Hurricane Electrical Prep: Storm Season Checklist for South Florida Homes

The electrical work that gets a South Florida property through a hurricane happens in April and May, not in the forty-eight hours after a cone shows up on the news. By the time a storm has a name, the useful list is short: photograph things, fuel things, unplug things, decide whether to open the main. Everything else, the service mast, the grounding, the surge devices, the generator that has not run since last October, has to be handled while the weather is boring.

What follows is the hurricane preparation sequence we actually use with property owners: what to inspect before the season, what to do as a storm approaches, what to leave alone during it, and the order to bring a building back after power returns. Getting that last part backwards is how people damage equipment that survived the storm itself.

Start Where the Power Enters the Building

The service entrance is the first thing to look at and the thing most people have never looked at once. On an overhead service, the utility's conductors run to an attachment point on the building, then into a weatherhead at the top of a mast, then down through conduit to the meter enclosure and into the main panel or disconnect. Roughly speaking, the utility owns the drop up to that attachment point and owns the meter itself. Everything else on that path is yours: the mast, the weatherhead, the conductors running down it, and the enclosure the meter sits in.

That ownership line has a practical consequence people learn the hard way. If wind pulls the mast loose from the wall or twists it out of plumb, or tears the meter can off, the drop stays disconnected until an electrician repairs that equipment and, in most jurisdictions here, an inspector signs off on it. Neighbors get power back and you sit dark waiting on a repair that has to be scheduled after the storm, along with everybody else who has the same damage.

Things worth checking now, from the ground, with your eyes and not your hands:

• Is the mast plumb and solidly strapped, with the roof flashing intact where it penetrates? A mast that already leans will not survive a real wind.
• Do the incoming conductors form a drip loop, hanging below the weatherhead before they rise into it? Without that loop, rain follows the conductors straight down into the conduit and eventually into the meter can.
• Is the meter enclosure rusted through at the bottom, and are the unused knockouts sealed? Coastal salt air eats the bottom of a meter can from the inside out, and once there is a hole, wind-driven rain gets in.
• Is anything rubbing? Tree limbs contacting service conductors year-round wear the insulation and become a failure point under load.

Underground services skip the mast question but bring their own. The secondary conductors run in conduit from a pad-mounted transformer, and both the transformer pad and your meter enclosure can end up standing in water. Note where your equipment sits relative to how high water has actually gotten on the property, because that determines what happens after a surge event.

The Panel Inspection Belongs in the Off Season

A panel that is going to fail during a hurricane usually shows it beforehand. We take the dead front off, which is work for an electrician and not a homeowner, and look for the specific signs that predict trouble: rust streaks running down the inside of the enclosure from an old leak, white or green powder on aluminum feeder terminations, discoloration at any breaker's stab connection, breakers that feel mushy or will not seat firmly, and a main that has not been operated in a decade.

Terminations get checked because heat and vibration loosen them over years, and a loose connection under a heavy post-storm load is the classic path to an internal fire. Aluminum service entrance conductors, which most homes here have, need the right compound and the right torque, and they need it verified rather than assumed.

We also confirm the panel is actually the right panel for the situation. Federal Pacific and Zinsco equipment from the 1960s and 1970s is still in service in a lot of Broward County housing stock, and a panel whose breakers may not trip reliably is a poor thing to be depending on when power comes back unstable. If that is what you have, an approaching season is as good a deadline as you will ever get to deal with it, and replacing that equipment falls squarely inside our electrical panel repair work.

Label the circuits while the cover is off. A panel with an accurate directory is worth a great deal at eleven at night when you need to kill one circuit and nothing else. Photograph the finished directory and keep the photo on your phone, not taped inside a door that may get wet.

Grounding and Bonding Decide Whether Anything Else Helps

Every protective measure downstream depends on a low-impedance path to earth and a properly bonded system. A surge device with a corroded ground connection is decoration. A ground fault that cannot clear because the electrode conductor is loose is a shock hazard sitting quietly in the wall.

The grounding electrode system in a typical home here means driven ground rods, often supplemented by the building's own reinforcing steel in newer concrete construction. The failure point is almost never the rod. It is the clamp where the conductor attaches to it, sitting in wet sandy soil for twenty years, and the connection at the panel end. Both corrode, and both are visible and testable.

Bonding matters just as much and gets skipped constantly. Metal water piping, gas piping where present, and the incoming communications services all need to be bonded to the same grounding system. That last one is the one we find missing most: cable, satellite and telephone entrances are supposed to land on an intersystem bonding termination at the service, and when they instead get grounded to a random ground rod on the other side of the house, you have created a difference in potential between two systems that a nearby lightning strike will happily exploit. That is a genuinely common cause of destroyed televisions and network gear after a storm, and it has nothing to do with what plugged into what.

Settle the Surge Protection Question Before the Season, Not During It

Surge protection deserves its own conversation, and we treat it as one, because choosing devices and building a layered scheme is a longer subject than a storm checklist can hold. The point that belongs here is about timing and condition.

