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 citys 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. It is a suburb where families have lived for generations and where a steady wave of renovations and upgrades is putting new demands on aging infrastructure.
Burnside's Established Suburban Character
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. These homes were designed for a few lights, a television, a basic stove, and perhaps a single heater. 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. When insulation cracks or crumbles it exposes conductors, creating the potential for short circuits and earth faults. 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. They dont trip automatically when a fault occurs and they can be easily fitted with the wrong size fuse wire, masking overcurrent problems. 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. Aluminium wiring was used as a cost-saving measure but it presents unique challenges. Aluminium expands and contracts more than copper as it heats and cools, which can loosen connections over time. These loose connections generate heat and represent a genuine fire risk. Any property with aluminium wiring needs regular professional inspection to ensure all terminations remain tight and safe.
The post-earthquake period also saw many Burnside homes undergo foundation and structural repairs. In some cases electrical wiring was disturbed during this work and not always reinstated to the proper standard. We have attended emergencies where cables damaged during earthquake repairs years earlier have finally deteriorated to the point of failure.
Home Upgrades Straining Old Wiring
Burnside homeowners are enthusiastic about modernising their properties, and understandably so. Adding a heat pump to an older home, installing an induction cooktop to replace a gas hob, fitting an EV charger in the garage, or setting up a dedicated home office with multiple screens and equipment are all common upgrades. The problem is that 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 depending on the model and mode of operation. An induction cooktop at full output can pull over 7000 watts. An EV charger on a dedicated circuit adds another 2400 to 7200 watts depending on the charging rate. Stack these on top of the existing household load and the maths quickly exceeds what a 1970s switchboard and its cabling can safely deliver. Circuits that were never intended to carry these loads begin to overheat, connections deteriorate faster, and breakers trip repeatedly.
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. This ensures that your heat pump, cooktop, or charger has its own properly rated supply rather than sharing an overloaded circuit with other parts of the house. 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 since the shift to remote working. A spare bedroom converted into an office might now contain a computer, multiple monitors, a printer, a router, phone chargers, a heater, and task lighting. All of this plugged into what was originally a single bedroom circuit via multiboards and extension leads. The cumulative draw can be substantial and the reliance on double adapters and power strips introduces additional points of failure and fire risk.
We also see increasing demand for outdoor entertaining areas with full electrical fit-outs. Covered patios with integrated lighting, outdoor kitchens with rangehoods and fridges, spa pools, and landscape lighting all require properly installed weatherproof circuits. Running extension leads from indoor outlets to power outdoor equipment is a recipe for trouble, particularly in wet weather. Dedicated outdoor circuits with appropriate protection are essential.
Burnside Emergency Patterns
Heat pump failures account for a significant proportion of our emergency callouts in Burnside, concentrated during the winter cold snaps and the peak of summer. When temperatures drop below zero or climb above thirty, heat pumps are running at maximum capacity. This is when marginal electrical connections and overloaded circuits are most likely to fail. A heat pump tripping its breaker on the coldest night of the year is one of the most common calls we receive from Burnside households.
Switchboard overloads during evening peak usage are another recurring pattern. Between five and nine in the evening, households are cooking dinner, running the dishwasher, heating or cooling the house, charging devices, watching television, and running hot water. On an aging switchboard with limited circuit capacity, this simultaneous draw can push things past the tipping point. We frequently attend homes where the main breaker or individual circuits have tripped during this busy window.
Smoke detector activations caused by electrical faults are a more serious category of emergency we respond to. When a smoke alarm triggers and the source turns out to be an overheating cable, a smouldering connection, or a scorched outlet, the situation demands immediate professional attention. These are not false alarms - they are early warnings that something in the wiring is failing dangerously. We treat every one of these calls with urgency and thoroughly investigate the cause.
Garden lighting and irrigation pump failures are particularly common during spring and autumn when these systems are being used heavily or reactivated after a dormant season. Low-voltage garden lighting transformers can fail, water ingress into buried junction boxes causes earth faults, and irrigation pumps that have sat idle through winter may trip circuits when started up. Many Burnside properties have extensive established gardens with complex lighting and irrigation setups that need occasional electrical attention.
Power tool incidents in home workshops round out the typical emergency profile for the suburb. Burnside has a strong tradition of homeowners who maintain well-equipped sheds and garages. Table saws, lathes, welders, and compressors all draw heavy current. A workshop circuit that works fine for a drill and a few lights can be overwhelmed when serious equipment is brought into use. We have attended situations where overloaded workshop circuits have caused breakers to fail, cables to overheat, and in some cases outlets to melt.
Schools and Community Facilities
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. These institutions have their own distinct electrical demands and challenges. 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. Circuit protection needs to be adequate for these peak demands, not just the typical baseline.
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. Our approach is the same regardless of the setting - arrive quickly, diagnose accurately, and resolve the issue safely.
The presence of these community facilities also means that the local electrical network in parts of Burnside carries a higher load than a purely residential area would. This can occasionally contribute to supply quality issues such as voltage fluctuations that affect nearby homes. Understanding the broader network context helps us diagnose problems that might otherwise seem to have no obvious cause within the individual property.
Fast Response from Our Team
Our location allows us to reach anywhere in Burnside within a short drive. Whether the call comes from Memorial Avenue on the northern edge, Condell Avenue to the east, Waimairi Road on the western boundary, or Greers Road running through the heart of the suburb, we can be on site quickly. In an electrical emergency those minutes matter, both for your safety and for minimising the disruption to your household.
We stock our vehicles with a comprehensive range of parts and materials specifically suited to the types of repairs common in homes from the 1960s through to the 1980s. This includes a full selection of circuit breakers compatible with the switchboard types prevalent across Burnside, cable in the sizes most frequently needed for rewiring and repair work, quality connectors and terminals, RCDs, and the testing equipment necessary to thoroughly verify every repair before we leave.
Having worked extensively across Burnside we are familiar with the common switchboard brands, wiring methods, and installation practices used during each decade of construction in the suburb. This experience means we can often anticipate what we are going to find before we open the switchboard, which translates directly into faster diagnosis and more efficient repairs. We know which types of breakers are prone to failure in boards of a certain vintage and we carry the appropriate replacements.
Transparency is central to how we operate. When we arrive at your property we will explain what we are doing at each stage, show you what we find, and discuss your options before proceeding with any work beyond the immediate emergency repair. If your switchboard needs a full upgrade we will tell you honestly rather than applying a temporary fix and hoping for the best. Equally, if the problem is minor and straightforward we will not manufacture additional work. 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. We want you to understand exactly what happened, what we did to resolve it, and what steps you can take to reduce the chance of a similar problem occurring in the future. Our goal is not just to fix todays emergency but to help you keep your home electrically safe for the long term.