My Ropetackle flat trips the electrics when I use one appliance. Is that the building's problem or mine?

Almost always yours to fix, but easy to misread. Most flats there have their own consumer unit and meter, with the freeholder responsible only for communal areas. A single appliance tripping the RCD usually means the appliance has an earth fault, or the developer board lumps too many circuits behind one RCD so any small fault drops half the flat. We can test which it is in one visit and, if the board layout is the culprit, quote to split the circuits across RCBOs.

Do coastal properties on Shoreham Beach need different fittings?

Outdoors, they genuinely do. Salt-laden air corrodes standard accessories quickly, so external sockets, lighting and EV charge points on the Beach should be good-quality IP-rated kit, and even then they need checking more often than the same fittings inland. If an outside light or socket has started tripping the RCD in wet or windy weather, corrosion inside the enclosure is the usual cause and it wants replacing before it takes the whole circuit down.

Can you come out tonight?

Yes. We run a 24 hour rota that covers evenings, weekends and bank holidays. Call and you get a real arrival window before anyone sets off, not a vague promise.

Can you attend a houseboat on the Adur?

Up to a point, and we will be honest about where that point is. The shore-side supply, the hook-up pillar and the consumer unit feeding the boat are standard electrical work we can fault-find and make safe. Wiring within the vessel itself leans on marine practice rather than domestic convention, and for internal boat systems we would rather point you to a marine electrician than guess at it.

Emergency Electrician Shoreham-by-Sea

Power went off and nothing will reset

We start where the electricity does. A voltage reading at the cut-out and across the tails proves whether supply is arriving at all, and only then is there any point examining the main switch and the ways below it. Skipping that means working the wrong end of the installation.

One side of the house has no power

Consumer units are grouped, each group behind one residual device, so the dead half maps directly onto whichever device let go. That turns a whole house into a short list of ways. Clamp readings and insulation testing reduce that list to one.

Sockets on one wall have no power

On a ring final, a single break usually leaves sockets live from the other leg, so an entire wall going dead normally means those outlets are fed from one point that has failed. Typically a spur, a joint box, or a terminal that has cooked itself loose. We find that feed and remake it.

RCD trips a few times a day

Earth current is never quite zero on a working installation. Add several ways together, plus damp finding its way into outdoor accessories, and the running total climbs toward the 30mA threshold, so the device releases for no obvious reason. A clamp meter on each way shows where it is coming from.

Cooker circuit keeps tripping

Oven and hob elements degrade slowly, and a measured insulation value tells you how far gone one is before it starts operating the protection. Testing the appliance in isolation, hot and cold, is the only way to be certain whether the cooker or the circuit feeding it is at fault.

Power trips when the pump kicks in

Motors draw a heavy surge on start-up, and shower or heating pumps sit exactly where moisture reaches the windings. Either that inrush is enough to move a breaker with little margin left, or the winding insulation has broken down and is passing current to earth. We watch it start with instruments connected.

Every repair gets tested before we call it done, and the readings go on paper so you can see what changed. If something needs a part we can't get hold of overnight, the property is left safe and working around the fault.