We Repair Wire. We Replace Most Devices.
A conductor is a simple thing. It fails in a small number of ways, nearly always at a connection and rarely along its length. So we cut out a damaged section and make it good in an accessible box. We remake a poor termination. That is genuine repair, and it is most of what this trade actually does.
Devices are a different proposition. A receptacle, a switch, a breaker, a GFCI: each one is a sealed or half-sealed assembly of moving contacts and springs, made to be fitted and not opened. Nobody designed them to come apart and go back together. Fit a new one, and you know what you have. Take an old one apart, and you do not.
This changes the shape of an honest visit. Where the fault sits in the wiring, we diagnose, and then we repair. Where it sits in a device, we still have to diagnose it. Fitting the new part afterward is the easy half. Anybody who opens with the new part has skipped the half that mattered.
Who Makes This Call
The repair-or-replace call has one owner
It is Reno’s, and he gives it straight, including on days when the straight answer is that he does not yet know and intends to find out before anything is fitted.
What People Ask Before Booking a Repair
1.Can the outlet be repaired at all?
There is nothing serviceable inside one. The contacts have worn, and there is no adjustment in them. Fitting a new one is the repair. What is worth insisting on is that whoever comes out establishes why it failed. A receptacle that has cooked itself usually had help from a loose termination behind it, and changing the face without addressing that puts a new part on an old problem.
2.My breaker tripped once during a storm and has been fine since.
That may be the device doing its job, and it may not, and the difference is not visible from where you are standing. What we would want to know is whether it interrupted a genuine short circuit or simply an overload, because those are very different events for the breaker itself. If it went with a bang, if anything smells, or if it has become reluctant to hold since, stop resetting it and have it looked at.
3.How do I know if my GFCI still works?
Press the test button. It should trip, and the reset should bring it back. A device that fails that test has to be changed. Monthly is the usual advice, and almost nobody manages monthly; twice a year is a great deal better than never.
4.My outlet was replaced last year, and the trouble is back.
Then the device was the symptom and something else was the cause, which is the most common reason a repair does not hold. Usually the termination behind it, or something upstream on the same circuit. Whoever comes next should arrive to diagnose rather than to fit another one.
5.Do you carry the parts?
The common devices, yes, and a good many repair visits need only the one. Fixtures, anything that has to match what is already on the wall, and discontinued equipment are the exceptions, and where a second visit is needed we tell you at the time, which is better than you finding out when nobody comes back.
Everything Else We Cover in Fountain Hills
Repairs sit alongside the rest of what we do in town:
What Fountain Hills Customers Say
Our Google listing is not curated, and there is no testimonials page. The live feed below is the whole record, good and bad, which is the only version worth reading.