Electricians in O’Connor
O’Connor is one of the inner north’s original suburbs, gazetted in September 1928 and named after Richard O’Connor, one of the first High Court judges. It runs from Northbourne Avenue’s western edge up to the bush of O’Connor Ridge, and most of it is still detached houses on leafy streets, with townhouses and flats in the eastern parts closer to Sullivans Creek.
Many of the calls we get from here are about electrifying: car chargers, heat pumps in place of gas heaters, better lighting, solar and data. The challenge is fitting all of that into homes whose wiring was planned for a radio and a few lamps.
O’Connor homes and what they need
The Tocumwal cottages. The suburb’s best-known houses did not start life in Canberra. They were built during the Second World War at the air base in Tocumwal, in the Riverina, then moved here after the war to ease the capital’s housing shortage. Roughly 200 of them went into a small group of eight cul-de-sacs, now the Tocumwal Housing Precinct on the ACT Heritage Register. They are fibro and weatherboard, with wide verandahs, steep roofs and red brick chimneys. Electrically, that means lightweight walls that are easy to run cable through, but older sheeting that may contain asbestos and should not be cut. We work from the roof space and under the floor where we can.
Post-war family homes. Much of the rest of O’Connor filled in after the war, and plenty of those houses have been extended since. A typical example has a modest original switchboard, a kitchen that has been redone once or twice, and circuits that were never planned around a 7 kW car charger and a couple of reverse-cycle units running at once.
Townhouses and flats. Medium density in the east of the suburb brings shared driveways and body corporate rules into the picture, especially for car charging.
The jobs we are asked for most in O’Connor
EV chargers are the job O’Connor residents ask us about most. Before we quote, we check the supply, the board and the cable run to where you park. In a house with a small supply, load management lets the charger back off when the oven and heating are on.
Heating and cooling is next: dedicated circuits for split systems and ducted heat pumps, often as part of moving off gas.
Lighting and solar and batteries follow, then data and cabling for home offices. Where several of these are on the wish list, a switchboard upgrade is usually the sensible first step, so every new circuit has somewhere to go.
For the rest of the district, see our Inner North Canberra page.
Getting a quote
Tell us what you have in mind through the free quote form or on 0434 913 935. If you are planning several upgrades over a few years, list them all, because it changes what we recommend for the board. You will hear back within 24 hours. We look at the house, then send a fixed price in writing. Fused Electrical Co is a family business based in Calwell, licensed (476229C), insured and rated 5.0 on Google.
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