What To Do If The Electricity Goes Off
LOSS OF ELECTRICAL POWER CHECKLIST:
Firstly – look outside – are the street lights on? Do your neighbours’ houses have light?
No – this is likely an area wide power cut – no-one will be able to ‘fix’ this other than the electricity board, you can report this to them on: 105 or by phoning UK Power Networks on: 0800 3163105.
You can also report it online and keep up to date with progress on the problem at: https://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk
Yes – I can see that my neighbours’ lights and the street lights are still on.
In this case you firstly need to check the electrical ‘flip switches’ – please make yourself familiar with where these are in your property.
Flip switches, sometimes known as ‘toggle switches’ are a collection of safety switches, if these switches detect something ‘unsafe’ such as a device being plugged in that is faulty (often something like a mobile phone charger, hairdryer, toaster, bulb blowing in a light fitting – it can be many things) or also a power surge through the system (which occasionally happens from the electricity grid) – they will ‘flip’ themselves from on to off – which will turn off a circuit of electricity in the property.
They will look like this:
The first thing that you need to do is make sure that all the switches are in the ‘on’ position, which is ‘up’. If any are not, this will be your problem, if you turn it back on and it immediately turns off again, this is representative that there is still a problem.
The next thing you need to do is unplug ALL plugged in devices in the house, every single one, then see if the switch will stay in the ‘on’ position. If it does, then you have a faulty device – the way to track down which device is faulty, is to turn on one device at a time and see if any of them make the switches flip ‘off’ again.
If when, ie. you plug in your kettle, the flip switches turn off again – this is because your kettle has developed a fault and you need to leave that device unplugged and replace it with a new one or get it repaired.
Then sometimes you need to just ‘reset’ the fuse board – you do this by turning off all of the flip switches, waiting a few seconds and then turning them back on again, this will often clear a minor problem and the flip switches will stay on.
If you have unplugged all devices and the flip switches, tried a reset as above and the flip switches will still not stay ‘on’ this is representative of a wider electrical problem which has developed and an electrician will need to be called.
During working hours, please contact us to confirm that you have taken the steps above and you need a contractor to be called.
Out of working hours, if this constitutes an emergency situation, please refer to the list of contractors.
