have been putting other things off, that is the visit to mention them.

On the ocean front, yes. Salt in the air comes from breaking surf, and Cronulla, Wanda and Greenhays face open water the same way Collaroy does. Within a few hundred metres of the sand you want marine grade fixings, enclosures chosen for the position and dissimilar metals kept apart, or the fittings fail early and the brackets fail before the fittings. Port Hacking and Georges River frontages are milder, because sheltered water throws far less salt into the air than surf does. We have written the detail up on our Northern Beaches page and the same principles apply here.

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.