Millar Electrics works out of 31-37 Norcal Road — Nunawading is our home suburb. The van is a couple of minutes from most jobs, the same sparky comes back for the follow-up work, and we know the streets and the housing stock here better than anywhere else we cover.
Nunawading's residential streets — mostly south and east of Whitehorse Road — were developed through the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The housing is brick and weatherboard on standard blocks, solid enough to last another fifty years, but the original electrical installations are another matter. Boards from that era typically run rewirable ceramic fuses, a single earth conductor tied to the water main, and a total circuit count that was never designed for ducted heating, split systems, dishwashers and EV chargers all running at once. When a Nunawading homeowner rings us about a tripping board or a kitchen circuit that keeps losing power, the answer is usually the same: the board has reached the end of its service life and needs replacing. We swap the enclosure, install circuit breakers and RCBOs across every circuit, add a proper earthing system to AS/NZS 3000, and leave the house wired for the next few decades. For most single-storey homes the job is done in a day.
The Whitehorse Road strip and the Silverdale Road industrial estate
Nunawading's commercial geography gives us a second major job stream. Whitehorse Road through Nunawading is the "Mega Mile" — a dense corridor of car dealerships, bulky goods retailers, homewares showrooms and automotive workshops, with most tenancies running three-phase supply. Level-crossing removal at Nunawading station a few years back cleaned up the Whitehorse Road and Springvale Road intersection, and the accompanying development along the corridor has brought a steady run of fit-out and switchboard work with it. When a tenancy changes hands along here, the new occupant almost always needs the board assessed, circuits reconfigured, and — if the previous tenant ran heavy equipment — the earth and neutral verified to current standards.
North of Whitehorse Road, the Silverdale Road light-industrial estate runs fabricators, mechanics, materials suppliers and small manufacturers. These businesses need proper three-phase wiring, dedicated circuits for compressors and welders, and switchboards that can carry the load without nuisance tripping. We handle electrical installations and maintenance for several businesses in the estate and carry the gear to deal with most industrial faults on the first visit. Maintenance contracts are common here — businesses can't afford the downtime of waiting on an unfamiliar sparky to diagnose a board they've never seen before.
EV chargers and the residential transition
The residential streets around Norcal Road and through the Canterbury and Springvale Road corridors have taken on a lot of EV charger installations over the last two years. Most of the existing switchboards in these homes have one or two spare slots — enough for a 32A dedicated circuit — but a portion need a board upgrade first. We assess both at the same visit and quote the combined job where it's needed. Load management settings matter here too: a home running ducted heating, a pool pump and an EV charger can pull well over the standard 63A residential service without load limiting in place.
Every job — whether it's a single safety switch or a full board replacement — is completed with a Certificate of Electrical Safety (COES) lodged with Energy Safe Victoria and a workmanship guarantee on parts and labour.
About Nunawading
Nunawading sits in Whitehorse City Council and is our home suburb — the Millar Electrics workshop is at 31-37 Norcal Road, just off Whitehorse Road. The suburb has three distinct zones: the residential streets to the south dominated by 1950s–70s brick and weatherboard on standard blocks; the Whitehorse Road commercial and retail corridor anchored by the car and bulky-goods dealers of the "Mega Mile"; and the Silverdale Road light-industrial estate to the north. Nunawading station, where the level crossing was removed as part of the broader Whitehorse Road grade-separation works, sits on the Belgrave and Lilydale lines. The older residential housing stock here regularly turns up original ceramic fuse boards, single-phase supply running at the limit of modern household load, and earthing arrangements that predate AS/NZS 3000. Switchboard upgrades and EV charger installations are the most consistent residential job types; commercial and light-industrial fit-outs and maintenance for the Whitehorse Road and Silverdale Road tenants are the other constant stream.
