Emergency electrician in Dearborn, MI.

A burning or hot-plastic smell, smoke, sparks, a panel or outlet that is hot to the touch, buzzing from the panel, or water near live wiring. Lights that dim hard or half the house losing power also count. If there is smoke or flame, call 911 first.

Some problems can wait until morning and some cannot. A single dead outlet, a tripped GFCI that resets, or a light that stopped working can wait. A breaker that trips again the moment you reset it should be left off until someone looks at it. Anything with heat or smell is urgent, because it usually means a loose connection that is arcing, and arcing connections start fires inside walls. Aluminum branch wiring from the 1960s and 1970s and old cloth-insulated wiring are both more likely to fail at connections. When you call, describe what you see, hear and smell; that decides whether someone comes now.

An after-hours service call in the Dearborn area typically runs $175 to $350 to come out and find the problem. The repair is quoted on site before work starts. Call (313) 769-7487 and the trip charge is told to you on the phone, so there is no surprise at the door.

Night and holiday rates cost more than a weekday appointment, so it is fair to ask whether the problem is safe to leave until morning. If it is, the person on the phone should tell you how to make it safe: switch off the breaker for that circuit, unplug what is on it, and keep people and pets away. If it is not safe, someone comes out. The repair itself might be a burned outlet, a failed breaker, a loose neutral in the panel or a damaged wire, and each is priced after the electrician has seen it.

Check your neighbors first; if they are out too, it is DTE. If only your house has half power, with some lights dim or some rooms dead, it can be a failed connection on DTE's service drop or a problem in your panel. Report it to DTE and call an electrician.

A house gets two hot legs from DTE, and losing one leaves half the circuits dead and any 240-volt appliance, like the dryer or air conditioner, not running. Lights that get brighter and dimmer as things turn on point to a loose neutral, which can damage electronics and should be treated as urgent. The part from the pole to the meter belongs to DTE. The part from the meter into the panel belongs to the house. An electrician can test at the meter and the panel to show which side the fault is on, so you are not waiting on the wrong crew.

Turn off the breaker for the problem circuit, or the main breaker if you cannot tell which one, as long as the panel is dry and you are standing on a dry floor. Unplug anything on that circuit. Do not touch a panel that is hot, wet or smoking.

If the panel is in a basement with water on the floor, stay out of the water and report it to DTE so they can cut power at the meter. If a service wire is down in the yard or the alley, stay well away from it and from anything it touches, including a fence, and report it to DTE as a downed line. Keep a flashlight near the panel. Have the panel door open and clear of boxes when the electrician arrives; a lot of Dearborn basement panels end up behind shelving and storage over the years.

Do not walk into a flooded basement while the power is on. Have DTE disconnect it at the meter, then have an electrician check the panel, outlets, furnace and water-heater controls before power goes back on. Breakers and outlets that were under water should be replaced.

Flood water carries silt and corrosion into breakers, outlets and the bottoms of panels, and those parts can fail weeks later even after they look dry. Basement outlets in Dearborn homes are often low on the wall, right where water sits. After a flood, the electrician checks what got wet, replaces what has to go, tests the circuits and confirms GFCI protection on the basement outlets, which NEC 210.8 requires for new and replaced work. Take photos of the water line before anything is removed; insurance adjusters ask for them.

A breaker that trips again right away usually means a short circuit or a ground fault; one that trips after a while usually means too much load. Space heaters, window units and hair dryers on one circuit are a common cause. A breaker that will not reset at all may have failed.

Start by unplugging everything on that circuit and resetting it. If it holds, plug things back in one at a time to find the culprit. In older Dearborn homes, a single bedroom circuit often feeds two or three rooms, so a space heater in winter is enough to trip it. AFCI breakers, which code requires on many living-area circuits under NEC 210.12, also trip on arcing from damaged cords or loose connections, and that trip is worth taking seriously. A breaker that is warm to the touch or trips with nothing plugged in needs an electrician.

A single small spark when you pull a plug can be normal; repeated sparks, a pop with a flash, scorch marks or a warm cover plate are not. Turn off that circuit's breaker, stop using the outlet, and call. Do not plug anything back in to test it.

Outlets in older Dearborn houses take a beating. Decades of space heaters, window air conditioners and vacuum cleaners loosen the contacts, and a loose contact heats up. Back-stabbed outlets, where the wire is pushed into a hole on the back instead of wrapped around a screw, are another common failure point. Black marks around the slots, a melted look, a buzz or a smell of hot plastic all mean the outlet or the wire behind it is damaged. The repair is usually a new outlet and a fresh connection, but the electrician also checks the wire in the box, since heat can damage the insulation a few inches back.