Is This an Electrical Emergency?
Is This an Electrical Emergency?
Reference
Some electrical symptoms need a call tonight. Some need one this week. Some are limitations you can plan around — here is how to tell them apart.
The hard part about an electrical fault is that the serious ones and the trivial ones can look similar from the outside. A breaker that trips occasionally is usually a circuit doing its job. A breaker that trips repeatedly with nothing changed is a fault developing. Below is how we triage calls, so you can triage your own.
If you smell burning and cannot locate it, or you can see scorching or sparks, stop reading and call.
Stop using the circuit and call. These are not wait-and-see symptoms.
Not an emergency tonight, but these are faults developing rather than quirks.
These are limitations rather than faults. Book them around your schedule.
Everything up to and including your meter belongs to the utility. The service entrance, panel and everything beyond are yours. That boundary decides who to call.
If the whole street is dark, it is a grid outage — report it to your utility (Toronto Hydro, Alectra or Oakville Hydro depending on where you are) and wait it out.
If only your home is out, check your main breaker and panel first. A tripped main looks identical to an outage from inside the house, and it is the most common false alarm we attend.
If you have partial power — some circuits live, others dead, lights unusually dim or unusually bright — that can indicate a lost neutral or an open service conductor. That is a genuine emergency, it can damage appliances, and it needs a call rather than a wait.
A burning smell you cannot locate, visible sparks or scorch marks, a panel that is hot or buzzing, any shock from an appliance or fixture, or water reaching electrical equipment. These are all reasons to shut the circuit off if it is safe to do so and call immediately rather than waiting.
A breaker tripping is it doing its job. The question is the pattern. Tripping once when you ran two heaters on one circuit is a capacity issue. Tripping repeatedly with no change in what is plugged in, refusing to reset, or resetting and tripping immediately, suggests a fault on the circuit and should be looked at within days.
A dimmer running mildly warm can be normal. An outlet or switch that is noticeably warm to the touch, or a plug that is hot when removed, is not — it usually indicates a loose or deteriorating termination, which is a common origin of fires inside walls. Stop using it and have it looked at promptly.
If the whole street is dark, it is the grid: call your utility. If it is only your home, check your main breaker and your panel first. If some circuits work and others do not, or you have partial power with dim lights, that can indicate a lost neutral or an open service conductor, which is a genuine emergency and needs a call.
Stop using the affected circuit and switch it off at the panel if you can do so safely. Do not reset a breaker repeatedly — it is telling you something. Unplug what you can from the affected area. If there is smoke, active sparking or a smell of burning, leave the building and call the fire service before anyone else.
Toronto Fire is on pace for about 100 battery fire calls a year. Where to charge, and where not to.
Read more →Old wiring behind the symptoms, and what actually has to change.
Read more →Overheating panels are the commonest emergency we attend.
Read more →Related services: 24/7 Emergency Electrician · Electrical Repairs · Electrical Inspections.
Call and describe it. We would rather tell you it can wait than have you guess.