When to Call an Emergency Electrician (and When It Can Wait Until Morning)

• A burning smell with no obvious source. Hot plastic, fish, or an ozone smell near an outlet, a switch, or the panel means something is overheating inside the wall. Wiring doesn't cool itself down. This is the number one reason to call at night.
• Sparks, arcing, or a crackling sound from an outlet or the panel. A small spark when you plug something in can be normal. Sparks that keep going, a pop, or a buzz you can hear across the room are not.
• A breaker that trips, resets, and trips again. One trip can be an overloaded circuit. A breaker that won't hold is protecting you from a fault. Forcing it to stay on is how fires start.
• Lights dimming and brightening on their own, or some bulbs suddenly very bright. This often means a loose or lost neutral. It can send too much voltage to half the house and cook electronics and appliances. Shut off the main if you can reach it safely, then call.
• Any outlet, switch, or cord that is hot to the touch, or scorch marks you didn't notice before.
• Water and electricity in the same place. A leak over the panel, a flooded floor with outlets near it, storm water in a crawlspace with wiring. Don't wade in. Call.
• Power out in part of the house but not all of it, with the neighbors' lights still on. That's a problem in your service, your panel, or your wiring, not the utility.

The U.S. Fire Administration lists electrical fire safety warning signs that line up with this list. So if you see them, the right move is not to wait.

If there is smoke or flame, get everyone out and call 911 first. Electrical fires spread inside walls where you can't see them.

If it's a smell, sparks, or a breaker that won't hold, and you can get to the panel safely, turn off the breaker for that circuit. If you aren't sure which one it is, turn off the main. The house goes dark, and that's fine. Dark is safe.

Don't unplug anything from a hot or sparking outlet with your hands. Don't spray water on anything electrical. Then call.

If the whole house is dark, step outside. If the neighbors are dark too, it's the utility, and the fix is their outage map and some patience.

If your house is the only dark one on the street, it's on your side of the meter. That can be a main breaker, a failed meter base, or storm damage to the service drop. That's an emergency call, and it's one we take at night.

A fallen or sagging power line is the utility's job and a 911 job. Stay well clear of it and anything it's touching.

Not everything that goes wrong at 11 pm needs a truck at 11:30. These can hold:

• One dead outlet with nothing warm, nothing smelling, nothing buzzing.
• A breaker that tripped once, reset, and has stayed on.
• A single light that flickers when the dryer kicks on.
• A ceiling fan that stopped.
• A doorbell or a porch light that quit.
• A GFCI outlet that won't reset but isn't hot.

None of those are fun, and all of them deserve a fix. But they're electrical troubleshooting and repair jobs for daylight, and you'll pay less for them that way. However, if a wait-until-morning problem turns into a smell, a sound, or heat, it just became a call-now problem.

Every big storm, somebody runs a cord from a portable generator into a dryer outlet to power the house. It's called backfeeding. It sends power back out through the meter onto the utility lines, where a lineman working to restore your street can be killed by it. It also fries the generator when the grid comes back on.

The right way is a generator interlock kit on your panel with an outside inlet box. You plug the generator into the inlet, flip the main off and the generator breaker on, and the interlock makes it physically impossible to have both on at once. It's permitted, inspected, and usually done in a day. So if you're reading this during a storm and your generator isn't hooked up yet, call us before you improvise.

If your breakers trip often, or your panel is a Federal Pacific, Zinsco, or a 100-amp box feeding a house full of modern appliances, the emergency you're having tonight is probably a symptom. We'll make it safe tonight. Then we'll talk about whether a panel upgrade stops you from making this call again.

A person answers. We ask what you're seeing, smelling, and hearing, and we tell you what to shut off. Then we come out, find the cause, and make the house safe. If the full fix needs parts or daylight, we get you stable and safe for the night and come back to finish. We explain what we found in plain words. No upsells, no shortcuts.

We cover Lexington, Columbia, West Columbia, Cayce, Irmo, Chapin, Blythewood, Sumter, Hopkins, Orangeburg, Aiken, and the rest of the Midlands, any hour.

Is a burning smell from an outlet an emergency?

Yes. Turn off the circuit if you can do it safely and call. Don't wait to see if it goes away.

My breaker keeps tripping. Can I just hold it on?

No. A breaker that won't hold is doing its job. Holding it on removes the one thing standing between a fault and a fire.

Half my house has power and half doesn't. Is that the power company?

Usually not. Partial power almost always means a problem in your panel, your service, or a lost neutral. Call an electrician, and turn off the main if lights are surging.

Do you charge more at night?

After-hours calls cost more than a scheduled daytime visit, because they are. We'll tell you the number before we roll, not after.

Can you hook up my generator during an outage?

If your panel already has an interlock or transfer switch, yes. If it doesn't, we can install one, usually in a day, and we'll tell you how to run safely tonight in the meantime.