Fall electrical safety checklist for Montreal homes

The first cool nights have settled over Montreal, and the arithmetic of fall is simple. Within a few weeks the baseboards come back on, the lights burn earlier, and your home’s electrical system starts the four or five months when it works hardest. Anything marginal right now, a loose connection, a tired outlet, a breaker on the edge, will be found by winter. It is better if you find it first.

There is a reason to take this seriously in this city in particular. Montreal records more fires than any other city in Quebec, and fire data from Sécurité publique Québec attributes about 22 percent of them to an electrical malfunction. The good news is that most electrical problems announce themselves weeks in advance. The checklist below takes about an hour, needs no tools, and consists mostly of looking, listening and smelling. That is also how a professional inspection starts.

Start with the outlets

Walk through every room before the furniture settles into its winter positions and look at each outlet. You are checking for five things:

• A faceplate that feels warm when nothing is plugged in
• Brown or yellow discoloration around the slots
• Plugs that slide out on their own because the outlet no longer grips them
• A crackle, buzz or spark when you plug something in
• Any smell of hot plastic

Each of these usually points to the same cause: a loose connection behind the faceplate. Loose connections arc, arcs make heat, and faulty wiring remains the leading cause of electrical fires. An outlet showing any of these signs should stop being used until it has been opened and checked.

While you walk, press the test button on the GFCI outlets in the kitchen, the bathroom and outside. Those are the outlets with two small buttons. They cut power in a fraction of a second if current leaks where it should not, which is what protects you near water. Test should kill the power, reset should restore it. A GFCI that does not trip, or will not reset, has failed and needs replacing.

Extension cords are temporary. Treat them that way

Fall multiplies plugged-in things: reading lamps, humidifiers, the portable heater in the office that never warms up. Extension cords absorb the overflow, and this is where winter fires get set up in September. The rules are short:

• If a cord has been feeding the same lamp since last winter, that wall needs an outlet, not a longer cord.
• Never run a cord under a rug or through a door frame. Cords fail where they are walked on, and a rug hides the heat until it is far too late.
• A portable heater plugs directly into the wall. Never into a power bar, never into an extension cord.
• One power bar per outlet. Power bars plugged into power bars are how circuits get quietly overloaded.

Give the heating a test run before you need it

Do not let the first frost be your system test. Pick a mild day, turn every thermostat up, and let each zone run for fifteen or twenty minutes.

A dusty smell in the first few minutes is normal. It is a summer of dust burning off the elements, and it passes. What is not normal:

• A burning smell that persists past the first half hour
• A breaker that trips when a zone comes on
• A baseboard that stays cold while its thermostat calls for heat
• A thermostat that clicks and nothing follows

While each zone runs, clear it. Curtains, furniture and cardboard need distance from baseboards, so give them the clearance the manufacturer’s label asks for. If a zone refuses to heat or keeps tripping a breaker, our electric heating page explains what a proper diagnosis and repair involve.

Stand at the panel and listen

With the heating running, go stand in front of your electrical panel and open the door. Your ears matter as much as your eyes here:

• Buzzing or crackling from inside
• Warmth on the door or on any breaker
• A breaker that will not stay set, or that feels loose
• Rust or white residue, which means moisture is getting in

Two things deserve particular attention in older Montreal homes. The first is a fuse box, which dates from another era of the electrical code. The second is aluminum wiring, common in homes from the sixties and seventies. Both matter beyond safety: Quebec insurers have refused or restricted coverage over fuse boxes, aluminum wiring and missing grounding. If your home falls into either category, a full inspection is worth booking, and every four years is the recommended rhythm for any home.

Outside, before the frost

Everything outdoors gets harder to fix once the ground freezes, so this part of the list comes with a deadline:

• Check that the weatherproof covers on outdoor outlets close completely, and press their test buttons too.
• Any cord that lives outside must be rated for exterior use. Indoor cords are not built for UV, freeze and thaw.
• If your service is overhead, look up at the point where the cable meets the house. A sagging cable, a mast that has shifted, a branch rubbing against the line: none of these are do-it-yourself items. Note them and call. Nobody should ever touch a service cable.
• If holiday lighting is in your plans, choose the outlets that will feed it now. The time to add an exterior outlet is before the ground freezes, not after.

If the checklist turns something up, deal with it while it is small. A warm outlet, a smell that lingers, a breaker that will not hold: these are early warnings, and early is the easy moment to act. Lighthouse Electrique is a licensed master electrician serving Greater Montreal since 2007, RBQ 8351-6120-43, and the phone is answered in English and in French. Call (514) 909-3773, or start with our electrical repairs page to see how a diagnosis works.