To think it's really weird that there are no electrical sockets at all in my sitting room?

[user1477282676]

We've just moved into a new rental...we're in Australia. The house is hard to date as it's been altered a lot on the outside...clad in some awful fake bricks...and the interior, though it appears to be around 1900-1920 due to the style of the ceiling roses and fireplaces, I think is possibly 1940s...

Some architectural details in houses in Oz seem to be older than they are because it was hard to get the latest stuff back in the day.

Anyway...I've discovered that the main sitting room has no electrical outlets at all.

Not one!

Why is this then? I can't think why they wouldn;t pop a socket in! There's a second sitting room which has two in it...it's a cottage style of house.

Was there not a tv or anything when you viewed it?

It could possibly be that the main sitting room is a very old original part of the house (so no sockets) and the rest of the house is actually an extension built around the sitting room later (so sockets).

Also, if I remember correctly, when electricity was first brought into houses it was lighting only, and I have vague memories of appliance being plugged into light fixtures initially.

What did the previous tenants do?

I would call the landlord and ask him if he would arrange for an electrician to come and install a socket (or let you arrange an electrician).

My house only had 1 socket in most of the rooms when I bought it... It was built in the 30's lol. One room didn't have any.

Electricity was a decadent luxury back in the day 😂

I'd be asking for some to be put in, how weird! You can't trail cables everywhere, it's dangerous.

I live in a 80's built semi and no sockets in the dining room which we didn't know until after we moved in! Rental as well somcant change it.

It could be an old verandah that they have covered over and made into a room. Therefore it was originally on the outside of the house and originally had no need for electric sockets.

Maybe it was originally part of a room that has been made into two rooms by adding a stud wall and the sockets are in what was the other end / new room?

Our house has a huge loft conversion, 25 feet long. It's really a very nice room but when we moved in there were two tiny, crap wall lights and no other lighting at all. Utterly bizarre, perhaps they ran out of budget so just gave up on electricity/ lighting? Hardly important.

My parents have a 70s build house with a huge lounge. There are exactly 2 sockets both down the same end of the room. There's electricity up the far end (sockets in adjoining rooms) so why

Means that dm had to have an extension cable to hoover the far end of the room, and when they got a VHS (about 20 years after everyone else, when they inherited from someone moving onto a DVD player) they needed to run an extension cable from the second socket to run that and the TV together.
I know people used fewer sockets back then but really?

As soon as I saw the title of this thread, I knew it be in Australia.

I'd go back to the landlord/agency and ask about getting some put in, though with any landlord who has the nerve to let such a place, I wouldn't hold my breath.

How is the house heated? I ask because the eccentric arrangements about heating in older ( and not so much older) Australian houses.

I live in Australia and we had so few sockets in our first house we ended up running extension leads everywhere. Electrics are crazy here. We now have a silly amount of sockets in our new house and in very strange places on the wall. A lot of them in the bedrooms are halfway up the walls.

I think you need to ask for some to be installed though as you can't be expected to run cables from other rooms.

Echt it's got a combustion heater. There's hot water powered by electricity. It's going to be freezing! :D I don't care though...I really like the house.

The room with no sockets is a sort of additional sitting room...it's not really vital to have any electricals in there.