Don’t Wait For Smoke, Call Our Emergency Electrician When Something Doesn’t Seem Right | Wilmington, NC
Photo By SuperBankTH at Shutterstock
In these days of sensory overload, you might mistake a buzzing switch that’s defective for a game show buzzer, or an acrid electrical smell for a lingering campfire aroma from your camping coat. It’s easy to discount your concerns and relax, but at Mister Sparky of Wilmington, NC, we know that quick, simple actions can save houses from burning down. You don’t have to gather in the front yard every time the lights flicker, but of all the things in your life that are vying for your attention, your home’s utilities are among the top concerns. In fact, if you have water leaks that could affect your electricity as they drip in your walls, that’s a good time to call our emergency electrician as well as the plumber. Electricians spend a lot of time learning about the principles behind electricity, the ways it travels in wires, through water, and in other ways, and what happens when it encounters resistance. In some cases, that generates heat, and you definitely don’t want that. So, even if you’re a physicist and well versed in the theory of electricity, let our emergency electrician sort out the complexities of real-life electrical risks. Here are some other ways our emergency electrician can help you out.
Finding Alternatives to Risky Wiring
Our emergency electrician can check out your concern about smoke rising from an outlet or sparks when you disconnect your extension cord from the wall, and then sit down with you and talk. You can get ideas about better ways to connect all of your devices, how to divide the load between circuits, and what kinds of electrical services you can order to add features to your home to support your needs. Our years of experience make us experts at finding hidden risks in your home’s electrical wiring and fixtures, and we can also use our talents to create new ideas to implement that you might not have realized were possible.
We might also suggest protective features such as GFCIs and AFCIs that are now available to cover entire circuits, protecting against electric shock and the risk of fire in important ways. Like circuit breakers, these devices aren’t designed to make up for bad wiring and risky habits, they’re there to make sure when things go wrong by accident, technology gives you a better chance of not suffering because of it. By the way, there are also protective devices for lightning strikes nearby and power surges on your wiring from inside or outside your home, both of which can keep your valuable electronics, HVAC, and other devices from being “fried” due to unexpected risks.
Doing the Math for You to Improve Your Home’s Circuit Design
Did you know that in many commercial buildings, the power outlets and even the light switches are labeled so you can tell which circuit, and which circuit breaker, they’re connected to? Most homeowners don’t go to that length to organize their homes, but it’s not a bad idea. It helps people know how to quickly shut down the power to a specific outlet in case of emergency or when it needs to be worked on, although in the latter case emergency electricians test it after shutoff just to be sure. It also helps people install equipment, which in the home is more like microwaves, space heaters, and hairdryers, that draw enough power to not want to share a circuit together. Many times, a whole room of outlets actually share a single circuit, so doing the math means adding up the power use of everything plugged in throughout the room, or even multiple rooms in older homes, and making sure it doesn’t go over the magic number, which is the circuit rating, the power use that causes the circuit breaker to say “enough” and shut things off. Our emergency electrician can check out problems that arise in overload situations like that, and also recommend some changes to your wiring to adapt your outlet connections to support your modern uses, rather than just telling you “don’t do that” without any solution.
A Side Note On Labeling, Computers, and Home Theater Equipment
While it’s not strictly an emergency electrician situation, the labeling that’s done in commercial wiring has a few good places in your home even if you don’t want to label every outlet. You can have us label your circuit breakers so it’s still clear where your circuits run, such as “kitchen east,” “kitchen west,” “master bedroom,” “upstairs bathrooms,” and so on. You can also have us label any other wiring that we perform, including alarm wires, network cabling, phone lines, and audiovisual cabling. That way, you can disconnect devices and later come back and know what kind of devices belong on that connection, such as your home computer or your smart home devices, which often have separate networks these days. This can also make your home theater system wiring much more accessible, for you and for any repair specialists who are working on it, trying to diagnose a problem with a 36-speaker in-wall and in-ceiling audio system, for example. And don’t forget, if your home theater system like many uses plenty of power, especially for the subwoofer, we can run several circuits to support the equipment, so when the bass starts playing during the exciting part of the movie, it doesn’t trip the breaker for the video and the lights and end your fun while you call our emergency electrician to sort it out.
Our Emergency Electricians are Here to Help in Wilmington, NC
At Mister Sparky of Wilmington, we’re ready to respond quickly when you have a problem such as hot wires, smoke from an outlet, or an unexpected loss of power. We’re also here to offer solutions to these situations if there’s a better way to wire your home that can help avoid them. Call us for electrical emergencies, and let us help with ideas.