Your home may not be safe for you to live in. Wiring is one of the leading causes of home fires every year and in many cases; it is completely preventable. Homes that were built before 1950 were probably built with the common electrical wiring at the time—insulated cloth wiring. Today, we know that method isn’t safe. The cloth frays and deteriorates overtime, which can leave wires bare. Bare wires that touch or touch insulation can create a small spark. A small spark is all it takes to cause major devastation. If you are not sure what kind of wiring you have, give a Glendale electrician, like those at The Electric Connection, a call today.

Just because your home was built before 1950, it does not necessarily mean it has cloth wiring. There may have been wiring upgrades done over the years. The best way to determine whether or not it is the old style wiring is by having an electrical inspection by a qualified electrician. Glendale homeowners will get the full story about the wiring hidden behind their walls. An experienced electrician will know what to look for and be able to tell you what you need to do to make your home safe.

It isn’t only an electric spark you need to be concerned with when dealing with cloth insulated wiring. There is also an increased risk of electric shock. Your appliances and gadgets are also at risk of being damaged with wiring that is not properly insulated. Many of the older, cloth insulated wiring jobs were not properly ground 60 years ago. This is another area of concern for homeowners. All of these issues and concerns will be addressed by the electrician during the inspection. The electrician will outline what needs to happen to bring your home up to today’s standards. Give The Electric Connection a call today and schedule your electric inspection.

House wiring has undergone some dramatic changes in the last hundred years. What was once a relative luxury is now accessible (and even required) in just about everyone home in the country. That isn’t to say that all wiring is created and maintained equally, nor can we confidently say that any Des Moines home is safe for your family without giving it an on-site look.

If you’ve ever done a renovation or addition to your home, you know the nightmare that city and county building codes can be. It seems like someone at the city and county clerk’s office is sitting around all day dreaming up new ways to make your progress come to a screeching halt. While your home may not have been built anywhere near today’s level of code, it still works just fine. Right? Well, while some building codes may be a tad excessive, often they use technologies that the electricians of the past would love to have had a chance to use. While it may come as an inconvenience, remind yourself that the technology available today can keep you and your family safe in a number of impressive ways. From safer walls and greatly decreased risk of house fire to GFCI outlets that will automatically detect an unsafe circuit and trip the breaker, killing the power and potentially saving a life.

Homes built after the 1940s were made with far safer wiring than any before that. Hopefully, by now, any home that predates that period would be completely re-wired with a new electrical panel for the longevity of the home, but this is wishful thinking. Today, millions of homes across the country and a good deal in Des Moines are essentially ticking time bombs, putting all of those inside at risk for electrocution or worse. While we don’t want to spread fear heedlessly, if you are considering the purchase of, or currently own, an older home, then you should get in touch with a licensed electrician to check the safety of your electrical system. Hopefully, everything will look and respond correctly, but there could easily be opportunities for improving the safety of your home.

In addition to the much older homes in the Des Moines area, newer homes are home to their own problems. If you ever notice an outlet begin to stop working unexpectedly, hear a buzzing in the wall, or even feel a current running, then you should make calling an electrician your top priority. Thousands of homes catch fire every year due to poor or faulty wiring, making this nothing to wait on, ignore, or even attempt to DIY; electricians should handle any blatant problems with your house wiring to keep your home safe. With homes popping up in and around Des Moines, our electricians have seen a surprising number of errors that could have been avoided by a more attentive installation, but that is a blog for another time.

If you suspect that your home’s wiring may be facing some issues, it really isn’t worth delaying to get in touch with the local electricians at Electrical Gurus. We have the tools and experience necessary to quickly determine what, if anything, the problem may be and then implement a fix that will keep your family safe. We understand how important it is to find affordable, trustworthy service for your household, which is why we take each call seriously and employ only the best local electricians.