Electrical emergencies in Alicante
Before calling anyone, it is worth knowing whether what you have is genuinely an emergency. This table tells you, and in many cases saves you a call-out.
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Request a QuoteEmergency, or can it wait?
| Situation | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Burning smell or smoke near the consumer unit | Call now | A loose terminal heats for weeks before it ignites. The smell arrives long before any flame, and it is the only warning you will get. |
| Continuous sparking from a socket or the board | Call now | A spark when plugging in is normal; sparking that repeats on its own means a sustained arc, and an arc melts copper. |
| A socket or switch that is hot to the touch | Call now | Heat at a connection point is resistance where there should be none. Unplug whatever is connected and do not use it again until it is checked. |
| Water reaching the board or a junction box | Call now | Switch off the main isolator before touching anything. With water present, floors and metalwork can be live with nothing visible. |
| The RCD will not reset even with every breaker off | Call now | That rules out the circuits and leaves the fault in the supply or the device itself. With no RCD there is no protection for people. |
| Feeling a tingle from a tap or an appliance | Call now | It means the casing is live and the earthing is not doing its job. It is the situation on this list with the highest real risk. |
| No power in the whole home while neighbours have supply | Call now | If the neighbours have power, the problem is inside your installation or your supply, and the utility will not attend. |
| One circuit dead while everything else works | Can wait | The protection did exactly its job: it isolated the problem. Leave that breaker off and it can wait for working hours. |
| LED lights flickering slightly | Can wait | Almost always incompatibility between the LED driver and a dimmer or an illuminated switch. Annoying, not dangerous. |
| The RCD tripped once and reset without trouble | Can wait | A single trip after a storm or an appliance surge is normal. Note the time: if it repeats, that is the first thing we will ask about. |
| A loose socket that neither heats nor sparks | Can wait | Mechanical wear of the faceplate or the fixing lugs. Worth replacing, but there is no risk while there is no heat and no spark. |
| The whole street is out | Can wait | That is a distribution network outage. An electrician cannot work on the public network: report it to the utility and wait. |
Most frequent faults
- RCD keeps tripping and will not reset — what to do
- No power in the whole house — what to check first
- Burning smell from the consumer unit
- Short circuit at home — what to do and what not to
- Electrical fault at night — call now or wait?