r/AskAusElectricians

Hi all,

Hoping for some advice before I call an electrician.

My garage door motor (Merlin MS65MYQ) has been “fried” 3 times in the last 5–6 months, including the most recent one which was brand new.

The garage door installer is now saying I need to get an electrician to check the outlet/circuit before they’ll do anything further.

What’s strange is that it seems to happen when my solar inverter trips.

• When the inverter trips and restarts, the garage motor still has lights on, so it looks like it's fine
• But later I find it’s completely dead

I also tried putting a surge protector on the garage door outlet, but it didn’t prevent the issue.

Solar / battery setup:

• Sungrow 10kW 3-phase hybrid inverter
• Battery backup covering 4 circuits + lights
• Circuit 1: Garage door + internet
• Circuit 2: Kitchen (fridge, dishwasher, power points – toaster, microwave, kettle)
• Circuit 3: Laundry + outdoor (includes air fryer)
• Circuit 4: Upstairs power

I’ve noticed the inverter tends to trip when:

• Kitchen appliances (e.g. toaster)
• AND laundry/outdoor loads (e.g. air fryer) are used at the same time.

Since the last issue, I’ve removed Circuit 3 (laundry) from backup hoping that it would ease the load, but the kitchen circuit is still on backup because of the fridge.

I've done some test and looks like Circuit 2 is probably the culprit. I tested dishwasher + kettle + toaster at the same time.

I’m now also wondering if I should isolate just the fridge onto its own circuit and remove the rest of the kitchen from battery backup, instead of backing up the whole kitchen. However not sure how easy the access is to do so.

Questions:

• Could inverter switching/restart be causing voltage spikes damaging the motor?
• Is this more likely a wiring/circuit issue or a solar/inverter issue?
• Would isolating the garage door onto its own non-backed-up circuit help?
• I already tried a surge protector at the outlet — does that rule out surge issues, or do I need something at the switchboard level?
• Does it make sense to isolate the fridge onto its own circuit and only back that up, instead of the whole kitchen?
• Could this be related to load imbalance or phase issues with a 3‑phase setup?

Any ideas what I should be asking the electrician or what tests they should run would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Some years ago I asked a local electrician to put in an underground conduit from my backup generator to my battery charger (we're off-grid, so the solar panels need some help in bad weather). It had previously been running over a 15-amp extension cord.

I asked for a 15-amp run, because it could be carrying up to 3000 watts, which exceeds the 10-amp/2400 watt limit of the usual domestic circuit. One of his employees did the actual work. It's about 10 metres of cable, maybe a bit less.

He put 15-amp sockets (with the larger earth slot) at either end and life went on. I used it more and more as the solar PV and the batteries reached EOL and couldn't support our daily needs without a top-up.

Recently I had a major solar upgrade and the following was pointed out to me:

1. The 15-amp outlet at the battery charger end had live and neutral swapped. Not the end of the world, that socket never got used for anything else, but still......

2. The cable run was only 2.5mm cable, which I'm told will *not* safely carry 3000 watts, it's only a domestic 10-amp cable. It's been carrying up to 3000 watts for some years without any obvious problems, but the new batteries have considerably larger capacity and should they need topping up, it will run for longer periods so any overheating issues that were under a threshold previously, might become a problem.

Should I be upset about this? Now I have to get a new 15-amp cable drawn through the conduit and the ends re-terminated. Until this happens, I can't run the generator at full capacity without worrying about starting a fire.

I see a lot of people asking if their power board needs an upgrade. It got me wondering about mine but I don’t want to make another post the same.

Can someone clarify?
- What requirements currently are (Type A RCDs, etc).
- If it doesn’t meet current standards, when an upgrade would be legally required.

I want to set up some festoon lighting around our backyard entertainment area and need a weatherproof outlet down near the back patio. Is it structurally possible and compliant to mount an outdoor point directly onto a metal colorbond fence post, or does it have to be attached to the brickwork of the house?

Hi all,

I am an IT nerd running a bunch of servers and am looking to do some load testing to plan power loading on different PDU’s and UPS.

I have a clamp meter however none of the power leads are split to be able to measure, I figure I could strip part of an extension lead to use for devices under test but this wouldn’t be safe/legal. I have seen online some US based electricians use AC line spotters to do this kind of testing but these don’t seem common here, so my question is how do electricians commonly test current load here?

Cheers

Just trying to gauge the market at the moment for residential single phase EV charger installs. Customer supplies the unit, straight run back to the board about fifteen metres through the ceiling space. What is a fair rate in Vic?

Hey sparkies, looking for some advice before calling someone out.

Only the kitchen lights are affected:

now 2 out of 3 lights don’t work and 1 flickers

tried brand new bulbs and still dead

rest of house power/lights are completely fine

They’re LED downlights. Could this be a loose neutral, faulty switch, bad driver/transformer, or wiring issue in the ceiling?

Also roughly what would something like this usually cost in Australia if it ends up being:

simple fix

replacing drivers/downlights

rewiring part of circuit

Just trying to avoid getting ripped off and understand what I’m dealing with. Cheers.

I am about to start building a home on the outskirts of Brisbane with Australasian Homes. I have just gone through the process of requesting extra power points and data points (run back to data cabinet) in the plans.

