We were called out at night to investigate an issue with the electrical supply to the home of a young couple who had recently moved in to a property.
Admittedly I spent some time on the phone trying to fix the problem as I tend to, before I loaded the van and headed out there. They had searched for “ELECTRICAL COMPANIES NEAR ME” and found our number online as an emergency electrician service.
As there was a complete power cut, I had asked the couple to call 105 first and speak with the local electricity network supply company to see if there were any issues known in the street or further away. Once the young couple had done this, they called me back to inform me that there were no known issues. At this point I was happy to come out as I was confident that there was an electrical issue INSIDE the property that I could look at for them. I always try to save my customers some money where I can and try to ensure that my services are actually needed before heading out to a property.
Once I arrived at the property, I spent some time discussing the problem with them and they explained what had happened. I took off the cover of the consumer unit and began investigating the problem. It appeared that there was absolutely no voltage showing at the incoming cables into the mains switch in the consumer unit. The mains switch is the double RED switch on the far-right hand side that can be seen in the photograph. The main switch is responsible for isolating and restoring power to all areas of the consumer unit / fuse box and without power coming in to the top of this switch then none of the circuits in the property would receive power either.
After a little more testing, I concluded that power was coming in to the property but not getting past the electric meter. After pressing some buttons and looking up some instructions online and following some instructions on the meter I discovered that that I could get the power back on for them.
It appears that the electric meter had stopped the supply to the property and the couple would need to urgently call the electric company in the morning to get their bills transferred over to their new home. ☹
I have come across prepayment meters that cut off supply before but not this style. Ah well, power restored for now and two happy people who can get the fridge, WIFI and tv back on – the essentials!
My initial suspicions during our first phone call were that there was an issue with the electrical supply to their home from outside OR that there was a serious problem inside the consumer unit which would require replacement parts and possibly cable repairs.
All was not lost, we restored power and checked out a light switch then made safe a shower circuit that was causing them concern. Good thing we did, it was potentially lethal! Bare wires had been left hanging out of a box in the ceiling and could become live with the simple flick of a switch! I disconnected the shower circuit at the consumer unit so this could not happen, even accidentally and explained what I had done and why.
If you are searching for “ELECTRICAL COMPANIES NEAR ME” and you have a problem with your electrical supply or electrical installation in the evening or on the weekend then you may be better searching for an emergency electrician or a 24-hour electrician 😊
Not every electrician bails out at night or on the weekends to come and fix things and sometimes it’s necessary to get a company that specialises in emergency call-outs to come and take a look.
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