When to Stop and Call a Licensed Pro Around the House
Why this matters
Most of what goes wrong in a house is ordinary: a tripped breaker, a clogged condensate line, a filter overdue for a change. You can handle a fair amount of that yourself, and doing so saves you a visit. The trouble starts when a homeowner who has handled the easy version keeps going one step too far, or treats a real emergency as a chore. A gas smell gets investigated instead of reported. A breaker that keeps tripping gets reset until something gets hot. Water near the panel gets mopped.
This card draws the line. The top half is the short list of things that mean leave or call the emergency number first, before anything else. The bottom half goes room by room and says where your part ends and the licensed trade's part begins.
First: the signs that mean get out or call right now
These come before any troubleshooting, any shutoff, any phone call to a contractor.
| What you notice | What you do, in this order |
|---|---|
| Gas odor (rotten egg or sulfur smell), or a hissing sound at a gas line | Everyone leaves now. Do not flip any light or switch, start a car in an attached garage, use a phone inside, or light anything. Leave the door open behind you if it is on the way. From outside and well away from the house, call 911 or your gas utility's emergency line. Do not go back in until they say so. |
| CO alarm sounding (a repeating pattern, not a single chirp) | Get everyone, including pets, outside into fresh air. Call 911 or the fire department from outside. Do not go back in to find the source or open windows on the way. If anyone has a headache, nausea, dizziness or confusion, tell the dispatcher. |
| Smoke, flame, or sparking from an outlet, appliance, cord or the panel | If there is smoke or flame, get out and call 911. Do not throw water on electrical equipment. |
| Burning or hot plastic smell with no smoke, from an outlet, switch, appliance or panel | If you can reach the panel without standing in water, switch off the breaker for that circuit. If you cannot tell which circuit, or the smell is at the panel itself, leave the panel alone, unplug nothing that is hot to the touch, and call an electrician now. If the smell gets stronger or you see smoke, get out and call 911. |
| Water on or near the electrical panel, or standing water touching outlets, cords or appliances | Stay out of the water. Do not touch the panel. Call the electric utility to cut power at the meter, then an electrician. |
| Sewage coming up a floor drain or tub | Stop running any water in the house. Keep people and pets out of the wet area. Call a plumber. If it is rising toward outlets or appliances, treat it as water near electricity, above. |
Two things are true of every row. You never investigate the cause first, and you call from outside or from a safe spot, not from the room with the problem.
Why the order matters
The pattern in that table is not caution for its own sake. Each one is a hazard where the natural first move makes it worse.
- Gas can be ignited by the small spark inside a light switch or a doorbell. Looking for the leak keeps you in the house while the concentration builds.
- Carbon monoxide has no smell. By the time an alarm sounds, the air has held an elevated level for some time, and the symptoms it causes include confusion, which is exactly when people make poor calls. See related: What Your Carbon Monoxide Alarm Is Telling You.
- Water and electricity together mean the water itself can carry current. A person standing in it can be shocked without touching anything electrical.
- A burning smell is heat that has already damaged something. Resetting or unplugging a hot device puts your hand at the hottest point.
Room by room: where your part ends
Kitchen
Yours: resetting a tripped GFCI outlet once, running the disposal reset button with the power to it off, clearing a sink drain with a plunger, closing the fixture stop under the sink, cleaning the range hood filter.
Stop and call: a gas range that smells of gas when off, a burner that will not light, or a flame that burns yellow and tall instead of mostly blue (gas technician). A GFCI that trips again right after its one reset (unplug everything on it, leave it off, and call an electrician; mention which appliances were plugged in). Any water under the sink that keeps coming back after you have closed the stop (plumber).
Bathrooms
Yours: plunging a toilet, closing the toilet's stop valve, resetting the bathroom GFCI once, cleaning the exhaust fan grille.
Stop and call: a toilet that rocks or leaks at its base, water stains on the ceiling below a bathroom, a shower valve that drips with the handle off, an exhaust fan that smells hot or hums without spinning.
Laundry
Yours: cleaning the dryer lint screen every load, closing the washer valves when you leave on a long trip, checking that the dryer vent hood outside flaps open when the dryer runs.
Stop and call: a dryer that runs hot, takes two cycles to dry, or smells scorched (dryer vent service or appliance tech). A gas dryer with any gas smell. Washer hoses with bulges or cracks (replace them, or have them replaced). See related: Your Dryer Vent and Why It Matters.
Furnace, air conditioner and water heater area
Yours: changing the furnace filter, clearing a condensate drain line with the system off, keeping the area around the equipment clear, reading the labels, testing alarms nearby.
