This is part of a “What Every Renter Should Know” series. Also check out our recommendations for electrical repairs.
You’ve just moved into your new rental apartment/house/bungalow. Everything is in perfect working order, and the entire place has been beautifully refurbished by the landlord. I’m kidding. Probably the landlord has done little more than force the previous tenant to slather a begrudging layer of cheap paint over the countless other layers. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ve replaced the scale-encrusted shower head.
In theory, your landlord will fix things promptly and in good faith. In reality, as renters already know too well, you’ll be doing most of it yourself, and then getting blamed for anything that goes wrong. Which is why we’re here to help, with a list of repairs that every renter should know how to do, and we’ll give tips so you’re ready for common emergencies. (Stay tuned for part two: Plumbing!) Don’t forget, iFixit has lots of guides for household electrical repair, if you’ve got a specific fix in mind.
Electrical
A home electrical installation is a complex system of electrical components that bring power into a home and distribute it to the various outlets, appliances, and lighting fixtures.
View Device“For me the bare minimum is knowing what might kill us and preventing that,” says iFixit’s lead teardown technician Shahram Mokhtari. “That’s been anything gas, electricity, and knowing the placement of supporting structures.
“Know where your shutoffs are, know what a gas leak smells like, know maintenance schedules for boilers and such, learn how to find live wires before drilling holes, etc. A neighbor taught me much of this at 27. I wasted a lot of money having people fix things I could have done myself in the early years.”
Cut the Power. Then Double Check. And Triple Check.
Tackling electrical repairs isn’t necessarily dangerous, as long as you know what you’re doing. Step one is to switch off the power at the fusebox/breaker box. Step two is to double check you switched it off, and step three is to try the light/appliance to make sure it’s really, really switched off. In addition, never, ever assume that something is safe.
I regard all wires as potentially live before I touch them, and take a moment to consider whether they are or not. As a habit it slows things down, but so what? This is even more important if your repair requires switching power on and off to test as you go. I once got mixed up while repairing a storage heater, touched a live wire, and the spasm threw me against the wall behind (thankfully it was a narrow hallway).
Don’t Make a Mess You Can’t Clean Up
Before you drill a hole in the wall of a rented home, you should know how to patch one up. Your contract may specify that you have to patch stuff up before you move out. Also, in my quite extensive experience, landlords don’t mind holes in walls, but they hate holes in tiles, woodwork, and window frames.
Nails and screw holes in woodwork, plaster, and masonry can be filled with a filler. I prefer the pre-made stuff in a tube if I’m moving out, as it’s easier to use and you’ll use up a whole tube easily. For anything else, keep the powdered stuff on hand so you can mix up small batches.
Just fill the hole, push it in a smooth it off with either a taping knife/drywall knife, or (for small holes) a finger. Wait for it to dry, sand, and paint. Look in storage cabinets for leftover paint. Often extra paint is left nearby. Otherwise, you can chip off a small bit of paint from a hidden area and take it into a home improvement store to be matched. If you’ve sanded properly and found the right paint match, repairs will be essentially invisible.
For bigger holes, you may need to add a support. In drywall, screw a piece of wood or drywall behind the hole (you’ll have to finagle it in) and then fill on top of that. You can also cowboy it by stuffing the hole full of newspaper and filling on top of that. For wide holes like damaged plasterwork, you should work in layers, so the filler does not sag, and also to let it dry faster. Filler will also shrink when drying, so fill slightly proud of the surface.
How to Reset Your Fusebox/Breaker Box
Let’s start with the breakers. This is where power enters your home, and it’s where you can switch it off. The breakers are made to trip when too much power passes through, which might be because a live wire got shorted to ground, or just because you switched on the oven, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, and the tea kettle all at once.
Resetting the breaker box is easy, but first you have to find it. So, do that as soon as you move into your new home, and also leave a flashlight on top for when you need it. One of those wind-up flashlights is a good bet here.
First, check for the cause of the tripped breaker. If you just turned on too many appliances at once, then you now know not to do that again. Switch off those appliances before resetting the breaker switch.
But if a single circuit tripped, then you should investigate further. The breaker box will have breakers for each circuit. A small apartment may have one for lighting, another for power sockets, and one each for major appliances. This is also handy for DIY. If you’re re-wiring a ceiling light fixture, you only need to turn off the lighting circuit, and double check before you do anything else.
To reset a breaker, you may just have to just push any flipped-off switched back into the on position. Some breaker boxes will have a separate “tripped” switch position to differentiate from switches that have just been turned off manually. In this case, you will have to turn the switch fully off before switching it on again.
Changing a Light Fitting/Switch
In a rented home, you may change a light switch because it’s broken, because you want to swap in a smart light switch, because you want to swap it to control a ceiling-mounted fan (I’ve done this one twice), or because the switches are so crappy and flimsy you just can’t take it any more.
First, switch off the power at the breaker box. Then flick the switch to check the power is really off. We also strongly recommend using a non-contact voltage detector inside the switch box before working. especially if there is more than one switch present. The switches can frequently be on different circuits, and just turning off one may leave others live. You don’t want to be the contact voltage detector.
