The days after an outage or a lightning storm in the Upstate have a rhythm at Carolina Heating Service. The calls we receive arrive in a pattern, from the first hour to the one three weeks later from a homeowner who has forgotten there was a storm. Here’s an overview of the most frequently asked questions we get after an outage or surge in power.
How does an outage and a surge do different damage?
An outage itself does little harm. The harm comes at the edges, in the flickering restoration and the minutes of low voltage that follow it, when motors start and stop repeatedly and a compressor is asked to restart before its pressure has bled off. A surge is a brief voltage spike, from lightning on a line a few blocks away, from the utility switching the grid back on, or from a large motor starting in the house, and it damages the electronics in nearly every appliance. Greenville sits in a lightning-prone region, so surges come through Upstate homes all summer.
Why does the air conditioner hum but not start?
The first calls we receive, often within an hour of the power returning, is the outdoor unit humming with the fan still, or the indoor blower running while the outdoor unit stays silent. That is a capacitor, the part that gives the compressor and fan their starting push, worn out by surges and repeated restarts, and since the compressor strains against it every time the thermostat calls, we ask the homeowner to turn the system off until we arrive. A repeating click with no start is the contactor, and a blank thermostat is usually a tripped breaker or a board that took the surge. Each is a routine air conditioning repair that grows if the strained compressor keeps trying.
Why is there no hot water by the evening?
The second call comes once someone has taken a cold shower. An electric water heater’s high-limit reset trips after a power event on some units, and its elements are vulnerable to a surge; a tankless heater’s control board shows an error code or fails to fire. Pressure swings during the outage also turn a slow drip at an old tank’s base into a visible leak, so we ask about the floor around it. Our water heater team handles each, and a heater that took a surge usually needs a board or an element rather than replacement.
The generator ran but the house stayed dark. Why?
The third call comes from homes with standby generators: the generator started and the house stayed dark, or the utility returned and the generator kept running. Both point to the transfer switch, which sits between the utility and the house, is the first component a surge reaches, and with damaged contacts fails to hand the house to the generator or back to the grid. A generator service visit after a long outage checks the switch along with the engine, and after Helene those visits ran for weeks.
Why are my electronics dead?
The fourth call is about the visible casualties: a television, a router, a garage door opener, a smart thermostat that lost its schedule, all gone on the same morning, which means a surge reached the panel and traveled through the house. What we tell that homeowner is that the invisible casualties matter more, because the control boards in the heating and cooling system, the refrigerator, the range, and the water heater took the same surge and may be damaged and working for now, so this call should turn into a look at the panel and the equipment even when both seem fine. It is also the moment to talk about a whole-home surge protector, which our electricians install at the panel. A burning smell, a warm breaker, or buzzing at the panel is the urgent version of this call, since a large surge can damage breakers so they no longer trip when they should.
Why am I still having electrical problems three weeks later?
The last call is the expensive one, three weeks after the storm or in the next heat wave, from a homeowner whose refrigerator runs constantly, whose dishwasher stops mid-cycle, or whose air conditioner quit on the first 100-degree afternoon, and nobody connects it to the storm. A capacitor weakened by the restoration flicker started the compressor a little harder every cycle until it failed and took the compressor with it, and a board that survived the surge with a degraded component worked until the day it did not. This is the call a post-storm tune-up prevents, by testing the capacitor and contactor under load, checking the board and connections, and measuring the compressor’s current draw in the weeks after a storm rather than waiting for the heat wave to reveal what the restoration did.
Have questions you need answered?
Carolina Heating Service has served Greenville and the Upstate since 1981 with all four trades under one roof, so we’re prepared to answer the questions about your home’s systems after a power outage or surge. Same-day repair service is available by phone, members of the Carolina Comfort Club receive priority service after a storm, and every visit ends with a report card and a video, with the price presented before any work.