If something electrical has failed and it cannot wait, use the quote form at the top of this page. Describe what happened, where you are and that it is urgent, and the job goes to a licensed electrician who attends after-hours callouts in your part of the Yarra Valley. If there is fire, smoke or someone has been shocked, call 000 first.
What counts as an electrical emergency?
Anything that is actively unsafe, and anything that leaves a household without power it genuinely needs. Burning or fishy smells at the switchboard or at an outlet, scorch marks around a power point, a fitting or switch that is hot to touch, buzzing or crackling from the board, sparks when something is plugged in, a cable pulled down or damaged by a fallen branch, water running into a switchboard or outdoor outlet. All of those are call-now jobs, and in every one of them the right first move is to switch off the main switch if you can reach it safely and then send an urgent enquiry.
Total loss of power to a house when the rest of the street still has supply is also an emergency, particularly in the colder months up the valley or where someone in the household relies on powered medical equipment. So is a safety switch that will not reset at all, because it means either a genuine fault on a circuit or a failed device, and you cannot tell which from the outside. What is usually not an emergency, though it feels like one, is a single dead power point, a light that has stopped working, or an appliance that will not start. Those are next-day jobs and you will pay less for them by waiting.
The power is off. Before you call, check these three things
First, look outside. If your neighbours are dark too, it is a network outage and an electrician cannot help; AusNet Services is the distributor for the Yarra Valley and the outer east, and their faults line is 13 17 99. Second, if only your place is out, open the switchboard and look at the main switch and the RCDs: a device sitting halfway, or clearly down when the others are up, tells you which circuit has the fault. Third, if a safety switch has tripped, unplug everything on the affected circuit, reset it once, and add appliances back one at a time. If it holds until you plug in the second fridge or the outdoor pump, you have found the fault and just saved yourself money.
Do not reset a device repeatedly if it keeps dropping out, and do not resort to taping, wedging or bypassing anything at the board. An RCD that trips over and over is detecting current going somewhere it should not, through moisture, damaged insulation, or a person. That is precisely the fault it exists to catch.
How quickly can an emergency electrician get here?
It depends on where "here" is. Croydon, Ringwood, Mooroolbark, Kilsyth, Bayswater and Lilydale are close to where most contractors working this region are based, so response times are short. Chirnside Park, Mount Evelyn and Montrose are not much further. Healesville, Yarra Glen, Seville, Woori Yallock, Yarra Junction and Warburton take longer simply because of distance, and during a widespread storm event everyone in the region is competing for the same handful of after-hours electricians. You will be told an honest window when you call rather than an optimistic one.
What speeds things up is a good description on the phone. Say whether the whole property is out or part of it, whether anything tripped, whether there is a smell or a noise, what the weather has been doing, and roughly how old the house and switchboard are. An electrician who knows they are coming to a 1960s board with ceramic fuses brings different things in the van than one attending a five-year-old build with a full row of RCBOs.
Storm damage and fallen lines
The ranges get more than their share of this. The dividing line matters: everything from the street up to and including the point of attachment on your house is the distributor's, and a downed or damaged line there is a call to AusNet on 13 17 99, never something to approach or clear yourself. From the point of attachment inwards, including the consumer mains running to your board, private power poles on your own land, and the wiring to sheds, pumps and studios, is yours, and that is where an electrician comes in.
After a storm, the two most common jobs are a service cable pulled away from its attachment on the fascia, and water that has found its way into an outdoor outlet, a garden light or a shed sub-board. Both look minor and both are live-work problems. If a branch has come down on your consumer mains, treat every wire in the vicinity as live, keep everyone well back, and call.
Other electrical work in the Yarra Valley
The same contractors cover the rest of the list. Start at the Electrician Yarra Valley home page for the full picture, or go straight to what you need.
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Frequently asked questions
Is there a 24 hour electrician in the Yarra Valley?
Yes. Enquiries on this site are taken around the clock and urgent faults are passed to a contractor who attends after hours. Say in the form that it is urgent and describe the fault, so it is passed on straight away.
What does an emergency callout cost?
There are no prices on this site, and any local trade site quoting a firm after-hours figure before seeing the job is guessing. What you should expect is the attendance arrangement explained clearly on the phone before anyone leaves, and a price for the repair before it starts. Ask for both. A contractor who will not give them is telling you something.
My safety switch keeps tripping. Can I just leave it off?
Leaving the affected circuit off is far safer than repeatedly resetting it, so yes, as a short-term measure that is the right instinct, as long as the circuit is not feeding anything critical. But the fault is still there, and RCDs trip because current is escaping somewhere. It should be found rather than lived with.
Do you attend during a widespread outage?
Contractors attend genuine installation faults during storms, but when an entire area is out, the cause is usually the network and no electrician can restore supply. AusNet Services on 13 17 99 is who to call in that case, and their outage tracker will tell you what is known. Once supply returns, if your property alone is still dead, that is an electrician's job.
Ready to get it sorted?
Use the quote form at the top of this page to tell a licensed electrician about what has failed and how fast someone can get to you, and they will call you back.
No obligationRequest a free quote