Surge protective devices are consumable. The components inside them absorb energy and degrade a little with every event, including the small ones that happen year-round when utility equipment switches. A device that has been in service through several seasons may have very little capacity left, and most of them have a status indicator that tells you so if anyone looks. Check the indicator on whatever you already have. If it has gone dark or amber, the device is finished and protecting nothing.

If you have no protection at the service at all, that is a project to schedule now rather than in August, because it means opening the panel and, in some configurations, adding a breaker or a disconnect. Do the reading on device selection separately and get the installation done while the calendar is quiet.

Generator Readiness Is a Maintenance Schedule, Not a Purchase

Generator sizing, transfer equipment and installation are their own subject and we cover them separately. The storm-prep version is simpler and comes down to one idea: a generator is a machine that fails from sitting, not from running.

For a permanently installed standby unit, the pre-season list is the exercise cycle actually running and being observed rather than assumed, an oil and filter service on schedule, and the starting battery. Batteries are the single most common reason a standby generator does not start when it is finally needed, and a battery that has been sitting in an outdoor enclosure through a Florida summer ages faster than the maintenance interval suggests. Also confirm the transfer equipment operates under load, not just that the engine starts, and check the enclosure and the pad for corrosion if you are near the water.

For a portable unit, the enemy is fuel. Gasoline with ethanol in it separates and gums a carburetor within months. Either run the unit dry before storage or keep it treated and rotate the fuel, and then actually start it and put a load on it a few times a year. Check the cord sets for damaged insulation and confirm they are heavy enough for the length you are running, because a long undersized cord drops voltage and makes motor loads run hot.

If your plan involves a generator and you do not yet have transfer equipment, that is the piece to solve before the season. Our generator installation page goes through what proper transfer arrangements involve.

Backfeeding Is the One Mistake That Kills Somebody Else

This needs saying plainly because people still do it. Running a cord with male plugs on both ends from a generator into a dryer receptacle or a range outlet to energize the house wiring is lethal, and it is lethal in more than one direction.

The power you push into the panel does not stop at your walls. It travels back out through the service and into the utility transformer, which steps it back up to distribution voltage on the primary side, energizing a line that a crew has grounded and is working on as a dead circuit. That is how lineworkers get killed restoring power. On your side, that cord has live exposed prongs whenever one end is connected, no overcurrent protection sized for it, and it bypasses every protective device in the building.

The correct answer is a transfer switch or a properly installed panel interlock, which makes it physically impossible for the generator and the utility to be connected at the same time. There is no acceptable improvised version of that.

Running a Portable Generator Without Poisoning the House

Carbon monoxide from portable generators kills more people after storms than the storms do in a lot of seasons, and the pattern is depressingly consistent: the unit was in a garage, on a porch, under a carport, or just outside a window, and somebody reasoned that the door being open made it fine. It does not. Exhaust pools, and it finds openings.

• Outdoors only, well away from any door, window, soffit vent or air handler intake, with the exhaust pointed away from the building.
• Never inside a garage, breezeway or screened enclosure, regardless of how open it seems.
• Have working carbon monoxide alarms with battery backup inside the house before you ever run the unit. You will not smell it and you will not notice the symptoms in time.
• Shut the engine down and let it cool before refueling. Gasoline on a hot exhaust ignites.
• Keep it dry and out of standing water, on a surface that will stay dry, with clearance around it for airflow. A soaked generator is a shock hazard and a scrap machine.
• Use cord sets in good condition with ground pins intact, and plug sensitive equipment through ground fault protection.

One more that matters here: a portable generator running loose extension cords through a partly open sliding door is also running those cords through a wet doorway, which is how a ground fault ends up in the path of somebody's bare feet.

The Week Before: What Actually Needs Doing

Once a hurricane is genuinely tracking toward South Florida, the electrical list is short and specific.

Photograph the panel with the cover on and the directory legible, and photograph the meter and service mast from a few angles. If there is damage later, that record makes the difference in a claim and in explaining to an electrician what changed. Test the GFCI devices around the house with their buttons and replace any that will not trip or reset. Charge everything, including cordless tool batteries, which run a lot of useful things.

Then think about what sits low. Anything electrical near ground level that can be raised should be raised: equipment on garage floors, power strips behind furniture, anything in a ground-floor utility room. Outdoor equipment gets a different treatment. Do not tarp or bag a condenser, which traps moisture, but do clear debris from around it and secure anything nearby that can become a projectile.

Pool equipment is worth attention specifically. Turn the pump off at its breaker before conditions get bad rather than leaving a timer to run it, and if flooding is expected where the pad sits, the equipment should be off and the circuit de-energized. A pump that runs dry or that gets submerged while energized creates a problem you will be dealing with long after the water goes down.

