Whose Electrical Services Expertise Is Reflected In Your Home’s Wiring And Fixtures? | Wilmington, NC
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Do you know the capacity of your home’s electrical system, the number of circuits, and the year they were installed? Is your wiring up to date, and who has performed electrical services on your home’s electrical system over the years? Were they reputable electrical services, licensed, and up-to-date on the latest electrical code? The homeowners themselves? In other words, in whose hands are you trusting your family’s safety and your home’s reliable electrical features? There’s a simple way to come up with a solid answer, even if you have an older home that has probably had many people work on it over the years, long before today’s advanced safety standards were in place. Have Mister Sparky of Wilmington, NC, be your trusted electrician, inspecting your home’s wiring and fixtures, noting any improvements or safety features you need, and giving you a sense of peace that you know how your home’s power is doing. Even when we’re just replacing an outlet, our experienced electricians are making note of any concerns they have along the way.
Accountability and Electricity Go Together
For big jobs there are permits and inspections, and licensing ensures a level of experience and competence, but when you’re thinking about the electrical services provider you trust now, what do you know about the ones who have worked on your home before you owned it? They may have done amazing work for the time, but it’s important to know what shape your home’s wiring is in now. Do you have the right gauge of wire for each circuit, and properly working circuit breakers or fuses? Are your grounded outlets properly grounded? There have been compromises in use in the past that may or may not be the right way to go today. What if your wiring is seriously old, with cloth covering or old “knob and tube” museum-quality work? It looks cool but needs replacement. Aluminum wire, a construction fallback during 1965-1972, should also receive special attention during repairs and replacement when you can. Our electrical services team wants to help you avoid the risk of electric shock in your home, especially with power around water, and the risk of sparks or wires heating up that can start a disastrous fire. It’s also important to make sure you have the best protection against power problems that can damage important equipment, especially electronics. In addition, of course, we want your power to be reliable and easy to use, so you and your family can enjoy life at home.
Thinking About Fire and Shock Hazards
How do you wrap wires around screw terminals when you install an electrical outlet? Can you use the push-in connections available on some for any kind of wire? These simple bits of knowledge, part of a large toolkit our electrical services team carry around in their heads, have an important role: when you’re consistent and professional, you can count on your work. When wires get loose or, sometimes worse, make poor connections, there’s an unknown that could result in stray power where you don’t expect it, and potential shock hazards, or sparks, shorts, and heating up from poor contact that can lead to hidden fires that develop and spread before you see them. Fortunately, these problems now have another form of prevention, in addition to correcting the wiring so they don’t exist in the first place. AFCI features on circuit breakers help shut down a circuit when signs of arcing and other wiring issues are detected. GFCI features on a circuit breaker or in your bathroom and kitchen outlets help identify the risk of electric shock near water, and when a “ground fault” is detected, they cut off the power before trouble happens. Older homes may have neither of these features, but our electrical services team can provide them for your home, in addition to checking your wiring for problems.
What About Your Home’s Power Capacity?
The person who decided how much power your home needs may have done it when all your needed to power were a few light bulbs, maybe a kitchen stove if you don’t have gas. You might only have a couple of circuits supplying your rooms, plus kitchens and bathrooms, which could account for so many fuses blown or breakers tripped over time. If that’s happening to you, it’s time to call our electrical services team to check out your electrical panel or fuse box and talk about an upgrade. There’s just too much going on these days that uses electricity, and as items like electric cars and tankless water heaters become popular and draw significant amounts of power by themselves, at some point you’re going to want to be the one who specifies what kind of electrical services you have. You might be making a jump from 60 amps to 200, but there are good reasons and many benefits. As a whole project, you can upgrade everything and run new circuits for carefully grounded, room-by-room service so your kids can use hairdryers at the same time in different rooms, or you can start with more capacity and plan more changes over time. In any case, the more modern your home’s electrical services, the better if it comes time to sell because buyers like the convenience of modern power and even more so, they want the safety it brings. Insurance companies too!
Electrical Care in Wilmington, NC So You Know Your Home’s Power Better
At Mister Sparky of Wilmington, our team knows that homeowners have a lot to think about, and often call when things don’t work. Let us encourage you to call for your safety, peace of mind, and convenience as well. Our team can inspect and correct your wiring, upgrade your electrical service and replace the circuit breaker panel, install AFCI and GFCI devices, even add whole house surge protection and lightning arrestors. It’s good to have someone you know taking care of your home, so call us!