Emergency Electrician in Baldwin, Maine

Goodnow Electric picks up emergency calls around the clock, every day of the week. Certain symptoms should never sit overnight: a switch or receptacle that is warm or throwing sparks, a scorched smell at the panel or an appliance, lights that sag every time the well pump kicks on, a section of the house that has lost power, or a main breaker that keeps tripping. Baldwin's older farmhouses and mobile homes, with their fuses, aluminum circuits and crowded panels, are where these show up. Smoke or flame means everyone leaves the house and someone calls 911 before anything else.

Storm damage is the other common call. A tree or a load of ice that tears the service drop from a house leaves two parties responsible. CMP's side ends at the weatherhead and meter; the mast, meter socket and all wiring past them are the owner's. The utility won't restore power to a damaged mast, so an electrician has to fix the owner's half first. Goodnow Electric secures the service, rebuilds mast and socket, and sets up the reconnection with CMP. A wire lying in the yard or across the road should be treated as live: keep well clear and call CMP or 911.

Private wells make a dead circuit more serious. A tripped pump breaker or a failed pressure switch leaves a Baldwin house with no water, which in January is an emergency. A wood stove, the main heat in about 17 percent of homes, can carry a family through an outage, but boilers, furnaces and circulators stop without power. Never tie a portable generator in with a homemade cord; it can energize the utility line and hurt the crews restoring it, which is what an inlet and interlock prevent. After the urgent repair, correcting the cause, often a worn panel or an undersized service, heads off the next call. A mast that folded under heavy snow once should be braced properly when it goes back up.