Townsville Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Switchboard Upgrade

Parker’s Electrical NQ are specialist when it comes to your switchboard, so her are a few tips on whether your switchboard needs upgrading and some of the options you might have, but first the sings that you need to upgrade are
* You still have the old fuses (These should be replaced with circuit breakers by an electrician NOT THE PLUG IN TYPE)
*You don’t have any RCD’S (By law you should have RCD’s on all power and light circuits)
*Your Air conditioners go off for hours each morning and/or night.
*Your switchboard is an old timber board or asbestos board. Most switchboards installed before 1990 are very likely to contain asbestos.) This is a link to a site with some information on this Queensland Government
*If you have added an extension to your home or business the current electrical switchboard may need to be upgraded to cope with the added needs, also your mains may need to be upgraded.
*You have been having some power faults. (This is often due to circuits being overloaded and the wrong fuse wire being installed, or bad connections on the terminals of the fuse holder. But can be other problem in your home.) We can help with a upgrade to the latest Australian standards, all our switchboard upgrade are solar ready and have T33 for air conditioners and Hot Water. Now for your options and these will depend on your old switchboard,
1. Full upgrade with new board and mains with weather proof switchboard on the outside, towards the front of your house. (Ergon Preferred)
2. The fuses being replaced with circuit breakers/RCD combo.
3. New sub board inside/under your house with the meters outside for Ergon to read.
4. New sub board inside/under your house with the meters on the front fence, so ergon don’t have to enter your property.
The Preferred method for Ergon is option 1 as this places all the meters, natural links and earth outside so they can test at any time, eg after a cyclone, or storm. For a quote please fill in the contact form or call 0488571866 Mains Upgrade
As your electrical needs increases, the demand on your mains increase, many old house have very small mains that were never meant to cope with air conditioning, induction cooktops, pools, spars, ext. Also with the Australian standards today your mains may not be stabile as we need to protect the mains with a CB and the size of the CB with your old mains might cause nuisance tripping. So with a Switchboard upgrade we often include a mains upgrade especially if there is singes that the mains have been overloaded in the past.
Main Earth
Another part of the main switchboard and some sub boards is the main earth, if your house was built in and before the 1980’s it could have the main earth on a piece of water pipe, this should be replaced ASAP, as it is probably not giving you a good earth connection and could cause electric shocks in your home. The earthling system is a very important part of your home electrical system and should never be disconnected, if it needs to be disconnected call an electrician as there are ways to do this safely, there is a risk of electric shock when disconnecting the earth especially if this is an old home.

Electrical Faults are one of the main reasons for Fires and electric shock. Most of these faults are caused by people doing there own electrical work

Fault Finding

Parker’s Electrical NQ can find all your faults and repair or replace the
issue, Gary has a life time of fault finding and can usually fix the issue
strait away for you. We work on all Industrial, Commercial and Domestic
Electrical work, so we have a good understanding of how things should work, this
make it easer for us to track down them faults.

If you are having a fault where your RCD keeps tripping or won’t reset, there
are a few things you can try yourself.

1. The first is to turn off the mains power and try to reset the RCD, if it
   resets turn the power back on and go to the net step, if it does not reset
   give us a call as the RCD needs replacing.
2. UNPLUG everything on that circuit and try to reset the
   RCD if it resets plug things back in until you find what is tripping the
   RCD. If it will not reset give us a call as there is something wrong with
   your wiring.

Common curses of RCD tripping are:

1. Fridge in defrost cycle.
2. kettles,
3. Toasters
4. Weather prof power points (that have water intrusion)
5. Extension leads (outside and have gotten wet)
6. Serge protectors that have gone faulty.

Some series faults that needs a Electrician IMMEDIATELY are:

• Tingles of water pipes or other metal items.
• Power flickering, or lights diming when you start your Air Conditioners.
•  Vermin damage wires that has some of the inner insolation or
  copper showing.

