Hello all,
Being on this website for a while now and always enjoy reading AMAs so I thought I'd start one myself. 10 years experience which includes 4 year apprenticeship and 6 years out of my trade.
Employed full-time, I'd class myself as a commercial electrician, mainly doing new installs on shopping centres and high rises throughout my career. I do feel like my knowledge as an electrician in other fields is lacking but I will do my best to answer any queries.
I would be, yes. however I don't do cashies
I have a 3 way light switch (one light and 2 switches) and I thought it was all in sync when I got the house (i.e. both switches on or both off means the light is off, one or the other on and the light is on). Now the switches are out of sync - is it possible for the switch behaviour to have changed without rewiring? (Maybe I just remembered wrong about when I first moved in)
This is just the nature of a two way switch. (3 way switching has 3 switches, I.E 3 ways to switch a light on) The only way to change this would be to go to push button switching.
I bought a display home and back when it was still on display to the public, they had speakers on the ceiling that played music.
Now that we’ve moved in, the company removed the system that played the music but the speakers are still there.
Is it an electrician that I call to reconnect it or a completely different field?
An electrician should have no problem connecting a hi-fi system, however if you are looking at something like balancing surround sound or advice on hi-fi equipment it'd be best to talk to an expert in that field.
The set up is quite confusing. The display centre had two houses. House A and House B. Let’s say we bought house B.
The hi fi system was located in House A (because that’s where the walk through office was). When the system plays music, both house A and B would have the same song.
When we moved in, house A was still shown to the public and therefore the music was still playing and house B was not.
Do you think this is still something an electrician can look into?
sparky, data cabler, or sound guy could all do it.
Thanks for the AMA.
What do you think about the air conditioning peak smart program?
Will this cause issue to the actual Air condition unit down the track?
I don't see the problem with the peak smart program, just reducing strain on their network and saves you some money.
I don't believe there is any real issue to the a/c unit, the unit itself actually have terminals specifically which you wire into for this program. Don't deal/work with a/c units, so I cant be any more help.
Hi there..
So this might be a silly question but if you do get an electrician to come out do you ask to view his license and do you get some paperwork to hold on to for insurance purposes even if the task of replacing or installing a new plug point is pretty simple?
Has any body on the forum every had an insurance company ask for certificates?
You could always do a license search on QLD governed website providing the contractor is in QLD; https://fswqap.worksafe.qld.gov.au/elis/searchPrepare.do?dis… .
Other than a invoice, you should also be given a certificate of compliance which details the work performed I believe. Not exactly 100% sure as I'm not an electrical contractor. Although Information can be found here; https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industries/building-property…
"Sparky" or "Lecky"?
Do you enjoy working with strippers?
Probably get called precious more than lecky. Rarely work with strippers unfortunately, only when there's a lot of control wiring going on ;)
I like strippers that reveal just the right amount…
Seriously though, there'd be nothing more boring than stripping and crimping ferrules all day long for a big switchboard. Saw the most awesome power tool by Weidmuller or Phoneix Contact or one of those guys at a tradeshow that stripped and crimped all in one. Shove an insulated wire in, out it comes with a ferrule crimped on, awesome!
sounds like a tool that'll cost an arm and a leg haha
Far out mate! I got ultrahyped to hear the answer. But later found out I thought of something else. Painted a nice picture in my mind though!! Lol
What do customers usually get for sparky jobs in terms of certifications and sign offs. For instance I've bought my house, haven't seen anything to do with electrical certifications except maybe the original council inspection when the place was built (not first owner).
So if you hire a sparky, are you meant to get some signed off paper work? If someone bought that Bunnings outdoor sensor floodlight and wired it in themselves, how would anyone tell?
(No, not me, mine is a standalone solar type lol)
Usually you'll find something on the underside of the main switchboard door possibly? Yes, the previous owners will probably have some form of invoice and certificate of compliance for any electrical work perform which they probably have thrown out. However contractors are supposed to keep them for up to five years.
There is no way telling other than getting an electrician in to do a full test and test every point and even then, if a DIYer correctly wired up a light, there's no way telling really
This is why the whole "you need a certificate or insurance won't payout" statements are sometimes pointless. If you are a subsequent owner of a house, chances are you're not going to have a stack of certificates from every post build installations done to the place (i.e fans, lights, outletrs whatever) so I have no idea how an insurance company would assess a claim.
Some outlawed electrical work is so simple how would they even tell as well? If something is wired up exactly the same as the rest of the place, how would I know if it was a previous DIY job or not?
The next closest thing that came to mind (aside from paperwork) was some sort of tag like you get at work when every XX months you get people test tagging all the equipment.
I have MR16 halogen lights in my kitchen, and I'm 100% sure thy are all much dimmer than they were a year or so ago. Would that just be because the globes need replacing, or could it be due to transformer? How hard t replace with GU10 lights?
(SOrry if this is too residential)
They do go dull after a while. Honestly, without exagerating I have changed over 200,000 in my career. Swap them out for 3000k GU10 LEDs.
GU10 are straight 230 volt, no transformer.
I'd recommend Phillips brand MR16/GU5.3 LED globes if that's what you are running.
I have found they are the most reliable to use with older transformers that may have the low wattage blinking issue with other brands.
What size and colour are the silk gloves you wear?
Medium - black/grey
What is electricity?
I am asking about, for instance, sub-quantum dipole resonant induction (gravity-> telepathy-> particle field interactions <-> 3D physical world communication (photon).
What is the most complete understanding/theory your profession discuss?
Higgs boson, vortex etc are not options, as they don't define much of the universes anomalies and unexplained phenomenon incl. experimental.
Is matter a result of electricity driven through sub-quantum vibration (cause&effect) memory (DNA)?
What do you guys understand? If you could ask your mates, i'd appreciate and will check here later.
Nothing after reading your comment
How is your body holding up? I was on the tools as an electrician for about 15 years but ultimately had to give it up due to various work related medical problems, mostly with knees and finger joints. Also slightly concerned about the amount of silica dust and asbestos I've inhaled over the years.
Still going pretty good, honestly feel like I could be on the tools until I retire at the moment. Have come across asbestos a few time doing civil preliminary works on site. Reported it immediately and I was given a asbestos exposure form to fill out, maybe it'll cover my ass in the future.
How much is it to install a power outlet? I needed to buy an oven that had electric sparking but gas stove.
The install would require both an electrician and a plumber. One of them would charge $300, and the other $200. All the elec had to do was install a power outlet.
Shocking prices.
Too many variables, but price sounds about right.
Here's one I've wanted to ask for ages.
A previous owner of next door to one of my investment properties (a unit) renovated years ago. I remember during the renovation, he told the electrician to wire a wall outlet to the common area wiring.
The electrician refused so the owner did it. The two were mates.
I never said anything to anyone as I knew the neighbour quite well and outside of this issue, he was pretty a decent bloke.
This guy sold ages ago now and the new owner wouldn't have any idea.
I've always wanted to bring this up, but I don't want to get anyone in trouble and I don't know who I would talk to anyway.
My question is; can anyone get into trouble if we just called an electrician to fix the issue? Of course, that would beg the question of how did I know about it.
You lost me at 'wire a wall outlet to the common area wiring?'
Honestly the electrician won't really give a stuff. He'll come in and do the work and get out.
Thanks.
To clarify, the guy wired a wall outlet (which was in his unit and he pays the bill for) to the common area (which we all pay for)
wow haha, good on the electrician for refusing to do the dirty work for his so called 'mate. Answers the same, electrician will likely to catch on what's going on but he'll probably just do the work and get out.
Not sure if this is enough detail. But I want to replace my gas stove top with an electric one.
Any tips on which electric one to pick, and also, what kind of work is required from a sparky to install a electric stove top?
I have a electric oven right beneath the gas stove top.
Also if you can give a rough pricing estimate it’ll be helpful.
Thanks
You should visit a store like the good guys, they’ve got plenty on display for you to touch and see. Don’t buy the cheap brands go with a well known one with a good warranty. The good guys have been really good to deal with so far
An electrician will take a couple of hours at least to install and complete the work so expect $80-90 per hour or less if you are lucky and can get mates rates?
Depends on the type of house they’d have to see your place to know how easy it will be to do
If you’re in Melbourne in the eastern or south eastern suburbs and need an electrician, let me know. I’ve got my partner who works full time and licensed a electrical contractor
You will need a dedicated electrical feed run to the switchboard with its own breaker.
Depending on house, its a decent job.
You might also need a plumber/gasfitter to disconnect old gas stove & cap the pipe.
$$$$$
Hi OP,
Thanks a lot for this AMA session.
I have a few questions. I will post one question per comment for keeping the answer and comments together.
Short version question:
Best place you recommend to buy electrical connectors?
Longer:
I buy items from ebay such as LDR based relays that would break or make a circuit based on day light.
ex: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Automatic-Auto-On-Day-Off-Street…
Looking for best place to buy pendant type B22 holders, mains plugs, wires etc to make it a complete circuit that would allow me to make an LED light that comes on during night and turns off at night - in the cheapest cost possible.
I'd say for cheapest cost possible, eBay would be the place. You could get any thing you want without having an electrical license.
If I hold an Electrical/Electronics/Computer engineering degree from abroad, what would it take to make myself legally eligible to do my own home's electrical repairs or minor enhancements without it being my main profession?
Unfortunately you'll need to do a full apprenticeship as electrical in theory is not equal to electrical in practice. You could gain some RPL and shorten the theory side significantly, however the practical component requires a minimum 4000 hours of on the job experience over a minimum time frame of 3 years and 6 months.
You need to be locally certified, which is extra training. The only exception I have heard of is for New Zealand trained sparkies, because their courses and standards are equivalent to ours.
There are also "Offshore Technical Skills Record (OTSR)" shortcuts, but I don't know what they let you do.
I heard that in Australia there are few restrictions around certain installations should be only carried out by people who hold the license to do so.
Can you guide us to a website link that has these laws documented?
Could you elaborate
Why is my led dimmable oyster light blinking randomly after 10pm each day?
Anything to do to fix it? In an apartment btw.
-dirty power/ interference (someone in another apartment might have something feeding back into grid and your light is sensitive enough to blink from it)
-off/on peak ripple (made worse on dimmers) <- most likely
-faulty driver such as overheat? Since you probably only use it at night, might not be until 10pm that it heats up enough and goes on the blink
Our dimmable incandescents do the same - it is the "off peak" signals being sent down the power lines.
A different dimmer might prevent it, or a sparky can install a big clunky filter in your switchboard/meter box to minimise this.
We just live with it
You mentioned cable trays.
1) Have you used (can you recommend) hanging brackets, instead of the usual UniStrut+threaded rod trapeze? I'm particularly looking for ones which are open on one side, so you can add runs to the tray without having to thread through all the hangers.
2) How do you mount trayway VERTICALLY on a wall. Burndy makes little bent washer/clip things, but I have never seen them used
1) that is an awesome idea, unfortunately I have not come aross such system. How easy would cable hauling and adding circuits be!
2) Have never heard of the burndy system you're talking about, normally vertical mounted cable tray is mounted in two way; dyna bolt cable tray straight onto the structure or unistrut onto the structure and cable tray mounted to unistrut.
P.S unistrut can do a lot more than just support cable tray, so versatile!
Thinking about it, I actually have used L bracket unistrut, that may be something you looking for. Mount the vertical part of the L onto structure and horizontal part supports the tray. I'm terrible at explaining things lol
Thanks for the reply (and for starting this thread) !
1) My install is under RSJs/girders/H-beams/I-beams. There are a few different hangers like these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hanger-Support-Bracket-Cable-100mm/…
https://www.gripple.com/gb/en/p9/a6/g-bracket
but I haven't found a local reseller :-(
2) Yes. Dynabolt works well for flat-bottomed trays, but some of the pressed trays have deep raised/pressed sections on them.
I was hoping these:
https://www.burndycss.com.au/product/ltchd/
would take the weight without big bolts/washers intruding into the tray.
Are bayonet to screw adaptors (and vice versa) really illegal/dangerous?
BC to ES are extermely dangerous due to a 50% chance of energising the external screwed part of the E.S.
How was your apprenticeship, was it as expected, did u get treated like shit, did you feel useless at times, or considered a career change, and are you glad you didnt now that your fully licensed?
My apprenticeship was great, I definitely expected to get treated shit but definitely did not. You do feel useless at times due to the nature of the job you get given, get given pretty much all jobs that required a spotter eg. following the scissor lift service guy around all day on site because hes not inducted so he requires a spotter with him at all times. However smoko and wholesaler runs was the best!! Burnt so much time and get paid to drive haha.
Never considered a career change, pretty happy with my current career.
I'm not sure what your last question is?
One thing for sure. Time goes by so slow when you're an apprentice and when you're a tradesmen, time fies. I think it's because you don't have any responsibly/pressure as an apprentice as opposed to a tradesmen where you basically work to keep you job lol if I make any sense.
Why is it illegal to run data cables through your own loft space? Example: a 50m Cat 5 cable up inside a wall, through the loft and down through another wall. Cat 5 ports on either end. No power involved.
You need to have a license to run data cable. So without a license, My guess it's illegal to run data cable lol
I don't have a data license myself, so I guess it's also illegal for me to run data cables. I believe its a two week course in tafe for me (cabling license) but I'm not sure what it's limited to as opposed to a qualified data technician whose done a 3 year apprenticeship.
How did you complete your apprenticeship and not at the least, gain an open cabling license? I completed mine back in……. 07??? And it was and has been a part of the Cert 3, Electrotechnology/Systems Electrician course since as long as I can remember. 🤔
We get to choose between 2 elective subjects at tafe, it was either PLCs or data which runs for roughly 2 weeks at tafe. My employer booked my tafe course and picked PLC over data. Did you guys have a PLC as a subject back then? (programmable logic controller for anyone wondering)
@bargaingambler: Yep. Covered off both. Interesting! 🤔
I hope (for the sake of today's sparkies), that it isn't going the path of plumbers licensing system - a ticket for every discipline.
Better for the public and obviously tafes/governments due to the increase in fees collected but not so great for sparkies wanting to jump discipline's.
It's a bit silly but there are regs around structured (data) cabling (and fibre, aerial, etc). Generally, basic networking throughout your house, I definitely wouldn't waste my time with an electrician/comms technician.
If you had your time again, would you have become a plumber instead? Ie, which do you think is the better trade to get into?
I'm happy with being an electrician. I think both gigs are pretty good, probably two of the higher paid trades too.
Do I cut the purple wire, or the orange wire???! Quick!
I'm eight hours too late, did it go boom?
Eight hours late? Isn't that best practice in your industry?
Ouch
How much would you charge for a full day's work?
Building a house, need to get 45 down lights, 4 chandeliers, 4 fluros, 8 small outdoor lamps installed.
more does this take more than 1 day?
Still 4 months away to completion, so just curious at this stage. will shop around in about 2 months time.
I can kind of can guess a rough price but I don't know really know how correct I'll be as there are many variables;
If it's a new house, wouldn't you need power points as well?
I'd say for the amount of lights you've given me and assuming it's a one story house, I'd say you should allow 1-2 days depending how many tradies are there. sparky rate can range from $65-$110/hr so you can do the math
Haven’t been in a house with full automation before so I can’t really comment. Definitely something I’d have when it becomes more affordable
Waste of money (if you're referring to clipsal c-bus and other branded systems).
Rule of thumb is you'll almost double your installation costs and with how many smart devices there are available these days, I honestly feel it's a bit redundant.10 or so years ago if you had the money to burn, it was the bees knees.
The more the days tick over, the less prevelant that is in my opinion. I have plenty of smart devices throughout my house and even that novelty wears thin, home automation even more so (for your average Joe).
Thanks for the AMA
Question - when it rains hard the circuit breaker trips and cannot be flicked back on for about 30 mins after the heavy rain event. Is there a way to test what is leaking?
