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The job of an electrician is more than helping keep lights on in homes and the TV running. It’s more than putting in new light fixtures and setting up smart home systems. One of the critical jobs of the electrician is safety. Many of the electrical repairs in Montclair, NJ that our licensed team handles help to prevent electrical fires, high voltage shocks, and other dangers.
Below is a list of common electrical hazards in your house and how you can avoid them:
The leading cause of electrical fires in homes is from the insulation around electrical wires—particularly older wiring. Because of the increased demand placed on wires in due to the larger electrical load of newer appliances, older wires can become too hot and cause the insulation to catch fire. These fires can quickly spread to building materials.
You may need to call an electrician in Nutley, NJ to extensively rewire your house to improve its safety. Below we’ve listed some of the ways to tell that you may need rewiring. Pay close attention, since a proper rewiring reduces significantly the chance of a house fire.
The answer to the above question is: “Sometimes no and sometimes yes.” Lights in your house that start to flicker can indicate minor issues you can correct yourself or which an electrician can fix, but aren’t a source of major worry—except for losing light in a few bulbs.
On the other hand, flickering lights can warn that there are bigger electrical faults in the house, some potentially dangerous. These problems absolutely require a professional electrician to repair. Never attempt to do any wiring or panel repair on your own, since it can create larger fire hazards and a high danger of electrical shocks.
There are homes of many different ages in Northern New Jersey, ranging from the newest in residential construction to vintage homes more than a hundred years old. This means there’s also a range of residential electrical systems. One of the major jobs we handle as electricians in Nutley, NJ is helping to upgrade antiquated electrical systems like knob-and-tube wiring to modern standards, as well as putting in the newest in safe outlets (GFCI and AFCI).
This brings us to the central hub of a home’s electrical system. The fuse box. Or the breaker panel. We see both in homes and we want to go into more detail about the differences—and why we recommend upgrading to a breaker panel if you have a fuse box.
You can expect to change the standard incandescent light bulbs in your house every 2–3 years depending on how often they’re used. Most of these bulbs can burn for around 900 hours. LED light bulbs can last for much longer, sometimes only needing to be changed every 8–11 years. But no light bulb will last forever.
But what if the light bulbs in your house are burning out far sooner than they should? Such as maybe less than a year, or lasting only a few months. You might have problems with the bulbs, the fixtures, or even your home’s electrical system. We’ll go over some of the reasons for short-living light bulbs below and what you can do about them.
We urge all our customers to investigate ways to update their household electrical systems. This isn’t only about making sure you’ve got enough power for all your new appliances and the increasing number of charging stations. It’s also about safety. We specialize in updating old homes with modern wiring, electrical panels, and outlets.
One of the upgrades we recommend is replacing standard three-prong outlets with GFCI and AFCI outlets, which improve safety. But let’s go one step lower and take a look at two-prong outlets, which many homes in the area still have. (Two-prong is standard for homes built before 1960.) You can stick adaptors onto them so they work for three-prong plugs, but we don’t recommend this. We’ll explain why it’s best to change out those old two-prongers.
There are many old homes in New Jersey, some built in the nineteenth century. A vintage home can still be a wonderful place to live if it’s had upgrades and repairs. But if you live in a home built before the 1940s, you may have a type of wiring in the walls and attics called knob-and-tube wiring. This is an extremely out-of-date wiring set-up, and we strongly recommend you call us to eliminate it and replace it. This is one of our specialties as local electricians, and we’ve helped many homes make the change to modern, safer wiring that is up to code.
There are a lot of different parts of your home that, if they ceased to work for a second, would cause major disruption to your daily life. One of those is your electrical system. The wires that run throughout your home provide needed power to practically every appliance you use. Without them, things would be quite a bit harder for you overall. While electrical wiring can last quite a while, though, it won’t last forever. There are times when it is necessary to rewire part or all of a home’s electrical system. Read on to find out when that is necessary, and what can be done about it.
