You do not need a multimeter or any training for these checks — just ten minutes and your senses. Do them once a season, and the last one once a month.
Walk-through checks (no tools needed)
- Touch your switch plates. Every switch and socket faceplate should be cool. Warmth means a loose connection heating up behind the wall.
- Look for discolouration. Brown or yellow staining around sockets is baked-on heat damage — that circuit needs attention now.
- Smell each room at night. A fishy or acrid plastic smell with no obvious source is the classic scent of overheating insulation.
- Count your extension cords. Any extension cord that has become permanent furniture is a socket that should exist and does not.
- Wiggle test the plugs. Plugs should sit firmly. Sockets that grip loosely arc invisibly every time the load changes.
- Check cord health. Kinked, taped-over or pet-chewed cords go in the bin, not behind the sofa.
- Listen at the DB box. A healthy distribution board is silent. Buzzing or crackling means arcing inside.
- Look up at your fans. A wobbling ceiling fan is loosening its own mounting — and its wiring — with every rotation.
- Check bathroom heaters for an earth. If your water heater was installed before 2000 and nobody has inspected it since, book that inspection.
- Find your main switch. Everyone in the house should know where it is and how to turn it off in the dark.
The monthly test that matters most
Your ELCB (earth leakage circuit breaker — the switch with the TEST or T button in your DB box) is the device that saves lives when current leaks through a person. Once a month, press the test button. The switch should trip instantly. Reset it, and you are done.
If it does not trip, your home has no working shock protection. Stop using the water heater and call an electrician the same day — this is not a "next month" repair.
What the checklist cannot catch
Insulation breaking down inside walls, undersized circuits from decades of add-ons, and corroded joints in junction boxes only show up with instruments. If your house is over 25 years old and has never had a wiring inspection, our wiring and rewiring service starts with exactly that — a documented inspection with photos, before anyone talks about opening walls.