Does Your Older Home Need Rewiring?

Most wiring faults are invisible. The cable sits in the roof space doing its job for decades, and the first hint that it has aged is usually something small. A light that flickers in one room. A powerpoint that has been loose for years. A board in the meter box that still has ceramic fuses in it.

Older housing stock is common right through the Peninsula, Frankston and the bayside suburbs. The question worth answering is whether your wiring has simply got old, or has got dangerous.

Why old wiring wears out

Wiring does not fail all at once. Energy Safe Victoria puts it plainly: the insulated coating on household wiring degrades over time and can leave bare wires exposed, and if bare wires touch, the result can be a house fire. It also notes that contact with degraded wiring can be fatal.

The other half of the problem is load. Energy Safe Victoria says fire brigades respond to more than 300 domestic electrical fires each year, and that many are caused by old wiring that has degraded or is unable to cope with the demands of modern electrical equipment.

A house wired several decades ago was not planned around a ducted heat pump, an induction cooktop, a second fridge in the garage and a car on charge in the driveway.

The signs the regulator says to watch for

Energy Safe Victoria's Test. Reset. Protect. campaign lists tell tale signs that wiring may be faulty:

• Old switchboards, particularly those without a safety switch.
• Old power switches or powerpoints, particularly broken ones.
• Flickering lights.
• Sparks from switchboards, switches or powerpoints.

You can check every one of those by looking and nothing else. Open the meter box door, look, and close it again. Walk the house and look at the powerpoints and light switches.

Do not take a cover off anything, and do not try to tidy up a broken powerpoint. Energy Safe Victoria's advice on a loose, cracked or broken powerpoint switch is not to touch it or attempt to repair it, but to cover it immediately and arrange for a licensed electrician to replace it.

Age alone is not a verdict

There is no year on the calendar where a house becomes unsafe. There is a point where guessing stops being reasonable.

Energy Safe Victoria's guidance is that if your house is over 30 years old, consider what could be behind your walls and get the wiring checked by a licensed electrician. For a purchase it is firmer again: when buying a home built before the 1980s, it says the wiring must be checked by a licensed electrical inspector or registered electrical contractor before you move in.

A check turns a guess into a decision. A full rewire is one outcome. So is replacing a couple of tired circuits, or bringing the switchboard up to date and leaving the rest alone. The point is to find out which one you are facing.

A renovation opens the walls

If work is planned for this spring, have the wiring assessed before the trades start rather than after.

With plaster off and ceilings open, cable can be run where it should go instead of fished through a closed cavity. It is also the moment you settle what is awkward to revisit later: where the powerpoints land, how many circuits the kitchen gets, whether the switchboard stays put.

It also changes what sort of job it is. Where the work reaches the consumer mains, the main switchboard, the meter box or the main earthing system, Energy Safe Victoria classes that as prescribed work, which must be inspected by an independent Licensed Electrical Inspector that your contractor arranges. Work that stays at the powerpoint and lighting end is non prescribed, and no inspection is required. Ask which one applies before the work starts.

If you rent the property out

For a rental this stops being a judgement call. Consumer Affairs Victoria states that rental providers who entered a new agreement after 29 March 2021 must have all electrical installations and fittings checked by a licensed electrician at least once every two years, and that the check must be carried out in accordance with section 4 of AS/NZS 3019, Electrical installations, periodic verification.

There is a wiring requirement on top of the check. Consumer Affairs Victoria states that from 29 March 2023, all power outlets and lighting circuits in a rental premises must be connected to both a switchboard type circuit breaker and a switchboard type residual current device. In an older property that has never had safety switches fitted, satisfying that is switchboard work.

What to do next

Walk through with a torch and look. Note the age of the house, whether the switchboard has a safety switch on it, and any powerpoint or switch that is cracked, broken or warm. Look only.

If the house is over 30 years old and nobody has ever checked the wiring, book the check. Energy Safe Victoria is unambiguous that electrical work is not a DIY job, even for small jobs such as changing powerpoints or light switches, so a cracked powerpoint is a phone call rather than a Saturday task. If a renovation is coming, have the assessment done while there is still time to act on what it finds.