Fixtures, outlets & smart installs

No. We do fixture-level swaps on existing 120V circuits — replacing a light fixture, an outlet, a switch, installing a smart lock. That's the boundary and we hold it. Panel work, new circuits, anything with knob-and-tube or aluminum wiring, or anything that smells hot goes straight to a licensed electrician.

Usually yes, provided you keep the original and put it back at move-out. That's exactly why we bag and label the old hardware and leave it in your closet — at move-out we can reinstall it in twenty minutes and your landlord never knows the difference.

Send us a photo of the current deadbolt and the door edge before you buy. Most standard deadbolts swap directly. Multi-point locks, mortise locks in older buildings, and metal fire doors sometimes don't, and it's much better to know before the box is opened.

Nine times out of ten it's a tripped GFCI somewhere else on the circuit — often in the bathroom or kitchen, sometimes in a closet. We'll find it. If it's not that, it's a back-stabbed connection that's worked loose, which we can also fix.

No, and please don't do it yourself either. In Massachusetts your landlord is legally required to keep working smoke and CO detectors in the unit, and removing or disabling one is both illegal and the single most dangerous thing you can do in an old triple-decker. The chirp is almost always a dying battery or a unit past its expiry — both of which we fix in about twenty minutes.

Take it down and look at the back — every detector has a manufacture date printed on it, and they stop being reliable after 10 years (7 for most CO units). Students inherit these, so a shocking number of Boston apartments are running detectors older than the tenant's lease. If yours is expired we'll tell you and swap it, and the replacement is billed at exactly what it cost.

It's common and it's usually placement plus detector type. Ionisation detectors sit right next to a kitchen and react to toast; a photoelectric unit in the same spot generally won't. Massachusetts building code actually requires photoelectric detectors within 20 feet of a kitchen or bathroom in many cases, so if yours is chirping at your cooking there's a fair chance it's the wrong type in the wrong place — worth raising with your landlord in writing, and we'll put it in the written summary for you.