Electrical Renovations in Auckland

Planning Your Renovation Electrical

Get an Electrician Involved Earlier Than You Think

Most renovation headaches start the same way. Calling the electrician after the builder’s already on site. By then? Joinery’s on order. Bathroom layout is locked in. Cable runs you needed through the studs are now behind plasterboard. Cost doubles. Options shrink. The same applies to network cabling during renovation for home offices and media rooms.

Get us involved at design stage, before you’ve paid for final drawings. We’ll walk the house, look at the existing switchboard, check what’s in the walls, tell you what the project actually needs electrically. Is the main supply big enough for the new kitchen and heat pump? Is the existing wiring safe to tie into, or are we rewiring that whole wall anyway? Does the Council consent you’re about to submit need revised electrical drawings? Sort all that before a hammer swings.

If you’re already mid-build, we can still come in. Just know that the rough-in cable work (electricians call it first fix) has to happen before the gib goes up, so timing matters more than you’d think. It’s also the window for running security camera wiring through the walls before everything gets closed up.

What We Handle

Rewiring first, because it’s the one that scares people. An old Auckland villa with original 1930s wiring (brittle rubber cable that crumbles when you bend it, no earthing, ceramic fuses that can’t protect anything modern) gets the full tear-out and replacement in modern cable to current NZ standards. Best done while walls and ceilings are already open for the renovation. Really the only sensible time to do it. Partial rewires suit kitchens, bathrooms, or specific rooms where you want one area properly sorted without committing to the whole house yet.

Switchboard next. Still got ceramic fuses? Breakers with no RCD (safety switch) protection? A main switch sized for a 1970s household? It goes. Modern switchboards with proper circuit breakers and RCDs on every circuit, labelled properly, sized for the new loads you’re planning. If the main supply coming in from the street isn’t big enough, we coordinate with Vector to lift it. Bigger homes running heat pumps (proper heat pump wiring is worth getting right during the renovation), pool heating, EV chargers and induction cooking often benefit from three-phase. Better to work that out during design than after you’ve signed the consent.

Kitchens eat more circuits than people expect. Induction cooktop needs its own high-current circuit. So does the oven. Dishwasher sits on its own. Rangehood wired to the ducting that goes outside, not into the ceiling cavity. Feature lighting above the island. USB points where you’ll actually use them, not where the original sparkie thought you might. Most kitchen renovations now include LED downlights in every room as part of the overall lighting plan. Pantry sensor lights that come on when the door opens. Plan all of it before the cabinetmaker finalises drawings. Sockets located 5cm off are the reason appliances don’t sit flush after install.

Bathrooms are zoned work, which trips a lot of people up. Every appliance, light, and switch has to match the waterproof rating for the zone it sits in. Heated towel rails, demister mirrors, underfloor heating, waterproof downlights in the shower ceiling, extractor fan with a humidity sensor, and ventilation wiring for bathrooms that connects to a proper ducted system. Cable runs coordinated with the plumber and tiler so everything’s in the wall before waterproofing and tiling go in. Miss the window and it gets ugly.

Then there’s the heating side. Heat pumps, hot water cylinder rewires, heated floors, towel rails, gas cooktops being swapped over to induction. If the plan includes a ceiling fan on a dedicated switch, now is the time to run that cable too. Cable routed at frame stage. Final hookup once the unit turns up. Commissioning and Certificate of Compliance so the insurer and Council are happy.

Character work is its own category. Villas, bungalows, Californians, Art Deco. Original architraves and scotia mouldings stay put where we can manage it. Original switch plates too, where the switch itself can be brought up to current standard. Otherwise we use modern reproduction switches that look right in a 1920s hallway but meet current electrical code. Cable concealed behind scotia or through ceiling voids rather than cut into solid kauri walls. Careful work. Not fast work.

Working Across the City

Electrical Renovations Across Auckland

Auckland renovations split by suburb and era. Central-city villas (Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, Devonport, Herne Bay, Parnell, Remuera) are the full rewire jobs. Brittle rubber cable. No earthing. Lath-and-plaster ceilings. Heritage overlays. And architects who care what the switch plates look like. Totally different scope to a post-war state house out in New Lynn or Henderson where the wiring’s modern enough but the switchboard’s tired and the kitchen circuit trips every time the jug goes on.

