What to expect at your electrical appointment

After you’ve picked your home design, an exciting planning process kicks off to tailor that home to suit you and your family. To select important elements of your new home like colour schemes, appliances and finishes, you’ll have an appointment in our Design Lab.

There’s another appointment that you’ll also have on the same day as your colours selection – your electrical appointment, where together with an electrical consultant, you’ll discuss and decide on the electrical requirements for your home. 

There are quite a few decisions to make in this two-hour consultation, so we spoke to Arden Operations Manager, Sarah Bowles to get the lowdown on how you can best prepare for this appointment and what to expect on the day. 

It all starts with your floorplan. “We’ll send through a copy of your preliminary electrical plan noting the standard electrical provisions applicable to your home to review before coming in,” says Sarah. “Our standard home designs come with everything our clients home will need to service the home for both power and lighting requirements ”.  

Working with the electrical consultant, you’ll then move through your floorplan one room at a time to decide on where your power and lighting will be positioned.

“This covers things like if they want to change from batten lights to downlights, which wall they want the switches to be on, and where the powerpoints will go.”

There are likely a couple of electrical features that you haven’t considered – but don’t worry, we’ll take you through these, too. 

“The electrical consultant will work through some questions to go through things that you might not have thought of before the day,” says Sarah. Where to put the Christmas tree is a common one! “They’ll also make some suggestions as to what might work well in your new home.”

The most common add-ons clients opt for are alarm systems, CCTV or intercoms, Sarah says. Arden also offers the option to run pre-wiring for alarm systems, cameras or intercoms, if this is something you might want to install down the track.

As cables are run through the walls and roof, it’s a lot easier to make these decisions during the pre-building process.

“Should you not consider pre-wiring until after the build, you may need to replaster and repaint to patch the holes made to complete the wiring post construction ” Sarah notes.

Another area that often receives additional electrical features: the wardrobe.  

“If you have a walk-in wardrobe, you might want to have powerpoints so you can use things like a clothes steamer, hair straightener or other electronics,” says Sarah. Also, as there’s usually not enough natural light source in this space, she also suggests adding more lighting. A great feature could be dimmer switches to change the lighting night or day and provide an overall greater amount of flexibility for lighting in general in this space.

For clients with a pool on their wishlist, it’s good to be mindful of where you want the future pool and equipment to go, as well as the electrical requirements needed to ensure there is enough power to the pool, says Sarah.

“The same goes for external lighting, like Christmas lights or landscape lighting for example, as we need to make sure that the home has enough power source and external power points.” This is a decision you’ll make after the initial electrical appointment, but it’s a good idea to raise any questions with the consultant on the day. 

There’s a lot to cover off in your electrical appointment, which is why we’re rolling out a new pre-appointment checklist to help you start thinking about the features you want to include in your new home. “This will help to make you feel a bit more prepared, so that you don’t have to make decisions on the spot about things you might not have considered,” says Sarah. 

You can rest assured that when you do have your meeting, one of our expert electrical consultants will be there to guide you through the process and work to accommodate all your requests.