Electrical problems are the largest cause of property damage due to home structure fires. Therefore, it’s important to observe safety precautions in your home. Especially regarding electricity and preventing fires, which can be devastating. When installing electrical components and appliances in your home, following safety guidelines can protect your family and your belongings.
Electrical Inspections
An electrical home inspection is a thorough examination of your home’s electrical system. This is helpful in diagnosing problems and ensuring all wires, systems, appliances, and other components are properly set up, grounded, and meeting all legal safety standards. The inspection can determine if there are any issues that need immediate attention, where there is room for improvement on the safety of your home, and what upgrades are available for better efficiency and safety.
Inspections are generally needed upon the purchase of a new home, once the home is 40 years (or older), when adding a new appliance, or whenever you put your home through a major renovation. These inspections provide many benefits, first and foremost of course being: safety.
Inspections will ensure that your electrical components are running safely, identify common electrical mistakes done by contractors or homeowners, recognize outdated or improperly used materials, and more. This is a major step you can take in ensuring your home is safe, if you haven’t had an inspection done before – it might not be a bad idea to schedule one. Give us a call and we will help you out.
Surge Protectors
Surge protectors are a great component for protecting your home from sudden power surges. Power surges are when there is a sudden increase in voltage that is above the typical 120 volts. When this happens, the wiring can overheat and begin burning. With homes full of technology and expensive electronics, whole house surge protectors can be beneficial.
The most common cause for the need of a surge protector is the operation of heavy-duty appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, washers and dryers, etc. These larger scale electronics require quite a bit of electricity to operate which can create heavy demands and cause disruptions to the voltage flows. Along with these appliances causing issues, faulty electrical wiring, downed power lines, as well as issues with transformers and other components can also cause power surges.
When you think of a surge protector you probably picture your standard power strip allowing the use of several outlets with surge protection built in. While these are an effective protection method, they provide limited protection from power surges and usually require replacement after a surge.
A whole house surge protector is an excellent option for protection while allowing you to enjoy all of your many electrically run devices in your home. These are built in and are designed to handle many power surges over the course of several years. This is a smart way to avoid damage and fire hazards when outfitting your home with safety precautions.
GFCI Outlets
GFCI outlets (also known as ground fault circuit interrupters) are designed to protect you from electrical shock. These are an inexpensive option to add safety to your home and brings your home to building code standards. Nipper is happy to help install and replace GFCIs where needed.
Many times GFCIs are required in bathrooms, garages, and kitchens where there is often water and greater risk of electrical shock. It’s easy to spot a GFCI outlet because they are equipped with “test” and “reset” buttons on the receptacles. When a GFCI outlet detects an imbalance in electrical flow, they will automatically cut the source of power to the outlet. These are a very useful and inexpensive safety option to add to your home.
Child-Proof Outlets
Another way to ensure safety in your home, is to be sure that young children cannot stick things into the outlets causing risk of injury and electrical shock. A good way to prevent these concerns is by installing child-proof outlets.
Child-proof outlets look like your standard outlet, but have spring-loaded receptacle covers to prevent electrical contacts from being touches, while also preventing the insertion of objects when uneven pressure is applied.
These types of outlets are simple for an adult to use. All an adult needs to do, is to apply even pressure when inserting a plug and the cover will open allowing you to safely use your outlet. Nipper is happy to help install these excellent safety devices.
Safety is a top concern of ours, if you have any questions or concerns about the safety of your electrical components in your home, don’t hesitate to call Nipper today.
