Electrical Safety Tips to Make your Home Winter Ready

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We know how cold winter can be. The season that sent everybody indoors and culled in their blankets while wearing heavy jackets. It is the time when homeowners spend a lot of money on electricity, trying to warm their homes and everything around.

While you want to stay warm and safe in your house in the cold season, it is ideal to be wary about how you handle your electric appliances and equipment. Without proper care, you may cause harm to yourself or your property.

These safety tips should help you achieve your goals while staying safe during Winter.

1. Be careful with Space Heaters

Keeping your room warm comes with a strict precaution. Using space heaters requires maximum attention, and you should always stay alert whenever you turn it on. Leaving the room might be hazardous, and, as such, you should not turn on the space heater and leave for work.

Due to the amount of power your space heater uses, you need to plug it into your wall socket. Avoid using extension cords for plugging space heaters. If the wall socket is far or hidden in a corner and the heater’s cord is short, do no0t use it in that room. Ensure wherever you set it up, the heater is more than four feet from any walls or items in the rooms.

 

2. Label All Your Home Circuits

When using too much electricity, it is easier for something to go wrong, like overheating of cables or appliances. You may experience such scenarios in Winter when you have to use the power to heat your home. That is why we have circuit switches in various places on our premises.

To ensure that you stay completely safe in Winter, you need to label all your circuits. With labeled circuits, you will quickly tell which switch or fuse cutout manages what appliance or line in your house. In case anything goes wrong, you can easily disconnect the power supply to the path that has trouble to stop any further damage in your home.

 

3. Monitor and Fix all Your Wiring Systems

The home wiring systems can get faulty over time. As you use more power, the cables connecting your home equipment to the main power supply undergo aging. Other conditional and mechanical causes can make your wires faulty.

When winter strikes, you want to ensure that you are ready for the power consumption surges. You need to contact your electricity technician and ask them to inspect all the wiring and fix any faulty systems. A quality 10/3 wire might be necessary for fixing your appliances as Winter sets in.

 

4. Remember to Install a Surge Suppressor

As you are going to use most of the appliances for long periods, you want to ensure that you protect all the systems. Power surges can sometimes happen, and they damage home appliances when you are turning on or off heavy power machines. Power surges can also be external, and you need to protect your home from the same.

With a surge suppressor, you can protect your home from the damages that occur when such surges happen. You will want to find a certified surge suppressor from your certified distributor and install it on your main panel. You can as well ask your technician to recommend or get you a high-quality surge suppressor for your home.

 

5. Prepare Your Home Generator

Winter storms come with negative effects. They can damage the main power supply lines in your estate without notice. And you do not want to remain in the dark and cold during those moments. Since you have nop idea when things will get better, you need a backup plan for your home.

With a portable home power generator, you can keep your house heated and lighted whenever something happens to the mains power supply. It is ideal to test your generator as soon as now.

Ensure it works perfectly and install it in a safe place, several meters away from your main house to avoid the danger of carbon monoxide that generators emit. You also need a dedicated cable for and socket so that you can only connect appliances it can withstand.

 

6. Unplug Essential Appliances When Not in Use

Are you planning to travel to South this Winter season? Make sure that you leave your home safe. Before leaving, you need to unplug all the appliances that are not in use. This helps to keep your home safe from electrical surge damage.

Some of the items you may need to leave on include your security lighting, CCTV cameras, HVAC, and the water heater. Why? Because you want to come home and find your house in perfect condition after the vacation.

Leaving the HVAC and water heater off will cause frosting and damage to your appliances at home. The least you can do is reduce the operational temperatures.

 

7. Install a Carbon Monoxide Detector

Are you going to use natural fuel sources like coal and wood to warm your home during winter? Then you better have a working Carbon Monoxide alarm to detect whenever they emit the deadly gas to avoid causing deaths in your home.

When you are going to bed, keep all the fires off or find a way to allow enough air to burn the fuel completely to avoid the cases of Carbon Monoxide accumulating your house. But since ventilation is managed by the HVAC, you will less likely have enough air inlets. You, therefore, want to put out the fire to avoid gas poisoning while asleep.

 

Summing Up

Winter is a cold season, and as it sets in, you are going to use lots of power. Ensure that you keep your appliances and home safe by repairing any damaged wiring systems and equipment. You also need a backup plan in case anything goes wrong with the main power systems.