Electrical Troubleshooting and Repair in Orlando, FL
Lights out in one room, outlets that quit for no obvious reason, half the house dark while your neighbors still have power: the cause is rarely a mystery, just a specific fault in a specific place. Thomas Edison Electric diagnoses and repairs residential electrical problems across Orlando, Lake Mary, Sanford, Longwood, and Altamonte Springs.
At a glance
- What it is
- A diagnostic visit to find the cause of an electrical problem, then repair it
- Common calls
- One room dead, half the house dead, lights not working, outlets with no power
- What we test
- GFCI and AFCI devices, breakers, voltage at the panel, connections along the circuit
- Time on site
- Varies with how far the fault has to be traced
- Emergencies
- 24/7 emergency service, call (407) 490-0004
Stop and Call Right Away If You Notice Any of This
- A smell of hot plastic, or brown scorching and blistering around a receptacle, a switch or a breaker
- A cover plate or breaker that is warm or hot to the touch
- Buzzing, crackling, or sizzling from a switch, outlet, or the panel
- Lights brightening and dimming across the house at once
- A breaker that trips the moment you reset it, or will not reset
- Any shock or tingle from an appliance, a faucet, or pool equipment
- Water intrusion at or near the panel after a storm
These are not wait-until-Monday problems. Switch that breaker off if you can reach it safely, then call (407) 490-0004 and we will treat it as an emergency. If you see smoke or flame, or the panel itself is hot or smoking, get everyone out of the house and call 911 first.
How a Licensed Electrician Traces an Electrical Fault
Troubleshooting is elimination, worked from the biggest possible cause down to the smallest.
- Map the dead zone. We test everything that is out. The pattern shows whether it is one branch circuit, several, or one side of the service.
- Rule out the resets. One GFCI can protect outlets in distant rooms, usually from a garage, laundry, exterior, or lanai. All get tested first.
- Read the panel. We measure voltage at the breaker rather than trust the handle, and look for double taps, loose lugs, corrosion, and heat damage.
- Measure the service. A home here is fed by two 120-volt legs. One reading low or near zero means a lost leg, which changes who fixes it.
- Follow the circuit. We trace to the last point with power, open the boxes from there, repair, then load test and re-test GFCI and AFCI devices.
What You Can Safely Check First
Some calls have a two-minute answer, and we would rather you find it than pay us to. With the panel cover closed, these are safe:
- Prove the bulb and the fixture. Try a bulb or lamp you know works.
- Look for a tripped breaker. Push the handle firmly to off, then back on. If it trips again, stop. Never remove the inner panel cover.
- Press every GFCI reset: garage, bathrooms, laundry, kitchen counters, exterior, lanai, pool pad. One often explains outlets in a different room.
- Unplug the circuit, then rebuild it. Reset with nothing plugged in and add items back one at a time. A failing appliance is a common cause.
The Two Patterns We Get Called For Most
One room is dead
A dead room, or a run of outlets down one wall, almost always means one branch circuit has an open. After the GFCI and breaker checks we work forward from the last live device. The usual findings are backstabbed receptacles, where the wire was pushed into the back of the device instead of under a screw terminal, and loose neutrals in a box. Both are repaired where we find them; see our outlet repair page.
Half the house is dead
When roughly half the home is out, the 240-volt appliances behave strangely, and the neighbors still have power, you have almost certainly lost one leg of the service: a failed main breaker, a burned lug, a bad meter-enclosure connection, or an open upstream. If the working half is also swinging bright and dim, the neutral has opened and every plugged-in device is at risk. Switch the main off if you can reach it safely. Where aging service equipment is the cause, the fix is usually a panel or service upgrade.
When to Call the Utility Instead of an Electrician
Duke Energy covers much of Seminole County and parts of west Orange County, OUC serves the City of Orlando, and a few municipalities, Winter Park among them, run their own electric utility. Not sure who serves your street in Apopka or Ocoee? Your last bill says. As a rule the meter and the wires feeding it belong to the utility, and the panel and everything past it belongs to you. Call the utility when your neighbors are out too, when a tree is on the service drop, or when the meter is damaged, and never approach a downed line. Call an electrician when your neighbors have power and you do not, or when the utility has told you the problem is on your side of the meter. Repeated outages upstream usually start a conversation about standby or portable generator power.
What a Diagnostic Visit Involves
A licensed electrician listens to what changed and when, then walks the area with you. Our trucks carry commonly needed devices and breakers, so many single-circuit faults are found and repaired on the same visit.
Some findings need a second step: a panel replacement is permitted work with an inspection to follow. When a repair uncovers protection that was never there, we bring that work up to current requirements: GFCI under NEC 210.8, arc-fault under NEC 210.12, tamper-resistant receptacles under NEC 406.12, surge protection when the service equipment is replaced under NEC 230.67, and the working space under NEC 110.26. Florida adopts the NEC through the Florida Building Code, and which edition applies depends on the code cycle when your permit is pulled. If the same circuit has failed twice, we recommend an electrical safety inspection rather than a third repair.
A Central Florida Angle
Attic heat is hard on connections: a terminal screw that was merely snug works loose over enough summers, and the splices above a Winter Park or Maitland ceiling are rarely inspected. Humidity corrodes outdoor boxes, lanai receptacles, and pool equipment, which is why so many dead-outlet calls in Oviedo and Winter Springs end at a weathered GFCI. A nearby lightning strike does not have to hit your roof to take out a GFCI device, an AFCI breaker, or an LED driver, so when several unrelated things quit on one stormy afternoon we look for a surge event and recommend whole-house surge protection. Homes around Altamonte Springs and Casselberry built in the mid 1960s and 1970s sometimes have aluminum branch wiring, where terminations loosen and overheat. Lights that dim or flutter have their own causes, covered on our flickering lights page, and a breaker that keeps shutting off on our breaker tripping page.
Faults We Have Traced in the Orlando Area
Recent diagnostic calls:
Frequently Asked Questions
One room has no power and no breaker looks tripped. What now?
Start with GFCI devices, because one may be protecting that room from elsewhere in the house. If they are all reset and the room is still dead, the circuit has an open connection in a box.
Half my house has no power but my neighbors do. Utility or electrician?
Call an electrician. Half the house dark while the neighborhood is fine points to one lost leg of your 120/240-volt service, almost always in the panel or service equipment. If the open turns out to be upstream of the meter, we will point you to your utility, whether that is Duke Energy, OUC or your city system.
My lights brighten and dim across the whole house at once. Is that serious?
Yes. That usually means an open or failing neutral, which lets voltage run too high on one side of the service and too low on the other. It can damage everything plugged in, so switch the main off if you safely can, then call us.
Is there a charge to diagnose the problem?
Yes. Troubleshooting is billed as a diagnostic visit, because tracing the fault is the work itself. Our office will explain what the visit covers, and how it applies if you have us do the repair, when you book. You get the repair price before we start.
What if the problem is intermittent and is not happening when you arrive?
Intermittent faults leave evidence. We look for heat discoloration at terminals, arcing marks, loose terminations, and damaged insulation, and we test under load rather than idle. If we cannot reproduce it, we document what was checked rather than guess at parts.
You do not have to know what is wrong before you call. Tell us what stopped working and when. Call Thomas Edison Electric at (407) 490-0004 or schedule a diagnostic visit. We offer 24/7 emergency service for electrical problems that cannot wait.