My meter box door is broken or won't close. Who fixes it?

From the point of supply, where the network meets your installation, the property owner is responsible for maintaining and repairing the installation. The meter box enclosure sits on your side of that line. Powercor lists a defective meter box among customer installation defects that are the customer's responsibility and need fixing promptly.

In a rental, the rental provider must organise and pay for repairs that aren't the renter's fault. In a unit block with a shared meter bank, the enclosure is usually common property, so start with the owners corporation.

Meter boxes face the weather. A door that won't close lets in rain and dust, which corrode terminals and can trip safety switches, and gives wasps, ants and spiders a dry place to nest among the wiring. On older boxes the door is also all that stands between curious hands and the fuses or switchboard inside.

Hinges and latches on older steel boxes rust, and plastic doors on newer ones go brittle in the sun. Close to the bay in Altona and Williamstown, salt air speeds the rust along.

If the enclosure is sound, a new hinge, latch, seal or door may be all it needs, and that doesn't involve the distributor. If the box is cracked, rusted through, too small or mounted on an old panel, replacing it is the better fix. A new meter box is prescribed work, so it can't be switched on until a Licensed Electrical Inspector has inspected it, and the distributor removes and refits the meter.

Older meter panels can contain asbestos. WorkSafe Victoria lists switchboards and their backing boards as a typical location for asbestos-containing materials in buildings from before the late 1980s, so don't drill, sand or screw anything to an old panel to hold the door shut.