Out of Hours Electrician in Liverpool

1) What is an out of hours electrician?

An out of hours electrician is an electrician that works outside of normal working hours. Normal working hours are considered to be 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday and any hours falling outside of this would be considered out of hours. 

They will attend emergency calls from customers at night, evening, and early morning. They will be well equipped to repair many different problems and will carry different spare parts especially for this purpose. 

2) When should I call them?

They normally work during that day as well as out of hours and as such they will sleep at night. You should call these types of electrician whenever you need them but ensure that you require them to attend your property. They will need to sleep at night and will not normally take kindly to answering general enquiries during the dark hours, emergencies are normally never a problem though. If you have any of the following problems then you should probably call an out of hours electrician when those problems occur:

• Power cut that cannot be solved by calling 105
• Partial power cut
• No sockets
• No lights
• Burning smell / fishy smell
• Trip switch tripping off
• Lights flickering 

There are of course other problems that you may feel require urgent attendance and it is important that you call if you feel that your electrical system is not behaving correctly or is potentially unsafe. 

How fast does an electrician come out at night?

In our case we are normally able to attend out of hours once you have booked us within two hours. Sometimes quicker. We do occasionally travel in some cases at night and this may mean that we are a little distance from you when you call us. We will always inform you of our estimated time or arrival once we are on the way. We can offer tracking via Google Maps sharing if you have the app. 

3) Should I do anything before the electrician gets here?

As most electricians charge by the hour for fault finding, the quicker we can find the problem the better. This saves you money and means that we can attend more emergencies each night. In order to help us find your problem quickly we ask that you make some access to your consumer unit / fuse box for us. We need some clear area around the consumer unit to bodily access it. We will need to work in here with tools and test equipment and this is made difficult if the consumer unit is covered in coats and bags. 😊

How long does an out of hours electrician take to fix problems?

The time taken to fix electrical problems depends on a variety of factors:

• The access to your consumer unit
• Access to sockets, switches and other electrical accessories
• The nature of the problem
• The location of the problem

There are a variety of factors that will affect how long it takes for us to find and fix an issue, some of these can be minimised before our visit and some of them are unknown until we begin our investigation. Most issues are fixed in the first hour and if not then we are usually in a position to make safe, provide a quote and offer some solutions. 

4) How long does it take to fix a trip switch problem?

A trip switch that will not stay up normally means that the trip switch is NOT THE PROBLEM. A trip switch will turn off when it sees a problem on a circuit. 

Finding the exact location on the circuit where the problem exists can take some time and is often hindered by access to lights, switches and sockets. The quicker we can access all these electrical accessories, the quicker we are able to get to the root of the problem and repair the issue. Occasionally we find that there may be a rewire or partial rewire needed of a circuit and this can take a little longer. We carry spare cable, electrical accessories and everything else we could need BUT it may be that we need you to move furniture for us in order to gain access to floorboards. 

We will always endeavour to get as much of your power back on as possible and then quote you to repair the problem permanently within the next few days. 

5) What if it is a broken trip switch?

If the trip switch is the problem then we can replace these for you. This often requires ordering a part, arranging a second visit and then testing and inspecting the circuits that the trip switch protects and / or various testing on the new part being installed to ensure safety. 

It is not as simple as simply unclipping one part and clipping another in, there are a vast number of electrical safety requirements that we have to follow to ensure that the installation is at least as safe as when we found it and preferably safer. 

We do carry a range of spare parts in our lock up and on board however it is impossible to stock all parts, past and present as there are simply too many manufacturers. 

6) What if the consumer unit is broken?

Occasionally there are parts within a consumer unit that will fail. Depending upon the age of these parts there may be an easy replacement available. A lot of consumer units are very old and the manufacturers either no longer exist or have changed product ranges several times. When this is the case then we cannot easily obtain new replacement parts for your consumer unit and the most sensible option is to replace the unit for a modern one. 

7) How much does an out of hours electrician charge?

Our services are priced competitively compared with many emergency electrician companies. Stay tuned for an in-depth out of hours electrician cost page coming soon.