It's been a while, nine months in fact, since our electrical (and colour) appointment, and although I've previously posted our colours and tiles selections, I haven't really touched on the electricals, so I'll try to provide as much info as possible in this post.
We'd spent most of the time at our appointment on colours, and felt like the electricals were a bit rushed through, but were reassured at the time that we would get the chance to go through the electrical plans in more detail with the electrician in due course.
Based on the house size, CG will have a standard allocation of downlights and power points on your electrical plans, to which you can change and/or add more lights, downlights, power points, switches etc. The main extras put forward to us at the time were the data pack and video intercom.
However, there is more you can do so do your research. When we raised with CG that we felt the electricals fell short, they were more than happy for us to liaise directly with their electrical contractor, Pat of Fisher Brothers Electrical, which we did to explore other options.
After speaking with (and emailing) Pat and based on his expert opinion, here are some of the things* we added after our electrical appointment (but by contract):
- extra data points (8-pack instead of 4) as all things including TV's are going digital (apple tv, netflix, etc)
- HDMI cables to enable multi-room viewings (so only 2 Foxtel points required instead of 4)
- NBN pack (couldn't believe we didn't think of that or that it hadn't been suggested) which includes another 3 data points (we upgraded to 6 data points)
* note that they can probably do most of what's available on the Fisher Brothers Electrical website, i.e. Cbus, Push (regret not doing that), theatre sound system, etc... (we'll put in Sonos ourselves after handover, but note they can do that too)
And finally as promised by CG, we met Pat (very nice guy and most helpful) on site this morning and did a walk through to go over our electrical plans and confirm and/or change the location of every single item and even added** a few items here and there. We dealt with Pat directly, so there was no variation.
** note that adding a couple of downlights (we added 2) should be fine, but adding an excessive number of downlights will affect your 6-star energy rating requirement, which by this stage has already been assessed (done just after contract). So if you think there aren't enough downlights on your plans, add them earlier wherever possible (adding power points doesn't appear to be an issue)
Last couple of little hints:
- if like me you'd like to have a pendant light centred over the dining room table but cannot confirm the location until you actually know exactly where the table is going to be, then Pat has kindly agreed to install the wiring hidden in the ceiling (and behind the switch) until such time that you're ready
- if building a two storey house, then get all your wiring to the ground floor absolutely right as they'll be much harder to add or change, but it will be easier to add electrical items to the first floor through the roof access
