I run a guesthouse on the seafront. Can you certify the emergency repair for my records?

Any notifiable work we do comes with the proper paperwork: a Minor Works Certificate or Electrical Installation Certificate to BS 7671, with Part P notification where it applies. If the fault points to wider problems in the installation, we'll tell you honestly whether your next EICR is likely to flag them, which matters when your insurance and letting licence depend on that report.

My flat's power is fine but the corridor and lift are dead. Is that my problem or the building's?

Almost certainly the building's. Lifts, stair lighting and door entry run off the communal landlord's supply, which is separate from your flat's meter and normally the managing agent's responsibility. We can attend, confirm exactly where the fault sits, make the area safe and put our findings in writing, so the agent has something concrete to act on.

My Old Town bungalow still has a fuse board with rewireable fuses. Is that an emergency?

On its own, no. A wired-fuse board is lawful if it complied when it was installed. It becomes urgent when fuses blow repeatedly, the board is scorched or warm to the touch, or there's rubber-insulated cable behind it, which by now is at the end of its working life. If any of those apply, treat it as a call tonight rather than a quote next month.

Why do my outside lights keep tripping the RCD? We're two streets back from the beach.

Salt-laden air gets into fittings, corrodes the terminals and lets moisture track to earth, and the RCD is doing exactly what it should. Resetting it every week just hides the fault. The lasting fix is usually a properly sealed, coastal-rated fitting, and in the meantime we can isolate that one circuit so the rest of the house stays on.

Emergency Electrician Eastbourne

No electricity in the flat at all

Everything dead at once places the fault before your ways: main switch, tails, service fuse, or in a conversion the submain running to you from the intake cupboard. We begin at the incoming side, and if responsibility lies with the operator or the freeholder you get readings to show them.

Half the lights have gone off

Lighting normally spans two or more ways, so losing half the flat means one of them has failed rather than the supply. Conversions confuse this, with rooms fed from whatever circuit was nearest at the time. Establishing what feeds what comes before anything else.

Living room sockets dead but lights work

Separate protection means this one is contained. With nothing released, the conductor path has been interrupted rather than faulted: a slack terminal behind a socket, or a spur that has parted. An interruption operates nothing at all, so it takes a meter to find.

Trip switch keeps tripping every day

A daily rhythm is a clue by itself. Appliances each contribute a small amount of earth current, and on an older split board the standing total sits close enough to the limit that one routine tips it: a wash cycle, the immersion, outside lights at dusk. Note the time and the search shortens.

MCB won't stay on

A breaker that will not hold has either a short across conductors or a demand it cannot sustain. Unplug everything on that way and try again. If it holds, the problem arrived with an appliance. If it refuses, the fixed wiring is damaged, and crushed cable under a floor is what turns up most in conversions.

Electrics trip when I plug the heater in

Elements break down as they warm and begin passing current to earth, which the residual device correctly reads as a fault. If the breaker goes instead, that way is simply carrying more than it should once 2kW joins whatever else is running. Appliance and circuit are tested separately.

Anything unsafe is isolated before we leave, and you get told plainly why. If a part is needed, the flat goes back to usable first and the job gets finished after.