Electrical Fault Finding & Repairs, North Yorkshire

Why the intermittent ones are the hard ones.

A dead circuit is straightforward. It is either broken or it is not, and it stays broken while you look at it. The awkward faults are the ones that come and go: an RCD that trips at four in the morning, a light that only flickers in cold weather, a socket that works until the freezer kicks in.

Those are usually water, a loose connection warming up and cooling down, or a slow breakdown in cable insulation somewhere you cannot see. Finding them means splitting the installation down and testing section by section until the fault has nowhere left to hide. It takes as long as it takes, and you will be kept posted rather than left wondering.

Meter cabinets and a wall-mounted isolator with the conduit run between them, the point where fault finding usually starts. — Where the tracing usually starts

What gets checked first.

Most faults turn out to be in one of a handful of places, and there is no sense pulling a house apart before those have been ruled out. Outside sockets and garden lighting where water gets in. Loft and under-floor joints where rodents have been. Immersion heaters and showers, which pull hard and fail slowly. Anything an unqualified person has added since the house was built.

The point of working through it in order is that you are not paying for somebody to guess expensively.

What is covered

What this covers.

RCD and breaker tripping traced to the circuit and the cause
Dead sockets, dead lighting circuits and dead outbuildings
Intermittent faults, including the weather-related ones
Burning smells and discoloured accessories, treated as urgent
Repair carried out and the circuit tested before it goes back on
Minor Works certificate where the repair calls for one

Priced after a look at what is actually there. A figure over the phone on work like this would be a guess, and a guess is how people end up with a second, bigger number halfway through.

Get booked inBack to you within 24 hours, Monday to Friday.

If it smells hot, do not wait.

A smell of burning near a socket, a plug or a consumer unit, or an accessory that has gone brown, is not something to leave until the weekend. Turn the circuit off at the board if you can identify it, and ring.

That is the one thing on this website worth acting on the same day.

Call 07546 173885

Where

Covered across North Yorkshire.

This work goes out across the whole patch, from Swaledale and Wensleydale down to York and Harrogate.

HuntonHunton is home.See the area RichmondRichmond and the villages around it, from the market place down to the river.See the area Reeth and SwaledaleReeth and up the dale beyond it.See the area Hawes and Upper WensleydaleHawes and Upper Wensleydale.See the area LeyburnLeyburn and the surrounding part of Wensleydale.See the area Catterick and Catterick GarrisonCatterick, the Garrison and the estates around them.See the area

Hunton Richmond Reeth Hawes Leyburn Catterick Bedale Northallerton Darlington Harrogate York Middlesbrough All areas

Also

The rest of the board.

RewiresFull and partial rewires, and consumer unit replacements carried out to the 18th Edition of the wiring regulations.Read more EICRsAn Electrical Installation Condition Report is an inspection and test of the whole electrical installation, written up so you can read it.Read more CommercialInstallations and maintenance for shops, offices and small commercial units.Read more

Everything we cover EV chargers

Questions

Worth knowing before you ring.

My RCD trips but only sometimes. Can you still find it?

Yes, and that is the usual case. An intermittent fault is found by testing rather than by waiting for it to happen. The installation gets split into sections and each is tested against the readings it should give, which shows up a circuit that is deteriorating even when it happens to be behaving on the day.

Can you tell me the cost before you come out?

Not honestly, because the fault could be a loose connection in a socket or a buried cable that has failed. What you get is a look, then a figure before any repair work starts, same as every other job.

Should I just replace the fuse board?

Usually not, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise before testing. A board that keeps tripping is often doing exactly what it is designed to do, which is telling you there is a fault on a circuit. Replace the board without finding the fault and you have spent money to keep the same problem.

Something keeps tripping, and nobody can say why.