Is Your Home Safe: 10 Electrical Safety Tips Everyone Should Know
What’s the difference between a god and an electrician?
A god doesn’t think he’s an electrician.
While you don’t need to be a direct descendant of Zeus to ensure your home is electrically safe, there are many important lessons that can be learnt from these self-proclaimed tradie messiahs.
To help us mere-mortals ensure our house is electrically safe, we have compiled a list of ten top safety tips that everyone should know to prevent you from shouting the lord’s name in vain.
- Routinely check your electrical appliances for any damage to their cords. Any abrasions, exposed wires or loose connections could cause a severe electrical fault. As such, it is best to replace any appliance that has incurred any cord damage immediately. Appliances should also be replaced if they exhibit any other issues such as overheating, shorting out, sparking or smoking.
- Something that everyone has been guilty off before, but is also incredibly dangerous, is overloading your sockets. While it can be difficult at times, with the massive array of appliances that all need to be charged or plugged in at once, overloading your electrical outlets could cause a fuse in your home to blow which could lead to far more serious consequences.
- Make sure every member of your household knows how to manually turn off the electricity to your house, in case of an emergency.
- Never hide cords or leads underneath carpets or rugs. Beyond being an obvious tripping hazard, the cords condition is difficult to check and maintain, which could lead to issues going unknown until it is too late.
- Be extremely careful when beginning any project on your house. This could be anything from hanging a poster on your wall by inserting a nail, to knocking down or replacing an interior wall. Because you have no idea what is behind your point of entry, there is a significant risk to your safety.
- Make sure your hands are dry when touching electrical appliances and switches, and be careful of any extension cords or portable appliances near any source of water, especially pools, baths and spas.
- Stressing the case for not mixing any liquids with electricity, do not use your microwave, t.v or any other appliance as a benchtop. If any liquid gets inside the small openings and holes in your appliance then they will short circuit and could do damage to your house or yourself.
- Be wary of electrical fires, and never attempt to put them out with water. As an electrical fire comes into contact with water, it immediately acts as a conductor of electricity and becomes extremely volatile and dangerous.
- Be aware of the wattage requirements of lamps and lights in your house, and supply the bulbs accordingly. As lamps operate at high temperatures, especially halogen bulbs, you should make sure that they are kept away from rugs and curtains due to their increased flammability.
- Don’t risk your safety and that of your families by waiting for something to go wrong. If anything electrical appears to be faulty in your household, immediately speak with a licenced electrician. While trite, at the end of the day it is better to be safe than sorry, and with all matters electrical this line can be crossed at the flick of a switch.
