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Burnside's housing stock, built mostly through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, is now reaching the age where electrical systems need serious attention — especially with heat pumps, EV chargers and home offices pushing old wiring past its limits. Our licensed electricians answer emergency calls day or night.
Serving Burnside & surrounding Christchurch suburbs
We received a call on a Friday evening from a homeowner on Memorial Avenue. Their heat pump had tripped the main breaker and when they attempted to reset it, sparks shot from inside the switchboard. On arrival we discovered a circuit breaker with a cracked housing that had allowed moisture to gradually track across its terminals. Evidence of internal arcing showed the breaker had been deteriorating for quite some time before it finally gave out. We removed the damaged breaker, fitted a quality replacement, carefully inspected every other breaker in the board for signs of similar degradation, ran end-to-end tests on the heat pump circuit, and confirmed the entire installation was safe before leaving.
Burnside sits in the northwest of Christchurch as one of the city's most well-established residential suburbs. With a housing stock built predominantly through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, many properties are now reaching the stage where their electrical systems require serious attention.
The majority of homes throughout Burnside were constructed during a period when electrical requirements were far more modest than they are today. A typical three-bedroom house from the 1970s might have been wired with a total electrical capacity that would barely support one modern kitchen. The wiring that served those needs adequately for decades is now being asked to do far more than it was ever intended for.
Original copper wiring from this era, while durable, has a finite lifespan. Insulation on cables installed forty to sixty years ago becomes brittle over time, particularly in roof spaces where temperature extremes accelerate the deterioration. We regularly find wiring in Burnside homes where the rubber or PVC sheathing simply falls apart when touched during an inspection.
A number of older Burnside properties still have their original switchboards fitted with ceramic rewireable fuses. These were standard for their time but they offer none of the safety features found in modern circuit protection. Replacing these boards is one of the most impactful safety upgrades a Burnside homeowner can make.
Some homes built during this period in Burnside were wired with aluminium conductors rather than copper, which expand and contract more than copper as they heat and cool, loosening connections over time. The post-earthquake period also saw many Burnside homes undergo structural repairs, and in some cases electrical wiring was disturbed and not always reinstated to the proper standard.
Burnside homeowners are enthusiastic about modernising their properties. Adding a heat pump, installing an induction cooktop, fitting an EV charger, or setting up a home office are all common upgrades. The problem is the original electrical supply in most Burnside homes was never designed to cope with this level of demand.
A single heat pump can draw between 1500 and 3000 watts. An induction cooktop at full output can pull over 7000 watts. An EV charger adds another 2400 to 7200 watts. Stack these on top of the existing household load and the maths quickly exceeds what a 1970s switchboard and its cabling can safely deliver.
The solution in most cases involves a switchboard upgrade to increase capacity and add modern RCD protection, along with dedicated circuits run from the board directly to each high-draw appliance. We carry out these upgrades regularly across Burnside and they make an enormous difference to both safety and reliability.
Home offices have become a permanent fixture for many Burnside residents, often plugged into what was originally a single bedroom circuit via multiboards and extension leads. We also see increasing demand for outdoor entertaining areas — covered patios, outdoor kitchens, spa pools, and landscape lighting all require properly installed weatherproof circuits rather than extension leads run from indoors.
Account for a significant proportion of our emergency callouts, concentrated during winter cold snaps and the peak of summer when heat pumps run at maximum capacity and marginal connections are most likely to fail.
Between five and nine in the evening, households are cooking, running the dishwasher, heating or cooling the house, and charging devices. On an aging switchboard this simultaneous draw can push things past the tipping point.
When a smoke alarm triggers and the source turns out to be an overheating cable or scorched outlet, the situation demands immediate professional attention — not a false alarm, an early warning.
Particularly common in spring and autumn. Low-voltage garden lighting transformers fail, water ingress into buried junction boxes causes earth faults, and idle irrigation pumps trip circuits when restarted.
Burnside has a strong tradition of well-equipped sheds and garages. Table saws, lathes, welders and compressors all draw heavy current, and a workshop circuit built for a drill can be overwhelmed by serious equipment.
Burnside is home to several well-known schools including Burnside Primary School and Burnside High School, along with community halls, sports facilities, and local churches. Older school buildings often have wiring that has been added to and modified many times over the decades, creating complex systems where tracing a fault requires patience and experience.
Community facilities such as the Burnside Memorial Hall and various sports clubrooms see intermittent heavy use that can stress electrical systems. A hall that sits largely unused during the week then hosts a large function with full catering, lighting, sound equipment, and heating presents a very different electrical load profile than its everyday state.
While our primary focus remains on residential emergencies, we understand that electrical problems at community facilities affect the whole neighbourhood. We have responded to urgent calls from schools where a power fault has affected classrooms during school hours and from community groups preparing for events who discover an electrical problem at the worst possible moment.
The presence of these community facilities also means the local electrical network in parts of Burnside carries a higher load than a purely residential area would, which can occasionally contribute to supply quality issues such as voltage fluctuations that affect nearby homes.
Whether the call comes from Memorial Avenue, Condell Avenue, Waimairi Road, or Greers Road, we can be on site quickly. In an electrical emergency those minutes matter.
Our vehicles carry a comprehensive range of parts suited to repairs common in homes from the 1960s through to the 1980s — circuit breakers, cable, connectors, RCDs, and full testing equipment.
Having worked extensively across Burnside we're familiar with the common switchboard brands and wiring methods used during each decade of construction, meaning faster diagnosis and more efficient repairs.
We explain what we're doing at each stage and discuss your options before proceeding with any work beyond the immediate emergency repair. You get a fair assessment and a fair price every time.
After completing any emergency repair we provide clear documentation of the work carried out and any recommendations for follow-up action, so you know how to keep your home electrically safe long term.
Electrical emergency in Burnside? WeDo Electrical provides rapid response throughout Burnside including Memorial Avenue, Condell Avenue, Waimairi Road, and Greers Road. Specialists in homes from the 1960s through to modern builds.
Call 027 484 0801 any time.