The Last Few Hours, and Whether to Open the Main

Shutting off the main breaker is the right call in two situations: you are evacuating, or water is likely to reach the panel or reach outlets and equipment inside the structure. Energized wiring and floodwater together is a hazard to anyone who comes back into the building, including the people who come to help.

The order matters. Turn the branch circuit breakers off first, then the main. That way the main is not interrupting the full load of the house, which reduces arcing at the contacts and is easier on equipment. When power comes back, reverse it: main on first, then branch circuits one at a time, largest loads last.

The exception is important. If the panel is already wet, if there is water on the floor in front of it, or if you hear or smell anything unusual from it, do not operate it. Stand back and call. That is a case where the right move is to have the service killed at the meter by someone with the equipment to do it safely, and it is exactly the kind of call our emergency electrical repair crews take.

After the Lights Come Back: Restore in Order

Utility restoration is not a clean switch. Power often returns unstable, comes back and drops again as crews sectionalize the system, and can return on one leg before the other. The first fifteen minutes are when a lot of surviving equipment gets destroyed.

Bring the house up deliberately. Leave the air conditioning off for several minutes after power returns rather than letting it slam a compressor into a system that has not equalized pressure. Turn on a few lights first and watch them. Then add loads in stages.

What you are watching for is a lost leg or a compromised neutral, both of which are common after storm damage to the service or to utility equipment. The signature is unmistakable once you know it: some lights unusually bright while others are dim, 240 volt appliances behaving strangely or not running, and lights that swing in brightness when a large load starts. If you see that, shut the main off, report it to the utility, and do not simply keep using the house. Elevated voltage on one leg will cook heating elements, motors and electronics quietly over a matter of hours.

Then work through the rest. Reset and test GFCI and arc fault devices. Check the indicator on any surge protection at the panel and on point-of-use devices, because a device that took a hit will show it. Walk the exterior receptacles and look for water in the enclosures. Smell for anything hot at the panel and at any outlet that fed a large appliance. And check the service mast and meter enclosure from the ground for anything that shifted.

Water Got In: What Can Be Dried and What Has to Be Replaced

This is the part where people try to save money and create a hazard that shows up months later.

Electrical equipment that has been submerged is generally not repairable by drying. Circuit breakers are sealed molded-case devices with a mechanism and calibrated components inside that you cannot inspect; once floodwater with silt and salt in it gets in, the trip behavior is no longer trustworthy and the device has to be replaced. The same reasoning applies to panelboards, safety switches, receptacles, switches and hardwired equipment. Salt water is far worse than fresh, and coastal flooding here is salt water.

Wiring is more nuanced. Conductors with wet-rated insulation in conduit may be serviceable if the terminations and the raceway can be properly evaluated and dried, while cable assemblies that wick water along the conductors are usually replaced. That evaluation is a judgment made by looking at the actual installation, not from a general rule, and it is the kind of thing that has to be documented for the inspection that will follow.

Equipment that got wet but was not submerged still needs attention, because moisture plus salt starts corrosion at every termination it touched. The failures show up as heat at connections weeks or months later.

Condos, Rental Property and Commercial Buildings Have a Second List

Multi-unit and commercial buildings carry obligations a single family home does not, and the storm-season list is longer.

Life safety systems come first. Emergency and exit lighting units run on batteries that degrade, and a long outage is exactly when they are asked to perform. Those need testing on schedule and before the season, not discovered dead afterward. Fire alarm panels, elevator recall and emergency communication systems all need power continuity checked and their backup batteries verified.

Then the building's own distribution. House panels, corridor and stairwell lighting, pump rooms, lift stations and rooftop equipment all need the same service entrance and grounding attention that a house does, at greater scale and usually with more corrosion because the equipment is on a roof in salt air. Generator fuel supply, run hours and load bank history matter for buildings that have standby power obligations.

Restaurants and retail tenants have a further problem, which is restart sequencing. Refrigeration, cooking equipment, hoods and point of sale systems all coming back at once on a service that just re-energized is a good way to lose a compressor. Planning that order in advance is routine for the property management accounts we support around the county.

Two Different Reasons to Pick Up the Phone

Call before hurricane season if your service mast leans, your meter enclosure is rusting, your panel has not been opened in years, you have Federal Pacific or Zinsco equipment, or your generator has not been run and loaded recently. Those are all schedulable, unhurried work in May and impossible work in September.

Call during and after a storm if you smell anything burning, if the panel or any part of the service is wet or damaged, if lights behave unevenly after power returns, or if the utility says they cannot reconnect until your equipment is repaired. Our line is staffed at every hour, (954) 602-0050and the closest available electrician gets dispatched to wherever you are inside our service area.

The most useful hurricane preparation you can do is the inspection you have been putting off. A service entrance, panel and grounding check takes one visit, and it is the difference between a storm that inconveniences you and one that leaves you waiting behind everyone else for a reconnection. The number is (954) 602-0050.