Eastern bays (Howick, Pakuranga, Bucklands Beach) are full of 60s and 70s brick-and-tile homes with undersized main supplies that can’t cope with modern heat pump and induction loads. Service upgrades from 60 amp to 100 or 150 amp are routine. North Shore’s a mixed bag. Takapuna and Milford villas get the character treatment. Albany and Silverdale newer homes get EV-charger retrofits and heat pump upgrades that should have been roughed in when the places were built.

Out west (Titirangi, the Waitākere foothills) means moisture-tolerant fittings, weatherproof exterior circuits, and sub-boards in detached garages where the subfloor can’t be trusted in winter. South Auckland (Papakura, Manurewa, Flat Bush) is weatherboard homes from the 80s and 90s with good bones but outdated circuit protection. Every suburb’s a different conversation, which is why we walk the site before quoting rather than giving a phone estimate.

Our Process

What to Expect

Every renovation job runs roughly the same way. Four stages.

Why Homeowners Choose Us

Why Choose Totally Amped Electrical

Trading since 2009. Every electrician on the team is fully qualified and registered with the EWRB (the Electrical Workers Registration Board, which licenses sparkies in New Zealand). All renovation work meets the current AS/NZS 3000 wiring rules and the New Zealand Building Code. Heritage villas, leaky plaster-clad homes, state-house conversions, everything between. We’ve done it. We know when to push back on a Council reviewer, when a main supply upgrade needs Vector to lift the cable from the street, when to keep the original brass switches and order reproduction inserts to match.

Turn up when we said we would. Tidy up at the end of each day. Leave the paperwork where you can find it. Answer the phone when you call back three weeks later because you forgot which circuit the towel rail is on.

Do I need Council consent for electrical work during a renovation?

Most of the time, yes. Adding new circuits, changing the switchboard, rewiring rooms, anything that forms part of a bigger renovation usually needs a building consent from Auckland Council. Replacing a light fitting in the same spot on existing wiring is generally exempt. Most renovation electrical work goes well beyond that though. Best approach is to include the electrical work in your main renovation consent application, not treat it as a separate afterthought. We tell you exactly what needs consent when we quote.

How do I know if my Auckland home needs a full rewire?

A few tells. If the cable you can see in the switchboard or ceiling void is brittle rubber rather than modern white plastic, it’s past its lifespan. If your switchboard still runs ceramic fuses rather than circuit breakers, it’s time. If your sockets don’t have an earth pin, or the earth reads nothing when you test it, the whole house has an earthing problem. If safety switches trip randomly when they never used to, something is breaking down somewhere. For homes built before 1980 that haven’t had major electrical work since, plan for a full rewire as part of any significant renovation. Doing it during the reno is the only time the walls are cheaply open.

How long does a renovation electrical job take?

Depends on the scope. A kitchen renovation might see us onsite 2 to 3 days for rough-in and another 1 to 2 days for final fittings, plus testing and sign-off. A full villa rewire is usually 2 to 4 weeks of electrician time spread across the project, with rough-in happening while the place is stripped out and final fittings at the end. A switchboard upgrade on its own is a day or two. We work to the builder’s programme and give you a proper schedule upfront, not a vague “couple of weeks”.

Can you work around heritage features in a character home?

Yes. Character homes need careful work. We run cable through ceiling voids and behind scotia mouldings where we can, rather than chasing into solid kauri walls. Original timber architraves get taken off carefully and put back. Original switch plates either stay (where the switch itself can be brought up to current standard) or get replaced with reproduction period-style plates that comply. We’ve worked in villas under full heritage overlay where every change needs sign-off, and we know what’s actually possible.

What happens if you find something unsafe mid-job?

We tell you straight away. If we open a wall expecting modern cable and find old rubber that’s flaking apart, or an earth that’s been disconnected for decades, or a junction hidden behind plaster that shouldn’t be there, we stop, document what’s there, and give you options. Sometimes it’s a quick fix that gets added to the existing scope. Sometimes it genuinely changes the scope. Either way you get the information to make the call, not a surprise on the final invoice.