Yes, you must have professional electricians for these jobs. Home electrical work is not something you can do on your own, since it risks creating worse safety issues. Professionals are trained to keep homes up to the local electrical code and ensure that any work is done to the highest safety standards.

Below are some of the electrical jobs you can have a professional electrician do to make your house a safer one:

If you have standard three-pronged outlets in your home (or even two-pronged outlets!), we strongly recommend you have some of them upgraded to GFCI and AFCI outlets, which are now the standard for new home construction. You can recognize these outlets by the two buttons between the sockets, marked TEST and RESET. These outlets are designed to protect from electrical shocks. They detect when there is an imbalance between the “hot” and “neutral” slots of the socket. If there is an imbalance, it means electricity is flowing to the ground, possibly through a person, and the outlet immediately trips a breaker and shuts off the flow of electricity. GFCI and AFCI outlets should be in the kitchen, bathrooms, and any room where people sleep.

The electrical panel is where electricity into the house divides into different circuits. Circuit breakers on the panel will trip to protect the electrical system in case of a power overload. If you have a panel more than ten years old—or it uses fuses rather than breakers—we strongly urge you to have a new panel put in. An upgraded panel will help deal with the larger amount of electricity homes use today and help prevent electrical fires. (And we can’t stress this enough: old fuse boxes can be dangerous!)

If you have a home with small children, it’s important to take safety precautions with the outlets to prevent a child from jamming small objects into them. Plastic outlet covers are a common solution, but a much better option—safer and more convenient—is to have tamper-resistant outlets installed. These outlets have shutters on them that close when not in use. If you’re going to upgrade to GFCI/AFCI outlets anyway, ask to have them made tamper-resistant as well.

We have the electricians in Nutley, NJ to help you with electrical upgrades. We have more than 25 years of experience, and our staff of licensed and trained electricians are expert troubleshooters. They can handle small safety upgrades, and they can also do major rewiring work for older homes, such as knob and tube remediation—something few electricians in the area can handle.