Nowadays, most people greatly rely on electricity for its operation. A modern house without electricity cannot function properly. Unluckily, it presents possible safety threats in a house if you handle electricity in the wrong way.
Fires due to electrical hazards are extremely risky. For those who don’t know, they constitute a huge percentage of residential fires. The outcomes can be fatalities, injuries, and property damage. Luckily, you can easily avoid electrical fires if you know some of the most common electrical threats in your house.
With this knowledge, you can hire a residential and commercial electrician Atlanta to fix these hazards and prevent these issues.
Water
Electricity and water are both common in your house. In fact, they are sometimes within close proximity. However, you should know that they should not come into contact with each other. If you’ve got a part in your house where water and electricity are within close proximity, you’ve got to make sure you equip them with GFCI outlets (Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupter). These types of outlets are necessary for laundry rooms, bathrooms, and much more. They are made to shut down electricity in case of a ground fault. This is a crucial safety element. In addition to that, it is wise to keep electrical gadgets away from bathtubs, showers, sinks, and pools.
Poor or Outdated System
The faulty system is one of the main reasons for electrical fires in houses. Old or outdated wiring is often not able to withstand the electrical demands required to power modern home appliances or devices. The wiring system of your house can be dangerously outdated if it is more than 30 years old. If you replace faulty and old wiring, you can easily avoid electrical hazards. Indications of faulty wiring include tripping circuit breakers, warm outlets, dim lights, flickering lights, and much more. You can greatly lower the risk of fire if you hire a professional electrician to evaluate, fix, and replace outdated and poor wiring.
Overloaded Outlets
A lot of individuals do not realize they are making a huge mistake by plugging in a couple of gadgets or appliances to one outlet. Every electrical outlet has a maximum number of amperes it can simultaneously deal with. If you stack a couple of plugs to a similar outlet, you are increasing the possibilities of electrical fires and short circuits. You can repair this problem if you lower the number of plugs in every socket. Limit the number of power bars per outlet. Aside from that, you shouldn’t use all of them in a single room.
Don’t Pour Water in Electrical Fires
One common mistake people make is to pour water on electrical fires. You should do this if an electrical fire does happen. The reason for this is that water will further fuel the fire and can lead to electrocution. Because of this, it is ideal to have a fire extinguisher on-site if you are worried about electrical fires. In case of emergency, use this rather than water. If you don’t have a fire extinguisher, turn off the electrical power in case of an emergency.
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