Mount Waverley's homes
A 1950s suburb
Building on the earliest estates didn't start in earnest until the early 1950s. The population had been just 464 in 1933.
Housing Commission and A.V. Jennings
The Housing Commission acquired land for 2000 houses by 1950, and the Pinewood shopping centre and nearby homes were an A.V. Jennings estate in the late 1950s.
Apartments too
In 2021, 68.6% of occupied homes were separate houses and 21.5% were flats or apartments. 41.9% were owned outright and 24.2% were rented.
Valleys that flood
Flood retarding basins line the valley south of the station and Scotchmans Creek, and VICSES names Mount Waverley among Monash's at-risk flood locations.
Your network
Check your electricity bill for your distributor. That's who to call for outages and fallen lines, not an electrician.
Wiring in a 1950s house
Houses this age were wired for a handful of lights and power points per room. Over seventy years they've usually gained extra circuits, some neat and some not. Old cable in the roof, too few power points and a board without safety switches are the things an electrician most often finds.
Rewiring doesn't have to happen all at once. An electrician who does older homes can tell you which circuits are worth replacing now, and which can wait for a renovation.
What you can do, and what's an electrician's job
You can
- Test your safety switches with the test button.
- Note which lights and power points go off together when a breaker trips.
- Count the power boards and double adaptors you rely on: lots of them is a sign of too few outlets.
- Change smoke alarm batteries, and swap battery alarms that are more than ten years old.
Leave to a licensed electrician
- Replacing old cable or the switchboard.
- Adding power points or circuits.
- Hardwired smoke alarms.
- Checking anything that's had water in it after a flood.
If it were our house
We'd have the wiring inspected before a renovation is designed, not halfway through it. In a 1950s house the inspection usually decides the plan: a board upgrade and a few new circuits, or a staged rewire.
Want a specialist to sort it?
Tell us the job and your postcode. We match the licence-checked local electrician who does this kind of work, and they call you. No ring-around, and your number goes to them alone.