When to call an emergency electrician, and when it can wait

Call immediately

A burning smell, scorch marks, melted plastic or heat coming off a socket, switch or the consumer unit is an emergency. So is any sign of arcing, crackling or buzzing at the board, water entering an electrical enclosure, or a shock felt from any appliance, tap or pipework, however slight.

In those situations, isolate first if you can do so safely. Turn off the main switch on the consumer unit, or the individual circuit if you know which it is, and leave it off. Do not attempt to open anything or investigate behind an accessory. Then call.

• Burning smell, smoke or scorching at a socket, switch or board
• A shock from an appliance, tap, pipe or light fitting
• Water entering a consumer unit, socket or light fitting
• Exposed live conductors after damage or a break in
• Repeated tripping that returns immediately every time you reset it

Call the network operator, not an electrician

If the whole street is out, or you have no power and your neighbours have none either, that is a supply fault. Contact the distribution network operator on 105 from anywhere in Great Britain. It is free and it reaches the right people directly.

The same applies to anything on the supply side: a damaged service head, a cracked meter tail sheath before the meter, a fallen overhead line, or damage to the sealed equipment before your consumer unit. That equipment is not yours and an electrician cannot lawfully work on it. Never touch a fallen cable and keep well clear.

Usually safe until morning

A single circuit that trips and stays off once you have unplugged the offending appliance is uncomfortable but not dangerous. Lights out in one room with everything else fine is the same. One dead socket, an outside light that has stopped working, a doorbell transformer that has failed: all of these can wait for a normal appointment.

The test is simple. If the fault is contained, isolated and nothing is hot, wet, smoking or shocking anybody, you are paying an out of hours premium for something a daytime visit will fix better, because the parts shops are open.

• One circuit off with the faulty appliance unplugged
• A single dead socket or light with no other symptoms
• Outside lighting or a garden circuit that has stopped
• A tripping RCD that resets cleanly once one appliance is removed

What to do while you wait

Keep the affected circuit isolated and label the breaker so nobody helpfully resets it. Unplug appliances on that circuit, particularly anything with a heating element. If there is water involved, deal with the water source first and keep people away from the area.

Write down what happened and in what order: what was switched on, whether anything smelled or sparked, whether it has happened before. That timeline genuinely shortens the diagnosis, because a fault that appears only when the shower runs is a different fault from one that appears at random.

What an out of hours visit involves

An emergency call out is diagnosis first. The aim is to make the installation safe and restore what can be safely restored, not necessarily to complete a full repair in the middle of the night. Sometimes the correct outcome is a circuit left isolated, a written explanation and a return visit with the right parts.

Expect a call out charge that covers attendance and a period of diagnostic time, with parts and further work quoted separately. Ask for that structure before anyone travels. Across Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff and Swansea we will also tell you on the phone if we think the honest answer is that it can safely wait until morning.