Emergency electrician in Barnet

In a block, the electrics are split between several owners. Generally, the flat owner looks after wiring from their own meter onwards, the freeholder or managing agent looks after the communal lights and landlord supply, and the network operator owns the supply cable and main fuse. The cables up the building may belong to the network operator or the building owner. Your lease sets out the detail. If water from the flat above reaches your ceiling light, do not touch the fitting or switch, switch off at the main switch if you can reach it safely, and keep the circuit off until it is tested. Our advice on a leak from the flat above covers who fixes what.

Flats in older blocks often have fewer sockets than modern life needs. One double socket in a living room may run a TV, a router, a heater and phone chargers through extension leads. A socket that feels warm, has brown marks or smells of hot plastic should be switched off and checked. The London Fire Brigade lists hot plugs and sockets among the warning signs of dangerous wiring. Our guide to a plug socket hot to touch explains the causes.

If an extension lead is warm, or plugs have brown marks around the pins, stop using them. Adding sockets or a new circuit is the lasting fix, and it removes the need to run several heaters and chargers from one outlet.

Semis from the 1920s and 30s have usually been rewired once or twice. Older boards without RCD protection and short lengths of old cable in lofts are common findings. Barnet is served by UK Power Networks, so call 105 for street wide cuts.

Hampstead Garden Suburb has strict rules on changes to the outside of homes, managed by its own trust as well as the council. Inside, electrical work follows the normal Part P rules. Notifiable work, such as a new consumer unit or a new circuit, is self certified by a registered competent person or notified to the London Borough of Barnet's building control. Older Arts and Crafts houses here have often been rewired in stages, with consumer units tucked under stairs or in cellars. Knowing where yours is, and having a torch beside it, makes a night time trip much easier to deal with.