You can use a digital multimeter (ours or someone else’s) to do non-contact voltage detection, as we show in the video below. Or there are single-purpose non-contact voltage testers available quite inexpensively, if you prefer.
Next, unscrew the faceplate and pull it away from the wall. The wires inside will be a lot thicker and stiffer than you might used to, so bear that in mind when yanking stuff around.
Changing things is a matter of unscrewing the wire clamps, pulling out the wires, and screwing them into the clamps on the new switch unit. Make sure you brush up on your symbols for ground, live, and neutral, and that you know your wire color codes. If you have very old home wiring, you may have different colors.
If you have to strip the sheath from a wire, always strip enough to safely enter the hole, and no more. This avoids unnecessarily exposing conductive metal.
These in-wall wires will have solid cores, but a general tip for stranded wires when rewiring tables lamps and so on is to make sure not a single strand is left outside the clamp/socket thing. This can lead to shorts. Avoid stray wires by twisting the newly-stripped strands slightly to keep them together.
Another general tip is to always cut the ground wire longer than the other two. This can help it stay connected if the others get yanked out somehow.
A final tip for working with wiring in walls: Generally speaking, cables behind walls run horizontally and vertically. This means you should never drill a hole in a wall directly above, below, or to the side of a power socket or light switch. There are exceptions. When I replaced a light switch with a ceiling-fan controller in an apartment in Germany, the cables ran diagonally from the hole, at 45˚ angles. I still don’t know if this was some kind of East German post-WWII building economy to save wire, or just a cowboy move on the builder’s part. Members of iFixit’s Stuttgart office report that they have regular vertical and horizontal wiring, as does a friend of mine in Berlin. Which is to say, don’t trust standards when it comes to anything that could kill you.
So that’s it. Remember to familiarize yourself with the breaker box, keep a flashlight on hand, and know where your screwdrivers are kept.
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5 Comments
I'm an apprentice electrician in school, seeing this is a great resource for people who don't have much experience. If it seems like a simple job you can try it, but always be sure to contact a professional for large issues. Always make sure the power is off before working on a device, if a pen tester says the power is off then you should still do more checking. If a beaker is tripped, check the circuit before you reset it again as a breaker tripping due to a fault could be a sign of equipment damage. Most residences are 120/240, and most wires will be black / white / red / green or bare copper. The chart given in this article is a great help. Always have a screwdriver set, a good pair of pliers and wire strippers (Klein Kurve strippers with the lineman's pliers head are top notch). And if you get a meter get one from Ideal, Fluke, or Klein with a Clamp On attachment to read current.
DanB.06 - Reply Share
If you use a non-contact live wire detector, test it on a known live circuit before using. If it doesn't signal the live wire, check its battery.
If you have a dead kitchen appliance, check the GFCI outlet first to see if it is tripped. Sometimes they are sensitive to line noise and trip when there is no fault. If you have repeated trips with a particular appliance, there may be a problem with the appliance. For example, if gunk builds up around the contacts of an electric skillet with a detachable control, and the skillet contacts a grounded surface, that could trip the GFCI. Don't ignore that; it's a dangerous condition. Clean up the bases of the contact pins, being careful not to damage the heating element seal. Food gunk can be electrically conductive.
PAB1130 - Reply Share
Every renter and homeowner should own at a minimum a multimeter and contact-less voltage detector to safely diagnose and test a fixture, switch or outlet. They are inexpensive and reduce the risk of getting shocked by a live circuit. Other tools could be a circuit tracer to determine the breaker servicing an outlet and an outlet polarity tester to check for missing grounds. If possible, ring out each outlet and fixture to map it with its respective breaker and document it for future use.
RickP - Reply Share
Good comments. If you buy a non-contact voltage detector, get a good one. Pay $30 rather than $10 dollars. The cheap ones fail when you least expect it for a big surprise. The good ones will have a receptacle checker to determine if the old ones where wired incorrectly. When you buy or rent a dwelling, replace all of the switches and outlets. Very cheap when you buy them in packs of 10 or more. While your at it, buy new cover plates if the old ones look shoddy. Don't forget to turn power off before replacing receptacles and switches. My current house had 40 electrical problems including miss wired outlets, wire splices not in a box, and badly stuffed switch boxes. 3 of the boxes where arcing. Some of the problems were with the original builder and some after work.
Jon - Reply Share
Before you venture into renting a home that is not well maintained, I suggest not doing so. Why would you want to place your life or that of your loved ones in danger. If you have unfortunatly already moved into a home that is not habitable for humans. please also consider your lease agreement in that you do not want to violate the rules you agreed & consented to follow.
There is a chance that it containes a section title as "7. Maintenance and Repair / Alterations: Renter shall:"
You need to be very careful Not to place your self in a position of legal troubles. If you read further in that section that you promised not to violate it may state for example
"Renter shall not alter the Premises, nor paint, nor wallpaper any portion thereof, nor repair any damage thereto, without the written consent of Owner and except through licensed, insured professionals approved in advance by Owner in writing"
So please secure the written consent of the Owners of the property before you do any repairs. Or just move out.
AJ de Gallegos - Reply Share