How to Keep Your Home Electrically Safe

To keep your home safe, electricity and gas are the two areas that you should not ignore. This article will focus on electricity and what you can do to keep your home safe concerning it. The two potential risks are, of course, electrocution and potential house fires. We shall look at how these can be prevented, and how peace of mind can be obtained when it comes to the electricity that powers our homes. One way is, of course, to hire a qualified electrician, such as a St Paul Electrician, to put our mind at rest that electrical work has been carried out to a high standard.

Qualified Electrician

The best way to keep your home safe is to have your wiring regularly inspected by a professional electrician. This includes periodically having your home rewired. The thinking on how often a home needs rewiring varies quite considerably. It cannot be recommended highly enough that you should have your home wiring checked. This is particularly important if you own an old house that has not had its wiring looked at for some years. You may have been getting away with it so far, but you need to know that it is safe. 

Certain animals can take a fancy to electrical cables. The teeth of mice, rats, and other rodents, have been known to be found on them. Okay, the electrician cannot tell which one of those rodents it was, but they certainly know the damage it causes. The problem is that the teeth of rodents will not stop growing, so they have to chew on something to keep their length of them down. Unfortunately, it could be the cables they chew on. Then, wires without their protective insulation can prove dangerous in that they can easily spark and cause a house fire. So, have your wiring checked regularly. Consider, too, ultrasonic devices that deter rodents from your attic space, by humanly giving out a signal that is silent to our ears but unpleasant to theirs.

What to Look Out For

Some early warning signs that wiring is dangerous or out of date can be if the wires look frayed, sockets have scorch marks, the lights are flickering, or a crackling or buzzing sound is heard. Also, a tip you might not know is that if there is an unidentified fishy smell that has been bugging you, it could be coming from a damaged or faulty light fitting or socket. This should be attended to promptly by a qualified local electrician in Naples, FL, or wherever it is you are based.

Circuit breakers are a good safety feature in the home. The clue to a problem will be if they keep tripping with annoying regularity.

Tips for Wiring a Plug 

One of the electrical jobs that you should be able to tackle yourself is wiring a plug. How to go about it will depend on which part of the world you are in, as there are two and three-pin plugs that are used.

The difference between American and European appliances is that American appliances will run on 110 volts, whereas European run on 220 volts. Should you see “110-220” on the appliance you know that it is compatible with America and Europe.

Here is a useful guide

American/Canadian Plugs (looking directly at socket) – Ground socket at the bottom, live slot on the right, neutral slot on the left. If polarized, the widest slot will be the neutral connector. The hot or live wire is black or red and the neutral is white or gray. There is a handy guide available online for North America in terms of wiring. 

European Plugs – 2-pin, no earth, just live and neutral. The live wire is brown. These plugs will fit into an earthed socket. A 2-pin European plug can be put into a 13-amp UK socket without the need for an adapter.

UK Plugs – 3-pin (with modern plugs and when looking directly at front of the plug) – Neutral (blue) wire to the bottom left, live (brown) wire to the bottom right, and the earth (green and yellow) wire to the top connector. The UK is the only country worldwide that uses fused main connectors. Others rely on fuse boxes, also known as “consumer units” which you can get from Sparks Direct, to protect equipment users. As a general guide on fuses, plugs commonly have either a 3-amp or 13-amp fuse inside. Appliances that are rated up to 700 watts will generally have a red 3-amp fuse fitted.

So, this gives you an idea of how to stay safe in different countries and continents, if you move around because of your work situation. If you are not sure, the internet is a place you can look to for advice. Always compare two sources to check the accuracy of the information.

In conclusion, we can keep our home electrically safe by calling a qualified electrician when electrical work needs to be done, regularly having our wiring inspected by them, knowing the warning signs that something is wrong with our electrics, and knowing how to carry out simple electrical tasks such as wiring a plug. Thankfully, though, appliances sold from new will already have a plug fitted. Older items ought to be tested by a fully qualified electrician.