The five photos we need to price your EV charger install

A home charger quote is really four questions: can your switchboard take the circuit, how far does the cable have to run, what is it running across, and is the supply single or three phase. Photographs answer all four. This is not a shortcut we invented: Evnex quotes New Zealand installs from "a few quick questions about your home and a couple of photos, no site visit needed", and Pod and Octopus do the same in the UK.

Photo 1: your switchboard, door open

This is the important one. With the cover door open, the electrician can see the row of breakers, whether any ways are spare, whether there are RCDs or RCBOs, and whether the board still runs on ceramic rewireable fuses. That single frame decides whether your quote includes switchboard work, which is a $1,500 to $3,000 difference.

• Stand far enough back to get the whole board in frame, then take a second, closer shot of the breaker row
• Open only the hinged cover door, the one designed to be opened by hand
• Do not unscrew or remove any panel, and do not open anything with tools. That's live work and it's not yours to do
• Use the flash if the cupboard is dark; a blurry board photo is the main reason we have to ask again

Photo 2: your switchboard, door closed

The closed board shows the main switch rating and any labelling on the front, which is often where the supply information lives. It also shows what's around the board: a board wedged behind a hot water cylinder or inside a full wardrobe is a real cost factor, and it's invisible in a close-up of the breakers.

Photo 3: the wall where the charger goes

Stand back and photograph the whole wall, not just the spot. We're reading the wall material, which sets the fixing and the price: timber weatherboard and plasterboard are straightforward, while brick, block and concrete cost more to fix to and to core through. We're also checking the charger will sit at a sensible height, clear of doors, downpipes, gutters and vents.

Photo 4: where you park

The charger has to reach your car's charge port with the cable it comes with. A 5-metre tethered lead sounds long until the car parks nose-in and the port is on the far rear corner. One photo of the car in its usual spot, taken from where the charger would go, tells us whether the standard cable reaches or whether you want the 8-metre version.

Photo 5: the route between the board and the charger

This is the one people skip, and it's the one that most often turns a fixed price into a variation. Walk from the switchboard to the charger position and photograph the path: the wall it runs along, any corners, whether it has to cross a driveway, go through a garage ceiling, or leave the house and come back in. Cable is priced per metre past the length in your quote, and anything that has to go underground is trenching.

Optional: the meter box

If your meter is in a separate box outside, a photo of it helps confirm the supply and the main fuse rating. It's the quickest way to tell single phase from three phase when the switchboard photo is ambiguous.

What can a photo still not tell you?

Two things, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.

• What's behind the wall. A photo shows the surface, not the framing, the insulation or what's already buried in there. Occasionally the fixing point has to move a little on the day. That doesn't change your price.
• The condition of the wiring inside the board. The photo shows the devices, not the terminations. If the electrician opens the board on the day and finds something genuinely unsafe, work stops and you see the priced difference in writing before anyone continues. If you don't accept it, you get your deposit back.

How to send them

Fill in the quote form with your charger, your car and your region, and reply to the confirmation email with the photos attached. Straight off your phone is fine; there's no need to resize anything. We keep them only as long as we need them, and delete them on the schedule in our privacy page.