Other faults you may have are short circuits, hot water, Air Conditioning,
Parker’s Electrical can help you with all of them so give us a call on
0488571866

LED Lights

Parker’s Electrical NQ are your specialist when it comes to LED lighting, we install LED lights in people homes and work place every day which means we have the experience you need when it comes to LED lighting, our friendly staff will be happy to help you decide on what light you need or choose something for you.
Below we have some information on LED lights and some photos of our jobs.

LED stands for ‘Light Emitting Diode’, a semiconductor device that converts electricity into light. LED lights are energy efficient and using approximately 85% less energy than halogen or incandescent lighting, this means a significant savings on your power bills, also LED lights have a much longer lifespan than other types of lighting as shown in the table below.

Estimated Lifespan*

And as all ENERGY STAR products, products are subject to random testing every year to ensure they continue to meet the ENERGY STAR requirements.

Parker’s Electrical NQ can upgrade your old lights to LED or install new LED lighting for you, all our LED lights come with a 3 year guarantee, we use Clipsal, Atom, Pierlite to name a few. We are dedicated to giving the best lighting with the best price that will also help bring your power bill down. In our opinion they have finally made a down light that is worthwhile using as they do not generate much heat and all the light goes to the right place and not in the ceiling. There are many LED lights available now like down lights, spot light, flood lights, high bays, round lights, ext, just about anything you may need and they are all energy efficient lights.
So give us a call on 0488571866. or fill out our contact form.

AIR CONDITIONING

Parker’s Electrical NQ specialize in the installation of split system air conditioners; as we are electrical contractors we do the complete installation including electrical and any switchboard work that is required, our staff can also repair that old system and in most cases repair or modify them hard to get parts, JUST BECAUSE ITS OBSOLETE DON’T MEN IT CAN’T BE FIXED.

      Our choice of unit is Fujitsu Split Air Condition which comes with a 5-year warranty, and as we are electrical contractors we connect your air conditioner to Power on tariff 11 or tariff 33. Is your Air Condition 10+ years old? If so, then it is time to think about a new one as any Air Condition that are 10 years old are the old direct on line, which use a lot of power compared to the newer inverter type Air Condition. The latest Air condition unit are all going over to a new more environmentally friendly gas that is also helping our environment. Our qualified team can fault find and repair your existing unit, if we find that it is not repairable we will give you a quote to replace it. Air Conditioning Cleaning We offer a Air Conditioning cleaning service at $90 each, Where we will come into your home or office and take your indoor unit apart and clean the fan and all those hard to get places. The reason we dismantling the unit is so we can get to all the drains, some of which are located in the back of the unit and can’t be accessed without earth taking the unit off the wall or dismantling the unit. I have seen units that have been stem clean or clean without even taking the front cover off and they look good from the outside but are still full of mold. Why should I have my air conditioner clean?
1. Save on Power Bill:- Cleaning a dirty Air Conditioner can save you up to 30% on power usage for that unit, when a unit is dirty it has to work harder to cool or heat the air because it has to work harder to cool or heat the air as the air flow is slowed down and the heat is not transferred properly.
2. Microbial Contamination:- All regularly used Air Conditioners become infected with microbial contamination which includes fungi, mold and bacteria. Air Conditioners are the perfect environment for such contaminants and will become airborne every time you use them.
3. Your Air Conditioner will last longer:- A regularly serviced Air Conditioner will last longer then one that has never been serviced, (you service your car regularly so why not your air conditioner?), and the only way to do this is to disassemble the unit as there are drain at the rear that need to be cleaned and the main drain is often partially blocked. 

Here are some photos that show the sings that you’re Air Conditioner needs replacing

Rusted Condenser

This needs replacing before it loses the gas and harms the ozone layer.

If you’re Air Conditioner in using R22 Gas then it is in need of replacing instead of repairing as these units are now more then 10yeas old. R22 is getting more expensive and harder to get so many service company’s including Parker’s Electrical NQ do not carry R22 any more.

Parker’s Electrical NQ

Service Area Townsville, Kirwan, Aitkenvale, Thuringowa, Garbutt, Bohle, Kelso, Bushland Beach, Cranbrook, Castle Hill, Idalia, Pallarenda, Mount Louisa, Douglas, Stuart, West End, Rasmussen, Condon & More