When a Tenant Should Call a Registered Electrician

Tenants in a ManjeProp house are not expected to diagnose wiring. You are expected to notice danger, stop making it worse, and get a registered person to the right room. The public fault form is how that request becomes a ticket. A registered electrician is who opens the board.

This note is about timing and boundaries. It is not a lesson in how to test a circuit.

Call for a registered electrician when you see these

Treat the following as electrical work, not as housemate DIY:

Burning smell from a plug, light or appliance that does not stop when you switch the appliance off at the wall
Scorch marks, melted plastic or a plug that is hot to the touch
Sparks you can see, or a shock from a tap, fridge or washing machine
Lights that stay on when the switch is off, or flicker in more than one room
Water near a socket, light or any covered board
A gate motor, stove or geyser that failed after a storm or a trip, and will not stay on

You do not need to name the fault. You need to say which rooms, which fittings, and whether anyone was hurt.

What you may do before anyone arrives

If it is safe to reach, switch the appliance off at the wall. Unplug it only if the plug and your hands are dry. Check whether a prepaid meter still has credit. Tell us which rooms or plugs are dead.

That is the whole tenant checklist. The fault form already prints those three lines when you choose Electricity. Follow them. Do not add extra steps you saw on a video.

If the whole house is dark and the street is also dark, it may be a municipal outage or load-shedding. Look outside before you call it a house fault. If the street has power and you do not, say that on the ticket.

What you must not do

Do not open the distribution board. Do not reset breakers you cannot identify. Do not remove a cover, tape a scorched socket, or replace a stove element. Do not “just tighten” a loose wire. Do not stand on a wet floor and investigate.

Do not send a housemate who “does electrical on the side.” Informal work on a rental house is how fires start and how insurance arguments begin. ManjeProp will book a registered electrician when the ticket justifies it.

Do not post photos of the open board on social media. If a contractor later photographs the board, that file belongs on the ticket, not on a story.

How to report so the right person is sent

Open Report a fault. Category: Electricity. Severity: Urgent or Emergency if there is heat, smoke, water on electrics, or a shock. Medium is for a single dead plug with no smell and no heat.

In the description write:

Property and room
What stopped working
Whether other rooms still have power
Whether there is a smell, heat or visible damage
Whether prepaid credit was checked
Whether water is involved

Attach photos of the damaged fitting from a safe distance, and of the appliance model sticker if a fridge or kettle is the only thing that failed. Do not photograph the inside of a board.

If people are in immediate danger, leave the building if you can and phone emergency services. Then phone ManjeProp on +27 60 313 6961 and mark the form Emergency.

After-hours judgement

A dead bedside lamp at 23:00 is not an electrician call-out. A socket that is too hot to touch at 23:00 is. A gate that will not open after a trip, with people locked outside at night, is an access problem as well as an electrical one — say both on the ticket and on the phone.

Staff decide who attends. Your job is to describe the risk without editing it down to “lights funny.”

Landlords and staff

On the PropertyCare desk, do not close an electrical ticket because a tenant said “it’s fine now.” Log the electrician’s visit as a completed repair with a photo of the replaced fitting, not of anyone’s ID. Keep the contractor’s invoice on the repair record. Do not paste the tenant’s identity number into the notes so the electrician can “find the house.” The property name and unit are enough.

If you are advertising a room, do not write “rewired” unless you have the certificate and the work was actually done. Overclaiming on a listing is how a viewing turns into a complaint.

Electrical work in a shared Durban student house is not a weekend project. Report the fault, keep clear of the board, and let a registered electrician do the opening.

Need someone booked? Use the fault form or call +27 60 313 6961. For a room enquiry that is not a live fault, use properties.