Outlet & Switch Replacement in Denver, CO

Check for a tripped GFCI first — one GFCI outlet, often in a bathroom or the garage, can protect a string of ordinary-looking outlets elsewhere, and its reset button quietly controls all of them. If it's not that, it's usually a failed device or a loose connection upstream in the circuit, which is exactly the kind of thing worth having found properly rather than lived with.

A problem. The grip comes from spring contacts inside the outlet, and when they're worn enough to drop a plug, they're worn enough to make poor contact — which arcs, which makes heat behind your wall. Replacement outlets cost a few dollars each. It's one of the cheapest genuinely-safety-related fixes a house can get, and a good one to batch several at a time.

Yes — new locations, not just swaps. Running a new outlet means getting wire from a source to the new box, and how easy that is depends on what's between them; an outlet backing onto an existing circuit is quick, and a first-floor wall under a finished ceiling takes more creativity. I'll tell you the honest difficulty when I see the wall, and quote it before anything gets opened.

It's the highest-value upgrade in this category, because most of the metro's older housing stock predates the requirements. Kitchens, bathrooms, garages, laundry, and outdoor outlets all want ground-fault protection by modern standards, and plenty of pre-1990 houses have none. A GFCI device protects everything downstream of it, so a few well-placed ones often cover the whole house. It's the difference between a tingle and a tragedy around water.