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This board had every reason to be replaced in the one enclosure: full, asbestos backed, and in the way of an EV charger and a battery. Here's the job from start to finish.

Nobody rings an electrician because their switchboard is full. They ring because they want an EV charger, or solar, or ducted air conditioning, and find out the hard way that there's nowhere to put it.

A gutted bathroom needs the electrician three times, not once. Here's what happens on each visit, and why this one got two extraction fans instead of one.

Circuits kept tripping in a 1950s home. Testing found perished rubber and cotton-braided cable still in service, with newer work joined straight onto it.

The board was modern and tidy. Behind the cover the main switch was charred, from a loose connection left behind by an earlier solar install.

Two 2400 watt radiant heaters over an alfresco, each on its own circuit. Most of the day went into getting the supplies out there, not into hanging the heaters.

A waiting room screen on a full-motion bracket, with a new outlet behind it so there's no cable on show. What commercial mounting asks for that domestic doesn't.

Plenty of Adelaide switchboards have an asbestos backing panel behind the fuses. Here's how to tell, why it isn't a reason to panic, and what it changes about replacing the board.

New board, LED lighting throughout, wall fans and a data connection trenched out to the shed. A working shed is a different job to a domestic one.

Four different types of outdoor fitting doing four different jobs, including sensor-operated lights on the shed that come on as you walk towards it.

Dimmable sconces in a master suite and a chandelier over a stairwell. One is a dimming problem, the other is an access problem.

Smeg appliances throughout and new LED lighting. A modern kitchen is a much bigger electrical load than the kitchen it replaces, and the total is what catches people out.

Two 3.2 kW radiant heaters, each on its own circuit. At that rating a pair of them is most of a small house, which is the whole reason they can't share.

Seven cameras covering a commercial premises in solid brick, where there are no wall cavities to hide a single cable in.

Induction, oven and a built-in microwave in a full kitchen renovation. Going from gas to induction means a new circuit, not a new plug.

Over forty downlights, every switch and powerpoint replaced, and a kitchen refit. Paint, floors and lighting together change a house more than any one of them alone.

Rewireable fuses, one safety switch covering a whole house, and hand-written labels. Three real boards and what each one tells you.

A 7 kW charger on its own dedicated circuit in a multi-level residential car park, where the wiring, the supply and the permissions all work differently to a house.

LED downlights through the house, and a wall-mounted TV with the power, HDMI and antenna all run inside the wall so nothing shows.

Hex LED panels across a garage ceiling. When your job is spotting swirl marks in black paint, ordinary garage lighting actively hides them.

Two large fans under a gabled pergola, so an outdoor space that was unusable on still summer evenings actually gets used.

A new continuous flow gas hot water unit needs power to run. This one had none anywhere near it, which surprises most people.

Lighting that kept tripping at a Golden Grove soccer club, traced to a buried join that had let moisture in and corroded the conductors.

A flush matt black outlet set into genuine stone, where the cutout is made off site and there's no second attempt if the size is wrong.

An underground supply out to the pool equipment, a weatherproof subboard, and a dedicated circuit for the pump, the lights and the heater so one fault can't take out the lot.

New downlights, a backlit LED mirror, powerpoints and an exhaust fan in a 1980 brick veneer bathroom that was originally wired for almost none of it.

One is free to fix and the other is a callout you pay for. Two minutes of checking tells you which, and it's the same two minutes we would ask you about on the phone.

A standard building inspection barely touches the electrical. Here's what to look at yourself during an open inspection, and which findings are cheap versus expensive.

A day without power and a box on the wall that looks much the same to most people. Here's what's actually going on, and what you should expect to receive at the end.

A ceiling fan costs cents a day. A split system costs dollars an hour. The interesting part is what happens when you run both, which is cheaper than running either on its own.

Nobody publishes real numbers, and most quotes are impossible to compare. Here's how electricians actually price work, and the questions that let you compare two quotes properly.

Four checks that take five minutes and rule out most of the bad outcomes, plus the warning signs worth walking away from.

A safety switch that keeps going off is usually telling you something real. Here's how to work out what, and when to stop resetting it and call someone.

The charger is the easy part. The switchboard, the cable run and whether your car can even use a faster charger are what decide the price and whether it works.

Thirty halogen downlights is 1,500 watts of lighting and a ceiling full of insulation gaps. The running cost is only half the problem.

Almost every expensive electrical regret in a renovation comes from the same cause. The layout was decided after the walls were closed up.

Safety switches and thermal scans catch two very different kinds of electrical fault. Here's what each one actually finds, and how often you need them.

The warning signs worth acting on, what a switchboard upgrade actually involves, and what it won't fix.

What halogen downlights actually cost to run in Adelaide, and what a proper LED upgrade involves beyond swapping globes.

The safety checks worth doing yourself, the ones that need a licensed electrician, and how to tell which is which.