Electrical safety guide for older Los Angeles homes

The three warning signs that mean stop

Heat. A receptacle, switch plate, cover plate, panel deadfront or cord that is warm to the touch is telling you that a connection has loosened and is now dissipating energy as heat instead of passing it along. Unplug what is connected, switch off the circuit, and do not use the device again until it has been opened up.

Smell. Overheated conductor insulation and overheated device bodies give off a sharp burning-plastic odor, sometimes described as a fishy smell. It is one of the few electrical symptoms with no benign explanation.

Sound. Buzzing, crackling or sizzling from a panel, switch or receptacle means arcing. A mains hum from a transformer or a dimmer is different from an intermittent crackle; the crackle is the one to act on.

What you can safely check yourself

Before calling anyone about lost power, work through this in order. It resolves a meaningful share of calls without a visit.

1. Look outside. If the street or the neighbors are dark, it is a utility outage and no electrician can shorten it.
2. Check the panel for a tripped breaker. A tripped breaker often sits in a middle position rather than fully off, which is easy to miss at a glance.
3. Check every GFCI receptacle in the house, not just the room that lost power. One device in a garage or bathroom frequently protects outlets in several other rooms.
4. Note what was running when it failed. A space heater, kettle, vacuum or window air conditioner named at the start of a call saves an hour of diagnosis.
5. Check whether the problem moves. If a lamp fails in one outlet and works in another, the outlet is the suspect. If it fails in both, the lamp is.

What to leave alone

Removing a panel deadfront exposes conductors that remain energized even with the main breaker off. The service conductors ahead of the main disconnect are live until the utility removes them, which is why a panel replacement is scheduled around a utility disconnect rather than a homeowner shutting off the main.

Also not DIY territory: anything in a ceiling box with cloth-insulated conductors, anything in a junction box you had to cut open a wall to reach, and any attempt to add a grounding pin to an ungrounded circuit by connecting the ground terminal to the neutral. That last one is common, it makes a tester show a grounded circuit, and it is genuinely dangerous.

Two-prong outlets and what they mean

A two-slot receptacle almost always means the circuit has no equipment grounding conductor. Fitting a three-prong device to it produces an outlet that looks modern and protects nothing: surge protectors have no path to work with, and a fault in a metal-cased appliance has nowhere to go except through whoever is touching it. The legitimate remedies are a new circuit, an added grounding conductor, or GFCI protection with the receptacles labeled as required. Our home rewiring page covers how each applies.

Extension cords and power strips

The reason a room full of extension cords is a problem is not the cords; it is what they are compensating for. A house with two receptacles in a bedroom was wired for a lamp and a radio. Running a bedroom office off a daisy-chained strip loads one circuit continuously in a way it was never designed for. Cords under rugs, stapled to baseboards or run through doorways add mechanical damage on top of that. The fix is more circuits and more outlets, not better cords.

Water and electricity in Los Angeles houses

Winter storms produce a predictable run of calls: rain driven into exterior receptacles with flip-lid covers that should be in-use covers, water tracking down a conduit into a subpanel in a detached garage, and roof leaks landing in ceiling boxes. Wet electrical equipment gets replaced rather than dried out, because the corrosion at terminations continues long after the visible water is gone. If water is reaching a panel, switch off what you can safely reach and call.

A short seasonal maintenance list

None of this requires tools:

• Test every GFCI and AFCI device monthly with its own test button.
• Test smoke and carbon monoxide alarms monthly; replace the units themselves on the manufacturer’s schedule, typically ten years for smoke alarms.
• Before the first rains, check that exterior covers close properly and that nothing has been left plugged in outdoors.
• Walk the panel once a year: look for rust, staining, a warm deadfront, or any smell. Do not open it.
• Replace any receptacle that no longer grips a plug firmly.

When something happens

Smoke or flame: call 911 first. Never put water on an electrical fire. A shock incident involving a person: treat it as a medical emergency even if the person seems fine, because cardiac effects can be delayed.

For everything else, switch off the affected circuit at the panel and call (213) 584-4180. We answer around the clock and will tell you honestly whether it needs someone tonight or whether Tuesday is fine.