Switchboard upgrades: the warning signs

A switchboard is the one part of an electrical installation that everything else depends on, and it is the part almost nobody looks at until something goes wrong. Most of the boards we are called out to were adequate for the building as it was originally used, and have quietly fallen behind what the site now asks of them.

Here is what tends to prompt the call, and what an upgrade actually involves.

Signs worth taking seriously

Anything you can smell or hear. A burning or acrid smell near the board, buzzing, crackling, or heat on the panel face are all reasons to stop and get it looked at rather than wait for the next scheduled visit. These are not wait-and-see symptoms.

Scorching or discolouration. Browning around a breaker or on the panel itself indicates heat that should not be there, usually from a loose or deteriorated connection.

Breakers that trip repeatedly. A protective device doing its job once is the system working. The same circuit tripping regularly means either a fault worth finding or a circuit carrying more than it was designed for, and neither is fixed by resetting it.

Rewireable fuses, or no RCD protection. Ceramic fuse carriers date an installation, and boards of that vintage typically predate residual current device requirements. RCD protection is the part that protects people rather than equipment, and its absence is the single most common reason we recommend an upgrade.

No room left. A board with no spare ways is a board that gets extended badly, and daisy-chained additions are a frequent source of the problems above.

Asbestos backing board. Common in older Victorian buildings. It does not make the board unsafe to leave alone, but it changes how the work has to be done, and it must be identified before anyone starts rather than discovered mid-job.

What an upgrade involves

The scope varies more than people expect. At the smaller end it is a like-for-like board replacement with modern protective devices. At the larger end, on a site that has grown, it means reassessing the supply itself, the main switch rating, and how the load is distributed before anything is specified.

A typical sequence looks like:

1. Assessment. What is installed now, what the site actually draws, what is planned, and what condition the supply and the main earthing are in.
2. Scope and quote. Board size, protective devices, whether the existing enclosure and location still suit, and whether any circuits need remedial work before they are reconnected.
3. Arranged outage. Supply is off for the changeover. On commercial and industrial sites this is usually scheduled outside operating hours, and where an outage is not possible we discuss temporary arrangements before booking the work.
4. Installation, testing and certification.

For most domestic and small commercial boards the changeover itself is a single-day job. Industrial boards, and anything that involves the supply authority, take longer to arrange than to install, so early notice is worth more than urgency later.

Why the certificate matters

Prescribed electrical work in Victoria must be tested and a Certificate of Electrical Safety issued. Keep it. It is the document that shows the work was done by a licensed electrician and tested on completion, and it is what an insurer, a buyer's conveyancer, or a future contractor will ask for. Work done without one is difficult to prove and, if it later contributes to an incident, difficult to defend.

We are a Registered Electrical Contractor and certify the work we do. If you have had work done and were never given a certificate, that is worth chasing up regardless of who did it.

If you are not sure

If any of the warning signs above sound familiar, the sensible step is an inspection rather than a guess from a photo. We can tell you whether you are looking at a repair, a staged upgrade, or a full replacement, and put that in writing so you can plan around it.

Call us if something is smelling hot or tripping repeatedly. That one should not wait.