Stop and call: anything inside the burner compartment, any gas smell, a pilot that will not stay lit, scorch marks or soot around the furnace or water heater, a water heater leaking from the tank or from the relief valve pipe, a relief valve that discharges, and any refrigerant work on an air conditioner or heat pump (federal law requires certification to handle refrigerant). Do not remove the upper panel on a gas furnace or run a furnace with its doors off.
Electrical panel
Yours: reading the directory, switching a breaker off to stop a problem, resetting a tripped breaker once.
Stop and call: a breaker that trips again right after one reset, a panel cover that feels warm, a buzz or crackle from the panel, rust or water marks inside the door, scorch marks, any breaker that will not stay on. The panel cover (the metal plate around the breakers) stays on. Everything behind it is an electrician's. See related: Reading Your Electrical Panel and Its Breakers.
Basement and crawlspace
Yours: testing the sump pump by pouring water into the pit, keeping the pit lid on, watching for new damp spots and photographing them, checking the main water valve.
Stop and call: a sump pump that hums but does not pump, a basement with standing water near outlets or the panel (treat as water near electricity), new cracks wider than a hairline that let in water, a musty smell that spreads. Do not enter a crawlspace with standing water if electrical wiring, a pump or a dehumidifier is down there and plugged in.
Roof, gutters and exterior
Yours: looking at the roof from the ground with binoculars, cleaning gutters you can reach from the ground with a wand, photographing damage after a storm.
Stop and call: anything that needs a ladder onto the roof itself, a tree limb on a power line (call the electric utility and stay well away from the line and anything it touches), a gas meter that has been hit or bent.
The one-reset rule, and why it is one
Resetting a tripped breaker or GFCI is on the homeowner list. Resetting it twice is not. A device that trips once may have caught a brief overload: a space heater and a hair dryer on the same circuit. A device that trips again right away is telling you the problem is still there, and the problem might be a damaged cord, a failing appliance, or a fault in the wiring. Each reset sends full current back into whatever is wrong. The second trip is the end of your part: unplug what is on that circuit, leave the breaker off, and call. See related: How to Reset a Tripped Breaker Once.
Worked example: water in the basement after a storm
A homeowner comes downstairs after a night of heavy rain and finds water across the basement floor. Here is how the stop line applies, step by step.
What she sees. Water about 2 inches deep across most of the floor. The sump pump is silent. The electrical panel is on the far wall, and its bottom edge sits about 4 feet off the floor, well above the water. But there is a power strip on the floor by the workbench with a dehumidifier plugged into it, and the strip is under water. Two wall outlets sit about 16 inches above the floor, above the waterline.
The question that decides everything. Is any energized thing touching the water? Yes: the power strip is submerged and still plugged into a wall outlet. That puts the water itself in question. The panel being high and dry does not change this, because she would have to wade through that water to reach it.
What she does. She stays on the stairs. She does not step into the water to unplug the strip or to reach the panel. From upstairs she calls the electric utility's emergency line and asks for the power to be cut at the meter, explaining that water is touching a plugged-in device. Then she calls a plumber about the sump and an electrician to check the outlets and strip before power goes back on.
What would have changed it. If nothing plugged in had been touching the water, and the panel had been reachable along a dry path, she could have switched off the breakers for the basement circuits and stopped there; whether a path is truly dry is a call only she can make on the spot, and if there is any doubt, the utility call is the right one. If the water had been reaching the outlets at 16 inches, the answer would have been the same as it was: stay out and call the utility.
What the call to the plumber says. "Water about 2 inches deep across the basement, sump pump silent this morning after heavy rain, power cut by the utility because a power strip was under water." That sentence tells the plumber what to bring and that the electric side is already handled.
The trap she avoided. The obvious move was to wade in and pull the plug. It is also the one move in the whole situation that put her body in the path of the current.
Choosing who to call
The right call is the trade that is licensed for that system. Gas lines, appliances and venting go to a licensed gas or HVAC technician. Wiring, panels and outlets go to a licensed electrician. Water supply, drains, water heaters and sewer lines go to a licensed plumber. Refrigerant systems go to a certified HVAC technician. Licensing rules differ from state to state, and some states also license specific specialties such as backflow testing or well pumps. A contractor's license number is public in most states, and checking it takes a few minutes. See related: How to Check a Contractor's License and Insurance.
References
- Your gas utility's and electric utility's published safety and emergency guidance, which sets the rule for your area
- See related: Carbon Monoxide Testing + Response Reference
- See related: GFCI and AFCI Troubleshooting Reference
- See related: Your Home's Shutoffs: Water, Gas and Electric