Bill Lutz, an electrician with Generation 3 Electric in Philadelphia, lets us in on some safety tips you can do yourself without having to call in an expert.
Test your breaker: Everyone should once a year (normally during daylight savings time when all your clocks have to be changed anyway) go to their breaker panel and simply turn on and then off each one of the breaker switches. Breaker switches are mechanical devices and, like any other mechanical device, they can wear out and break for millions of reasons. You will never know if your breaker is broken if you never touch it. So simply throwing that switch on and off is a simple test that will assure your switches are is still working and will function in the case of an emergency.
Always use surge protectors: Surge protectors have many more uses besides protecting your computer’s hard drive from a sudden lightning storm. Many other appliances can benefit from surge protection as well, such as phones and televisions. Even when there is no direct noticeable power surge, tiny surges, such as those often caused by vacuum cleaners powering up, can do small amounts of damages that over time will wear out your electronics. You won’t even know that this damage has been happening until it is too late. Suddenly, you have a corrupted hard drive or your digital phone is broken and you have no idea why. So be sure to invest in a quality surge strip for real protection. Check Sycomsurge.com for electrician-sold devices rather than the cheaper retail products which may not offer complete protection against surges.
Don’t Overload: Most houses have certain circuits for each room or section of the house. These circuits are made to handle a certain maximum amount of energy use, before they are overloaded and cause a surge and trip your breaker or cause an electrical fire. Do not use multiple splitters to connect a whole bunch of electrical appliances to one outlet or even one room. Overloading your circuits is a certain recipe for disaster that can be easily avoided.
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