At Pezz Electrical Services LLC, safety is our number one priority. Our services include safety inspections for heating and electrical equipment alike, which becomes more and more important as winter approaches. Follow these steps to keep your home safe for the winter, and call our friendly team to learn more.

Winterize your home to prevent chilly temperatures and burst pipes. Keep heat from moving out of the home by sealing air leaks, applying weather stripping or caulking to areas around doors and windows.

Make sure heat can reach all of the pipes in your home. