Emergency Electrician, Melbourne Western Suburbs

Most calls that come in as emergencies are not, and people are usually relieved to hear it. The ones that genuinely are share one feature. There is a live conductor, a heat source or a shock risk that will not wait until Monday morning.

We would far rather someone called and was told to isolate a circuit and book normally than sat up all night worried, or worse, went poking at something with a screwdriver. The list below is roughly how we triage a call on the phone.

The first decision is whether to isolate. If you can safely reach the switchboard, turn off the affected circuit, or the main switch if you are not certain which circuit is involved. Do not stand in water to reach a switch, and do not touch anything that is smoking, arcing or wet.

If someone has taken a shock, do not touch them while they are still in contact with the source. Isolate the supply first, or use something dry and non-conductive to break the contact. Treat any shock seriously even if the person seems fine, because heart rhythm problems can develop hours later. Call 000 if they are unresponsive, burned or in pain.

Then leave it alone. The most common thing that turns a manageable fault into a serious one is somebody resetting a protective device four or five times against a real fault. One reset is reasonable. If it trips straight back in, that device is doing exactly what it was fitted to do.

We work out of a workshop at 11/23-25 Jordan Close, Altona, which puts most of the west inside a short run rather than a dispatch across the city. At two in the morning, the difference between a local van and a dispatcher in the east is an hour of sitting in the dark.

Altona, Altona North, Altona Meadows, Seaholme, Williamstown, Newport and Spotswood are minutes away. Laverton, Point Cook, Yarraville, Footscray, Maidstone and Braybrook are a short run up or across. Sunshine, Sunshine North, Hoppers Crossing and Werribee are further out and take a little longer, particularly in the evening peak, and we will give you a realistic window on the phone rather than an optimistic one. The full list is on our service areas page, and there is a dedicated page for an electrician in Altona if you want the local detail.

When you call we will ask what you can see and smell, whether anyone has been hurt, whether the street has power, and whether you can safely reach the switchboard. That is triage, not a script. Sometimes it ends with us telling you to turn one switch off and go back to bed, which costs you nothing.

After hours work costs more, everywhere and from everyone, because it means getting a qualified person out of bed. Anyone advertising the same rate at 1am as at 1pm is recovering it somewhere else in the invoice.

What we will not do is use an urgent attendance as an opening for a sales conversation. If the fault is a failed device that takes twenty minutes, that is what you pay for. If the installation underneath it is past its service life, you get the test results and a written quote, not a scare campaign at midnight. Our guide to what electricians charge in Melbourne sets out the business hours figures.

After enough of these calls the causes stop being surprising. Five findings account for the large majority of what we attend, and none of them are exotic.

The first job on any emergency call is to make the installation safe. That might mean isolating and locking off a circuit, disconnecting a faulty hardwired appliance, or replacing a failed protective device so the rest of the house has power while the faulty part stays off.

On the first visit we can generally replace a failed breaker, RCD or RCBO, isolate and terminate a damaged circuit, replace a damaged outlet, switch or light fitting, disconnect a faulty hardwired appliance, restore power to unaffected circuits, and carry out fault finding with test instruments to establish exactly where the problem sits.

What we often cannot finish the same night is the larger work behind it. A full switchboard upgrade, a rewire of a damaged circuit through a roof space, replacing consumer mains, or anything needing the distributor to attend or parts that are not on the van. That is normal and we say so on site rather than improvising an expensive overnight fix that would be done better and cheaper in daylight. You pay for the call-out and the time, and when we return in normal hours to complete the repair you are charged for the repair, not a second call-out.

If the fault turns out to sit on the network side of the point of supply, we will tell you that and hand it across rather than charging you to work on something that is not yours. Our guide to power outage and storm preparation covers how to tell the difference before you pick up the phone.

Most of the emergencies we attend had been signalling for weeks. A breaker that trips occasionally and then holds. A warm faceplate. Lights that dip when the heater starts. A board with circuit breakers and no safety switches, which protects the wiring and does nothing for the people in the house. None of those are dramatic and all are cheap to deal with in business hours.

The three that pay for themselves most reliably are RCD protection on every final subcircuit, a surge diverter at the board which is far cheaper fitted while the board is already open, and working smoke alarms that are inside their ten year service life rather than merely beeping when tested.

Pivot Trade Services holds REC 37223 and ABN 87 689 296 937, and Dan Morgan leads the electrical side. Every job comes with a Certificate of Electrical Safety for prescribed work and a 12 month workmanship guarantee. For non urgent work, contact us or call 1300 748 688. For anything live, call 0401 500 446 at any hour. There is more detail on how we triage faults on our electrical emergencies page.