Concerned about electrical safety in your home?
by Admin
Posted on 20-08-2022 09:42 AM
All service panels are equipped with fuses or circuit breakers that protect the wires in each circuit from overheating and causing a fire. In general, older service panels use fuses, while more modern systems rely on circuit breakers.
Your responsibilities we do not have a responsibility to maintain or carry out safety checks to electrical appliances which are owned by our customers. If you are planning to carry out any electrical improvement work to your home, then ensure this work is carried out by a qualified electrician. Our customers have a responsibility to report any electrical faults and allow access for electrical repairs or electrical safety checks to be completed in your home.
Nfpa actively supports national electrical safety month, an annual campaign in may sponsored by the electrical safety foundation international (esfi), which works to raise awareness of potential home electrical hazards, the importance of electrical fire safety, and the safety of electrical workers. To help reduce your risk, nfpa and esfi recommend that you have all electrical work done by a qualified electrician, including electrical inspections, when buying or remodeling a home. In the video below, brett brenner, president of esfi, offers tips residents can follow to help keep homes safer from electrical fires, in this age of smart home technology.
After the home electrical systems distribute power through the circuit breakers, they run through bundles of wires in the walls, floors, and ceilings in each room and through to hard-wired appliances. Each bundle contains at least three wires two with plastic insulation and one which is bare. Black and red insulated wires are “hot” wires, which come directly from the circuit breaker. The white wire is the “neutral” which brings the current back to the electrical source in the panel. The bare wire is a copper ground wire, the safety part of the circuit. The ground wire is a direct path to the ground, acting with the circuit breaker if there should be a short circuit.
How to electrical wires
Black wires or “hot wires” carry live electrical loads from the electrical service panel to an outlet, light or other destination. Red wires are also hot wires used to interconnect smoke detectors, so that if one alarm goes off, all the others do as well.
White and gray wires are neutral wires that connect to the neutral bus bar, which attracts current and carries it throughout the house. Don’t let the “neutral” part fool you because they can still carry a charge—especially if the current load is not balanced. White wires wrapped in black or red electrical tape are also hot wires.
If you've had any alterations or additions made to the electrics in your property since 2005, they must meet the requirements of 'part p of the building regulations', whether the work was completed professionally or by yourself. Partial or full rewires and any additions to the electrical installations must be compliant. The legislation applies to new homes, extensions and any alterations. Your local authority has the power to force you to alter or undo the work if it does not meet building regulations standards.