A breaker that trips every evening, a socket that stopped working, lights to add, an old board with no residual current device, or a house that needs rewiring room by room. Describe what is happening and you get a free quote, with the price known before any work starts.
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Handyman Algarve arranges electrical work in the Algarve: faults and tripping breakers, sockets and lighting, consumer unit upgrades, outdoor and pool circuits, and full or staged rewiring. Portugal runs at 230 volts, 50 hertz, on Schuko sockets. Quotes are free and given in English or Portuguese before any work starts, with the price agreed up front.
Salt and sun again. Outdoor sockets, garden lighting and pool equipment within reach of sea air corrode from the inside, and the first sign is usually a residual current device tripping after rain or watering rather than anything visibly wrong. Summer is the other pressure: air conditioning, a pool pump and an electric water heater running at once is what finds the limit of a contracted power that was set when the house had none of them. And many older village houses still have circuits without an earth conductor, hidden behind modern looking sockets that were simply swapped onto old cabling. That last one matters most, because it looks fine and offers no protection at all.
Swapping a light fitting or a socket faceplate is a handyman job. Anything that changes a circuit, touches the consumer unit, or connects to the meter is not, and needs an electrician who works to the standards a certified installation requires. If a request turns out to be on the wrong side of that boundary, you are told before anything is booked rather than after someone is standing in your hallway. The same applies in reverse: if what you need is one socket moved and not a rewire, the quote says so.
As of 2026, an electrical quote is built from how many points the job involves, how the cabling is reached, and what has to be made good afterwards. Pulling new cable through existing conduit is a different job from chasing a masonry wall, replastering and repainting it. A fault finding visit is priced separately from the repair, because until the fault is found nobody honestly knows which repair it is. Larger work, such as a consumer unit change or a rewire, is quoted for the whole job with the number of points written down, so what you are comparing between quotes is the same scope.
Photographs help more here than anywhere else: the consumer unit with its cover off, the socket or fitting in question, and the meter. See how it works for the process from request to finished job.
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Portugal runs on 230 volts at 50 hertz, with Schuko sockets, the round recessed type with two pins and side earth contacts. UK plugs need an adapter, and appliances brought from the UK or Ireland work fine on the voltage. What catches people out is the contracted power on the meter rather than the voltage: it is what decides how much you can run at once before the main breaker trips.
Small work is quoted as a callout plus labour, with materials separate; larger work such as a consumer unit change or a rewire is quoted for the whole job rather than by the hour. What moves the price is access to the cabling, whether walls have to be chased and made good, and how many points are involved. As of 2026, Handyman Algarve quotes electrical work free and before anyone comes out.
There is no honest single figure, because a rewire is priced per point and per metre of chasing, not per house. The three questions that decide it are how many sockets, switches and light points the finished house needs, whether the cabling can be pulled through existing conduit or the walls have to be opened and replastered, and whether the house is empty or lived in while the work happens. A quote that arrives without those answers is a guess.
Because something is letting current escape to earth, and in Algarve houses the usual suspects are outdoors: a garden light or pool pump that has taken in water, an outside socket corroded by salt air, or a water heater element on its way out. The way to find it is to switch everything off, reset, then bring circuits back one at a time. If it trips with everything unplugged, the fault is in the fixed wiring.
Not automatically, but three things justify a proper look: circuits with no earth conductor, a board with old rewireable fuses instead of breakers, and no residual current device at all. Any of those means the installation predates the protection now considered basic. Rewiring can often be staged room by room rather than done in one go, which spreads both the cost and the disruption.
Often yes, provided the circuit and its protection can carry what will be plugged in. Adding a socket for a phone charger is not the same as adding one for an air conditioner or an oven. The check takes minutes and is worth doing before the wall is opened: extending a circuit that is already close to its limit is how you end up with a breaker that trips every evening in August.