Safety advice
Electricity keeps a home running, and it causes thousands of fires a year when it is neglected. These are the things worth knowing before something goes wrong.
Advice worth having before you need it
Written for householders, not electricians. Each one tells you what to do right now, and when to stop and call.
Why your RCD keeps tripping
Resetting it again and again is not a fix. The device is telling you that current is going somewhere it should not.
Read more
A burning smell from a socket
This is the one fault we treat as an emergency every single time. Arcing connections start fires.
Read moreWhat to do in a power cut
Half the emergency calls we take during bad weather are network faults. Two minutes of checking tells you which one you have.
Read more
Smoke alarms and testing
A battery alarm you never test is decoration. Interlinked mains alarms wake the whole house, not just the room that is burning.
Read moreThings worth doing this week
Press the test button on your RCD
Every consumer unit with an RCD has a test button. Press it. The device should trip instantly. If it does not, it is not protecting you, and that is a job for today rather than next year.
Feel your plugs and sockets
Anything warm to the touch is a warning. Warm means resistance, resistance means a loose connection, and a loose connection is how socket fires start.
Uncoil extension leads before use
A coiled lead cannot shed heat. Running a two kilowatt heater from a coiled reel is one of the most reliable ways to melt one.
Check your alarm dates
Smoke alarms have a manufacture date on the back and a service life of about ten years. Past that, replace the unit rather than the battery.
Find your main switch in daylight
Know where the consumer unit is and which way the main switch turns off, before you need to find it with a phone torch at midnight.
When is it an emergency?
There is a smell of burning
Always an emergency. Isolate the circuit and call us. Arcing connections do not settle down on their own.
The whole property has no power
Check whether the street is out first by calling 105. If it is only you, and nothing has tripped, call us.
Someone has had a shock
Seek medical advice for the person, isolate the circuit, and do not use it again until it has been tested. Any shock from an installation is a fault, not bad luck.
Water has reached the wiring or the fuse board
Isolate at the main switch if it is safe to reach, and call us. Do not energise anything that has been wet until it has been tested.
A single socket has stopped working
Usually not an emergency, unless it is warm or discoloured. Book a daytime visit and avoid the out of hours rate.
A light fitting has stopped working
Try the lamp first. If the fitting is dead with a known good lamp, it is a normal booking rather than a call-out.
Lights out, burning smell or a tripping fuse board? Call us now.
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