Home renovation expert David Carter has taken on all types of projects during his 50 years of construction experience. As CEO of Handy Man Repairs, Inc., in Philadelphia, Mississippi, he helps homeowners fix their carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and mechanical problems. In this article, he explains when a homeowner should take on an electrical project himself.
Whether or not a homeowner is going to be able to do his own electrical work really depends on the person’s experience. However, what I usually recommend is that those without extensive experience handling electrical equipment stay away from anything beyond replacing an outlet or a switch.
Fixing a little outlet in a wall is usually a simple job, but if you mess it up and forget a step there is a real possibility that you could get shocked. So that is a safety issue more than anything else.
Another problem with electrical projects is that you often don’t know who worked on the wiring system in a home before you bought it, and whether that person was qualified or not. If the person who did electrical projects in your home previously did not work in a way that was up to code, then you could be setting yourself up for a massive surprise if you try to tackle a electrical project on your own.
I actually had a project last month at a client’s home where a problem like that came up. I had turned off the electricity and went to work on the wiring, but I noticed that the wires were still hot. When I traced the problem back, I realized that the tenant in the building—and I had been hired by the landlord—had hot wired the system to bypass the meter on the circuit. So in that case, I notified the owner and had to call the electric company to pull the meter all the way in and redo everything just to get to a point where it was safe to proceed. You just never know what you are going to find when you get started on a project.
Those are the reasons why I always recommend calling a professional for electrical projects. Anything that goes beyond just a routine fix, like replacing a light or hanging a fixture, is something that a professional should handle if you are not sure how.
When it comes to the wiring inside your home, it is just too easy to mistakenly overload a circuit and cause a massive problem. I recently had a client who did just that when she tried to put a welding machine in her barn on a system that was only meant for 15 amps. I ended up having to run a new wire and install a new circuit breaker to the barn.
The most common electrical issues I am called in to a client’s home to fix are outlets, switches that have gone defective, lights, and ceiling fan installations. Wires can come loose up underneath the ceiling fans, and a lot of clients just are not confident enough to fix that problem on their own. They are doing the right thing by calling a professional though, because when you are dealing with electricity it is better to be safe than sorry.
