Prevent Electrical Emergencies in Your Home with These Electrical Safety Measures

Using electricity safely is vitally important. Many people are electrocuted or critically injured because of electrical accidents or fires in their own homes every year. Many of these electrical emergencies, including home fires and electrocutions can be prevented by understanding the basic electrical safety measures or principles and adhering to various safe practices. To help you, here are electrical safety measures that you may want to implement in your home.

Condition of the Flexible Cables, Plugs, and Sockets

When did you last check these? Having damaged sockets, flexible cables, and plugs will lead to fires and electrical shocks. Therefore, for you and your family's safety, you need to check your sockets and plugs for buzzing/cracking sounds and burn marks. You also need to check for tripping circuit breakers and blowing fuses. Any damaged plugs, sockets, or cables should be replaced immediately to prevent issues of live wires being exposed and causing electric shocks. In addition, when replacing these plugs and sockets make sure you always go for those with the standard safety marks. Such plugs come with neutral and live pins that have insulating sleeves, which allow you to safely put them in or pull them out of the sockets.

Adaptors and Extensions

Your house may be having around four or so sockets in an average room. Although this will be enough for most purposes in your house, an increase in appliances such as games consoles and computers may require more sockets to be installed. Adaptors and extension leads may do the trick but misuse of these adaptors and leads can result in real danger. For instance, they can overheat and result in electrical fires. Therefore, make sure that you don't plug adaptors into other adaptors. In addition, don't overload the adaptors, especially with the high-current appliances like heaters, kettles, and irons. Low-current appliances include computers, televisions, hi-fi equipment, and radios. Installing extra sockets would also be a valuable action. When doing this, ask your electrician to install twin sockets instead of the single ones.

Kitchen Safety

Most house fires start from the kitchens. Most of these fires are caused by misuse of the electrical cooking appliances, including the microwaves. Therefore, for kitchen safety, don't leave electrical appliances such as the dishwashers running unattended. Avoid wrapping flexible cables around any appliances when they're still hot. In addition, avoid keeping objects on top of appliances such as the microwave that can block ventilation. For more information, talk to a professional electrical worker in Canberra.