EV, backup & commercial
Emergency electrician in Woodside, NY
An electrician answers this telephone at night, not an answering service. You will get a real person, a real time, and — when it is the right answer — instructions to call somebody other than us, at no charge.
Every contractor in this trade advertises twenty-four hour emergency service. For a great many of them that means a call centre in another state that takes your details and passes them on in the morning. We are not going to compete with that by printing a bigger number of minutes.
What we actually offer is smaller and true: somebody on this crew carries the telephone every night, they are an electrician, and they will tell you honestly when we can be there. Sometimes that is forty minutes. Sometimes it is eight in the morning. You will know which on the telephone.
Things that are not an electrician's job — call these first
Some situations need the fire department or the utility, and calling us first costs you time you may not have. We would far rather tell you this on a web page than on the telephone while something is burning.
A downed power line, or anything arcing outdoors: this is Con Edison and, if anyone could come near it, 911. Stay well away from it and away from anything metal touching it, including fencing and standing water.
A smell of burning you cannot immediately account for, visible flame, or smoke: leave the building and call the fire department. Do not go looking for the source. Do not wait for an electrician.
A smell of gas: leave, and call the gas utility from outside. Do not operate any switch on the way out, including a light switch or a garage door.
Somebody in contact with electricity: do not touch them. Call 911.
A whole street or block dark, or your neighbours out too: that is a utility outage and there is nothing on your side of the meter to fix.
Things that are ours, tonight
A burning or fishy smell traced to a panel, an outlet or a switch. A scorch mark or discolouration around a device. A panel that is warm, humming, or buzzing. Arcing or sparking anywhere inside the building. Water that has reached electrical equipment. A shock from an appliance, a tap or a metal fitting.
Also ours, though usually not at three in the morning: a partial outage in a building where the street is fine, a breaker that will not reset, and loss of power to something that genuinely cannot wait — a sump pump with water rising, heat in a cold snap, or a business that cannot open.
What it costs, said before we set off
$285 for the first hour outside working hours, then half hours. You are told that number on the telephone before anybody gets in a van, along with an honest estimate of arrival. There is no separate call-out charge on top, and there is no different price for the middle of the night.
If we conclude on the telephone that the answer is the utility or the fire department, that conversation is free and always will be. We are not going to put a charge between somebody and the advice to leave a building.
A real person, and a real time. Somebody on this crew carries the on-call telephone every night of the year, and it is answered by an electrician rather than by an answering service. That is not the same as promising to be at your door in twenty minutes, and we will not print a number of minutes we cannot keep. What you will get is a real person, an honest answer about when we can be there, and — if the safe thing is to call the utility or the fire department instead of us — that answer instead, immediately and at no charge.
Included as standard
What the job actually includes
An electrician on the telephone
Not an answering service taking a message for the morning.
An honest arrival time
The real one. We would rather tell you eight in the morning than promise forty minutes and not appear.
The price before we set off
$285 first hour, then half hours. No separate call-out fee, no premium for the hour of the night.
Made safe first, then repaired
The immediate hazard is dealt with before anybody discusses a full repair.
Free redirection where it is not ours
Utility or fire department, told to you immediately at no charge.
A written follow-up
For anything that needs proper repair in daylight, with no pressure to decide at 2am.
When to call us
Signs this is the job you need
- A burning or fishy smell from a panel, an outlet or a switch
- Sparking, arcing or a scorch mark anywhere inside
- A panel that is warm to the touch, humming or buzzing
- Water that has reached electrical equipment
- A shock or a tingle from an appliance, a tap or a metal fitting
- Loss of power to something that genuinely cannot wait
Emergency electrician — what it costs
- First hour outside normal working hours. We tell you the number before we set off.$285
This is the range this job actually lands in, not a headline figure. The low end is a straightforward version of the work; the high end is one with a hard access problem, an old service, or something that has to be opened up before anybody can be certain. We tell you which one you have after we have looked, and the written quote says where the price could still move and why.
Questions we are actually asked
Emergency service — frequently asked
Is there a call-out fee on top?
No. $285 covers the first hour outside working hours, and then it is half hours. You are told that on the telephone before we set off — not on an invoice afterwards.
What if I call and it turns out not to be an emergency?
Then we tell you so on the telephone and you have lost nothing. We would much rather talk somebody down at eleven at night than have them sit up worrying about a smell that turns out to be a new lamp burning its coating off.
What should I do while I wait?
If you can identify the circuit involved and switch it off at the panel safely, do. If there is any smell of burning, any smoke, or any doubt at all, leave the building and call the fire department instead — and telephone us afterwards. Nothing electrical is worth staying in a building for.
Related work
Often needed alongside this
Troubleshooting
Half the house dark, a breaker that will not stay in, a smell you cannot place. Diagnosis first, quote second.
$165
Breakers & protection
Nuisance trips, dead circuits, and bringing arc-fault and ground-fault protection up to where the code now expects it.
$185 – $520
Generators
From a mechanical interlock for the portable you already own, to a permanently installed standby set.
$780 – $16,000
Thermal imaging
A loose termination runs hot long before it fails. A camera finds it while it is still cheap.
$450 – $1,100Somebody who does the work will come and look
Book a visit
Telephone the shop and you will get an electrician rather than a call centre. For defined work — a panel, a charger, a lighting scheme — the quote is free. For a fault, the visit is the diagnosis and it is $165 for the first hour, credited against the work if you go ahead the same visit. Either way we will tell you on the telephone which one it is.