Thinking about "Home Automation" and making this "Smart Home" from the beginning. Should I ask if the builder/electrician can install Shelly Pro DIN devices for later setup or wait until later? What's going to be the easiest process?

This build is off the plan and locked in price. So I don't want to make "major" changes that will blow out cost. I am also happy to wait and make these changes later if it need be.

So I have a brand new house, brand new MSB and aerial lead-in. We have a 3phase, 80A service from Citipower as confirmed by them yesterday via phone.

The issue is that original sparky installed a 50A 3ph main breaker (was supposed to be 63A breaker, but he didn’t have one in the truck on install day), and he is now in the wind.

So I asked my new sparky to quote me on whether the main breaker can be upgraded to 63A , as we have issues with overload on L1 with main breaker tripping when an EV is charging at 11kw (3ph) and powerwall is charging at 10kw( single phase, L1).

New sparky has checked everything and said yep, no worries can install a new 63A main breaker - But that he’ll need a Citipower truck visit to isolate and reconnect mains, which will be $1000+ by itself.

But then I spoke to Citipower and they said nah, no truck visit required, just have your sparky pull the service fuses himself to isolate.

Sparky is still saying nope, he’s not allowed to touch the service fuses and won’t do the work without a Citipower truck visit.

So please enlighten me as to who is correct here - and ideally provide a link to a relevant document I can show my sparky if he is incorrect.

What’s everyone’s go to ducted exhaust fans?

Ventair, Airbus
Brilliant Blizzard
Fan tech rapid response

Brilliant seems to have most airflow and is the cheapest, any pros and cons for any of these units?

Have read some post mentioning old dodgy rentals owned by the old Greek man who is everybody's landlord (the ones that haven't burned down yet) and this place was literally that for decades. The post might have mentioned a shower zapping people too (which freaks me out a bit).

Can upload pics of certain things but afraid people would tell where I live (we live on top of a restaurant).

Nothing like that has happened and I've seen safety switch and breakers go off. It has seemed fine for ages. Old but ain't broke (that I know of).

Should the powerboard say the outlets are grounded?

I would just call an electrician to look things over but I have to know that something is bad enough to raise it with subletter who can raise it with LL, but not so bad that someone might come in and say the new landlord should condemn the building unless they pay for huge renovations and we get kicked out because of code #$6893^$#@*( of the #*#*# That us poor ole dumb gronks wouldn't understand and we have to move all our shit to a new rental that's a devil I don't know and twice as expensive on a 6 month lease.

Anyhow, sorry. I would really like to get an electrician in but it would be way easier if I could point to something that's generally a reasonable, legally-required, modest upgrade or a pressing concern. Or, I could try to fork out for an electrician but have no idea how extensive their testing will be and how long it will take.

If they would give me a report that I could give to the subletter and new landlords (they are a corporate business, this would be very professional and impersonal, but subletter is being shitty about this) then I would happily pay a bit more rent for the peace of mind of living here. And if it's dangerous, then fuck them, honestly. I don't know if I'm just neurotic, though.

New powerboard says sockets in my room and kitchen are not grounded (at least not directly). Is that required in QLD?

Subletter poked a multimeter prong (red wire) into a bottom/ground hole in the powerboard and said that it showed a certain amount of voltage that wouldn't show up if it wasn't grounded and said my cheap powerboard (Belkin) wouldn't be reliable. Why would there be a disrepancy between his multimeter and powerboard? If he knows what he's doing? Two Belkin powerboards have the red 'not grounded' light on.

Anyway, i don't really understand if this is bad except it's probably better to have grounding. We have a metal toaster in the kitchen that keeps breaking and it's blamed on crumbs and sticky levers and shit like that. I suspect that the ill-advised, cavalier stuff that we have done for ages here is starting to show consequences, though.

The guy renting the room out says that the safety switch protects you from electric shock, that the threshold that it detects a fault mean you get zapped with pretty much nothing. I asked if that means you can stick a knife in the toaster or in the bath.

I think it could be that every once in a while, the house breakers and/or safety switch get activated, and that seems fine (it goes to the ground breaker), but I just don't want to miss anything dangerous, like if there's residual current just hanging around? I want to be able to use my PC's and my bedroom's power had been from an extension cord poked through a tiny hole above the outlet in front of the toilet (I can't tell if the wiring was there before it was turned into a bathroom, or not, but I suspect the wiring is older).

Dodgy-looking retrofittings (eg. outdoor tap, propped-up corrugated iron, silicon everywhere), damp + gas pipes, water pipes, wires near each other downstairs. So I want to know where the faulure points are.

tl:dr

Might be no grounding on powerpoints, one safety switch for GPO's but not for oven or lights, bunch of other stuff. What to look for in old Queenslander long-term rental houses?

Hope this isn't boring AF, I'm grating on people talking about this so much. Objectively, what should I be sure of, to not have fire where we can't extinguish, to not be zapped?

Restaurant downstairs would also be very pissed if we got condemned (but also sure they don't want zapped)

Thank you!! <3

Had a job like this recently where everything was agreed upfront, job’s done, tested, cleaned up, all good, then at the end they suddenly start saying it “took less time than expected” and try to knock money off the final invoice