Electrical repair in the Phoenix Valley

Some electrical problems are just annoying. Others are the early stage of a connection overheating inside a wall. The hard part is that both can look the same from the hallway.

If you notice any of the signs below, turn off the breaker for that circuit if you can do it safely, and call us. If you see smoke or flames, get out of the house and call 911 first.

A breaker is a heat-sensing switch. When the wire it protects carries more current than it should, the breaker warms up and trips. That is the breaker doing its job.

Phoenix makes that job harder. Summer highs regularly top 110 degrees, and the AC runs hard from roughly May through October. Breakers trip at lower loads when they are hot, and many Valley homes have the panel or meter-main on an outside wall that sits in full sun all afternoon. Years of heating up and cooling down can also loosen the connections at a breaker.

So a breaker that trips every July afternoon may be overloaded, worn out, loose, or simply cooking in the sun. We test it to find out which, because the fix is different for each one.

A single dead outlet is often the easiest call we get. In many homes, one GFCI outlet in a bathroom, the kitchen or the garage protects other outlets further down the line. When it trips, everything after it goes dead, sometimes in a different room. Look for a GFCI with a popped reset button before you call. If that doesn't fix it, a loose connection at that outlet or the one before it is a common cause.

Losing power to half the house is a different problem. It can point to a failed main breaker, trouble inside the meter-main, or an issue on the utility side of the meter. We check everything on your side first. If the problem belongs to APS or SRP, depending on your address, we tell you exactly what to report so you can get it in front of the right people.

Flickering lights have a long list of causes. A loose bulb or a dimmer that doesn't match your LEDs is a cheap fix. Lights that dim across the whole house when the AC compressor starts can point to a loose connection in the panel or at the service. Flickering on one circuit that gets worse over time usually means a connection is failing somewhere along it.

Buzzing and burning smells go to the top of the list. Both can mean a connection is arcing or overheating. Some homes built roughly 1965 to 1973 were wired with aluminum branch circuits, and the CPSC has documented a fire risk at those connections. If your home is from that era and an outlet feels warm, we check what the wiring is made of before we touch anything else.

We start by asking what you noticed, when it started and what was running at the time. Those answers save time, so jot them down if you can.

Then we test. That usually means checking the panel, the breaker on the problem circuit, and the outlets, switches and boxes along it. Once we find the cause, we show you what we found, explain your options, and give you a written price before we fix anything. If the answer is a new outlet and not a new panel, that is what we tell you.

When a repair needs a permit, such as replacing a damaged run of wiring or a failing meter-main, we pull it under our ROC license and schedule the inspection.

Call right away for burning smells, smoke, buzzing, warm outlets, shocks, or any tingle in or near a pool or spa. If someone feels a tingle near the water, get everyone out, keep them out, and call an electrician.

Call soon for breakers that keep tripping, lights that flicker more each week, or outlets that went dead and didn't come back after a GFCI reset. Monsoon season runs June 15 to September 30 and brings lightning, outages and surges, so early summer is a good time to get small problems looked at before the storms start.