Niddrie is two jobs in one suburb. There is the Keilor Road strip — one of the busiest retail and dining runs in Melbourne's north-west, full of cafés, shops and salons that need fit-outs, compliance work and repairs done without losing a day of trade. And there are the streets behind it, mostly interwar and post-war homes that need the same things every older suburb needs: switchboards brought up to date, lighting redone, faults chased down properly. We do both, and the commercial side is usually done after close.
- Shop & cafe fit-outs
- Exit & emergency lighting
- Three-phase power
- After-hours commercial work
- Switchboard upgrades
- Home rewires & repairs
Commercial work on a strip like Keilor Road lives or dies on timing. A café that cannot open at 7am has lost the day, so the noisy and disruptive parts — chasing walls, switchboard changeovers, anything that needs the power off — get done overnight or on a quiet trading morning, and the quieter fit-off work happens around your hours. We price after-hours into the quote upfront so it is not a surprise line on the invoice later.
The other thing that catches shop owners out is compliance. Exit and emergency lighting is not a one-off install: under AS/NZS 2293 the system has to be tested every six months and hold up for 90 minutes on battery, and it is the sort of thing an insurer or a landlord will ask for evidence of at exactly the wrong moment. We install it properly, and we give you the paperwork for every job so there is a record on file when someone asks.
That is how we prefer to do it. We split the job: anything that needs the power off or makes noise and mess happens overnight or during your quietest trading window, and the rest — fitting off switches, points and lights, testing, labelling — gets done around you. For bigger fit-outs running over several nights we agree the schedule with you in advance so your staff know what to expect each morning and nothing is left half-connected at open. After-hours rates are in the quote from the start, so you are comparing a real number rather than a daytime price plus surprises.
The system has to be designed and installed to AS/NZS 2293, which in practice means emergency lighting and exit signs positioned to get people out safely, running on battery backup that holds up for at least 90 minutes. The part people miss is that it is an ongoing obligation, not a one-off: the system has to be tested every six months and the results recorded. We handle the install and the testing, and we give you the certification and test records each time — which matters, because it is usually a landlord, an insurer or a council inspector who asks, and never with much notice.
Yes, and most serious kitchen equipment needs it. Commercial ovens, dishwashers, cool rooms and large extraction fans generally will not run on single phase, so the first thing we check is whether the tenancy already has three-phase available and how much spare capacity is on it. If it does not, we work out what is involved in getting it in, which depends on the building and the supply in the street. We would rather find that out at quoting stage than after you have taken delivery of a twenty thousand dollar oven that has nothing to plug into.
Both, and the residential side is a big part of what we do here. The homes behind Keilor Road are mostly interwar and post-war, which means the usual older-housing list: switchboards with no safety switches, wiring that has been extended over decades, lighting that has never been updated, and the occasional bit of DIY from a previous owner that should not be there. Same approach as the commercial work — we look before quoting, tell you what genuinely needs doing versus what can wait, and leave you with the compliance paperwork.
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