I had an electrician come out and he told me i could try to replace the whole switch board for $3k+. He could not guarantee that the problem would go away after spending that much.
I have outdoor lights that are hardwired but I don’t see any leaks.
Should I spend the money for a switchboard upgrade?
I will leave OP to answer about the costs but if I were you - I would diagnose the problem by turning off all the distribution cut off when this happens next time and if breaker stays on turn on the sections one by one to find the faulty circuit. If the circuit breaker triggers even with all the distribution circuits off - the problem lies in the main circuit but replacing the switchboard without finding the water leak is if no use as the problem will resurface.
This issue is quite common, especially in older switchboards. Yes, your electricians will be able to performs test required to find the problem. Doesn't necessarily need water leaking to cause it to trip, even a bit of moisture can cause it to trip. My guess would be insulation breakdown of the cable with the assistant of moisture somewhere.
Another likely cause of nuisance tripping would be your switchboard, may be really dirty, dusty, deadly geckos/bugs sitting on your protection devices(circuit breakers/rcds)which isn't quite enough to trip it, but when it rain moisture in the air will be enough to push it over.
Just in my experience.
$3000 does sound quite up there but what's involved? how old is your switchboard? how many protection devices will he need to install? will he perform a full electrical test after installing your new switchboard?
Likely a leaking fitting that water is getting into. You should be able to narrow it down to one particular circuit. Then it's a matter of inspecting each light/power outlet until you find it. If it is indeed water ingress, you should work it out pretty quickly. The guts of these things tend to rust pretty quickly when submerged in any form of water for a even a short period of time!
Changing over your switchboard won't solve your problems, it may even add to them if it's older wiring that depends on the older installation methods.
Ok, please tell me what the story is with this wiring…
My front porch light has three different switches, plus is on motion sensor.
If I turn one of the switches on, the light can only be turned off with the same switch. To make things a real pain, when the light goes on, it stays on for a minimum of 30 seconds or so (due to sensor?) even if I turn the switch off immediately.
So if one of the kids has left the light on, I have to try each of the three switches (inside garage, by front entry and in bedroom) one at a time, and stay 30 seconds to see if it was that switch or not before trying the next one.
My guess is a combination, master switch, switch for sensor position, and 3rd one for always on.
There are 3 and 4 position switches for this exact reason, to limit the amount of switches and size of the switch plate needed.
Some more modern sensor lights can do away with the lot as well as the extra cabling normally required to have such a feature.
If you combine the 2, modern sensor light plus multiple switches, you can run into a few guessing games with switches that can be fun and games.
Have you electrocuted yourself before?
lol yes
If he had, he'd be dead - making this thread scary AF!
electrocuted = dead
Hi bargaingambler,
When I lived in New Zealand, you could get certification that allowed you to do basic electricians' work: plugs and light switches - that sort of thing. I believe it was used by apprentices and home handymen.
Is there an equivalent in Australia?
No such thing here in Queensland and pretty sure whole of Australia mate. That'd save a lot of money for house owners
I see a slot of people.here who don't understand.business . No wonder so many fail
for downlights that are attached to plugs, are we able to strip the wire and remove the plug in order to hardwire it?
Yes but you will most likely be also removing your down lights warranty, usually manufacturer states that the plug is to be used. I don't a reason why you would hard wire it? Unless it's a DIY job and you only know how to hard wire and not install plug bases.
Hard wire when there is no earth for plugbase. Lazy mans way lol
lol what?
@bargaingambler: As in, hardwiring downlights is a good option when there is no earth in the roofspace to connect to plugbase. I know you technically should run an earth but this is an alternative
What do you think about having to take exams in renewing your license every five years, plus a $80 donation to the QLD government
Don't really see anything wrong with it, is there an issue about it you want to discuss?
My residential property has 3 phase power when we purchased it. Is there any way to test that it in fact works without purchasing a 3 phase machinery?
First google search; https://reductionrevolution.com.au/blogs/news-reviews/three-…
Australian website too
do you get offended when someone asks for discount if you do a cashie?