Power, Gas and Water: Why Abolishment Takes Longer Than You Think

The most common cause of a demolition date moving is not weather, machines or council. It is a supply that has not been abolished yet.

Disconnection versus abolishment

**Disconnection** means the supply is turned off. The infrastructure is still there.

**Abolishment** means the supply is physically removed back to the network and the distributor certifies that it is gone.

Demolition requires abolishment. A live service anywhere near a machine is a fatality risk, and no responsible contractor will start without the paperwork confirming it is gone.

Electricity — the long one

Your electricity abolishment goes to the distributor for your address, not to your retailer. In greater Melbourne that means one of:

- **CitiPower** — the CBD and inner suburbs - **Powercor** — the west and outer west - **Jemena** — the north and north-west - **AusNet** — the east, north-east and outer east - **United Energy** — the south-east and the Mornington Peninsula

The application has to come from the owner or an authorised agent, and it needs proof of ownership behind it. Once lodged, the distributor schedules a crew to remove the service, and depending on the distributor and the time of year, four to eight weeks is a normal wait. Around Christmas it is longer.

Nothing you do compresses this. You can only start it earlier.

The overhead-versus-underground detail

An overhead service on a pole is usually a straightforward removal. An underground service, a service that also feeds a neighbour, or a pole on the property itself can turn into a more involved piece of work with its own scheduling. If your supply is anything other than a plain overhead lead-in, assume the longer end of the range.

Gas

Gas abolishment means the supply is cut and capped back at the main, not merely the meter removed. That is a network job with its own lead time — commonly a few weeks, sometimes longer where the main is under the road or the property is on a shared service.

Where a property has no gas connection at all, get that confirmed in writing. "There is no gas here" is not evidence, and an abandoned but live service under the front yard is exactly the kind of thing you do not want to discover with an excavator.

Water

The water meter is removed by the retail water business for your area — Yarra Valley Water, South East Water or Greater Western Water depending on the address. This is generally the fastest of the utilities, but it still needs an application and a visit.

The sewer is a separate matter. The connection point stays and is usually capped rather than removed, because the new build will want it. Your plumber will have views on this and it is worth asking them early — decisions made now are cheap and decisions made later are not.

Telecommunications

The old copper lead-in and any NBN equipment on the building need to be dealt with. This is lower risk than the others but it is one more application and one more attendance, and it is routinely forgotten until the day before.

The practical program

Lodge every abolishment the moment you decide to demolish — before the permit, before the asbestos assessment, before anything. They run in parallel with each other and with the council application, they are all slow, and none of them depends on anything else being finished first.

The one thing that will delay you is the application you have not lodged yet.

We prepare and track abolishments as part of a demolition or knockdown-rebuild scope, and we chase the distributors, which is the part people find genuinely painful when doing it themselves.