Electrician in Armstrong Creek

A board installed since 2011 has RCBOs or RCDs on the final subcircuits, a labelled schedule and usually a couple of spare ways. That removes the whole first act of a job in an older suburb. There is no ceramic fuse to replace, no unbonded metalwork, no asbestos backing behind the panel.

What we check instead is what the builder left. Estate boards are sometimes compliant but tight, the inverter position was chosen for the installer rather than for a battery arriving later, and the builder solar was often sized to satisfy a requirement rather than to cover the household. All three are fixable, and cheaper to fix while another job is already open.

There is no subfloor in an Armstrong Creek house. Slab on ground construction means a new circuit runs through the roof space and drops down inside a wall cavity, which is straightforward on new trusses but limits where a drop can actually land.

Internal walls with a clear cavity above them are fine. An external wall with insulation and sarking, a wall with a bulkhead over it, or a spot below a first floor are harder and sometimes need a surface solution instead. We work the drop points out on site before quoting extra power points or a new lighting circuit, because that is what decides whether it is a two hour job or a day.

Side access on these lots is commonly a 900mm path on one side only, because the double garage takes the other. That is the practical limit on outdoor equipment. A split system condenser, a heat pump hot water unit and a battery all want wall space and clearances, and there is one usable side of the house to put them on.

Noise setback to the neighbour is the first consideration, not the last. Estate homes sit close together, and an outdoor unit a couple of metres from a bedroom window over the fence is a problem you will hear about. We position units with the neighbouring floor plan in mind, which on a repeated estate design is usually predictable.

Roofs here are Colorbond and lightweight tile on new trusses at a low 20 to 22 degrees, in sound condition, and the modern street grid means orientation varies enough that plenty of homes end up with a west or east array. A 6.6kW system is $4,500 to $8,500 before STCs and roughly $3,000 to $6,000 after, and a 10kWh battery is $8,000 to $12,000 before rebates.

A single phase 7kW charger is $1,200 to $2,200 installed, and with the garage next to the board most Armstrong Creek installs are at the lower end of that. Where solar, a battery and a charger all share a single phase supply, load management with a current transformer is worth adding so the charger backs off rather than the main switch tripping.

We work Armstrong Creek from Altona, about 70km away. That means booked work, not call outs. Geelong region jobs go in the diary in blocks so a run of installs shares the trip, and we tell you the week rather than the hour when the job is scheduled.

For a suburb full of chargers, batteries and heat pumps that is the right model, because none of that is urgent work. Powercor is the distributor here and in our own area, so the connection application and export approval follow a process we already lodge. REC 37223 for electrical, SAA S3962281 for solar and battery, 12 month workmanship guarantee.