Power cut: is it just my house? What to check

The house goes dark, the fridge stops humming and the router lights die. Before you ring anyone, spend two minutes finding out whose problem it is. A cut across the street is fixed by the network company, for free. A fault inside your home is fixed by an electrician. Ringing the wrong one costs you time, and sometimes money.

Step one: look outside

Go to a front window, or step out of the door if it is safe. Are the street lights on? Do the houses either side of you have lights or a television glowing? In a block of flats, is the corridor lighting working, and does the lift still run?

If everyone around you is dark, it is almost certainly a network power cut. Ring 105, the national power cut number. Across Greater Manchester it reaches Electricity North West, who look after the local cables and substations. They answer around the clock and also take reports online, with a live map of known cuts on their website. Once you have reported it, there is nothing for an electrician to fix.

Windy, wet spells like this week’s bring more of these, particularly where overhead lines run out towards the moors above Oldham, Rochdale and Bolton, and in the lanes of north Cheshire.

Step two: if it is just you, check the consumer unit

If the neighbours have power and you do not, the fault is somewhere on your side. Take a torch to your consumer unit. In most Greater Manchester terraces and semis it is under the stairs, in the hall or by the front door; in newer flats around Salford Quays and the city centre it is often in a cupboard by the entrance.

Look along the row of switches without opening any cover.

• The main switch is down. Something large has tripped it. Push it back up once. If it drops straight away, leave it down and call us.
• An RCD or one breaker is down and only part of the house is dead. This is a fault on one circuit or one appliance, not a power cut. Our guide to why your electrics keep tripping explains how to narrow it down.
• Everything is up but nothing works. The supply is not arriving at the board. Go to step three.

If the consumer unit is wet, scorched, buzzing or smells hot, do not touch it at all. Keep people away from it and ring 07893 933403.

Step three: the meter and the sealed fuse

On a prepayment meter, check the display for credit or an emergency credit message. A meter that has run dry looks exactly like a power cut from inside the house, and topping up is the fix.

Next to the meter there is usually a black or grey box with a seal on it, with a thick cable coming up from the floor. That is the service head, or cut-out, and it holds the main fuse for the whole property. It belongs to the network company, not to you, and the meter belongs to your supplier. Never remove the fuse carrier, break the seal or unscrew anything here. If that box is cracked, scorched or making a noise, stand back and ring 105, and tell them what you can see.

If the meter has credit, the main switch is up and the neighbours are lit, ring 105 anyway. A blown service fuse or a damaged supply cable to one house is their job, and they will send someone.

When it is a job for us

Call an electrician when the cause is inside the home and will not reset safely:

• the main switch or an RCD will not stay up even with appliances unplugged;
• half the house works and half does not, and nothing has visibly tripped;
• the power went off when water started coming through a ceiling or ran down a wall;
• there is a burning smell, scorch marks or crackling from a socket, switch or the board (our page on a burning smell from a socket covers what to do while you wait);
• the network company has been out, the supply to your meter is fine, and your home is still dead.

Our emergency electricians cover Greater Manchester and north Cheshire at any hour and aim to be with you within 60 minutes. When we arrive we isolate whatever is unsafe first, so the rest of the house can come back on, then trace the fault and repair it. If a part is needed that is not on the van, the faulty circuit is left off and safe, and you are told plainly what it needs.

The cost is the same for every visit: no call-out fee, £89 for the first hour on site, then £45 for each extra half hour, and parts only if a part is needed.

What not to do while the lights are out

• Do not run an extension lead from a neighbour’s house through a window or door.
• Do not plug a portable generator into a socket to “backfeed” the house. It can kill someone working on the cables.
• Do not open the consumer unit cover or poke around with a screwdriver to find the problem.
• Do not keep flicking a tripped switch up and down hoping it will hold.

Be ready for the next one

Keep a working torch somewhere you can find it in the dark, ideally near the consumer unit, and a charged power bank for your phone. Learn which switch on the board is the main switch while the lights are on. Write 105 and our number, 07893 933403, on a card by the meter. If someone in your home relies on powered medical equipment, ask your network company what support they offer before a cut happens rather than during one.

Around the older terraces of Edgeley and Heaton Norris, see our Stockport electrician page; every other town we cover is linked from the main electrical page.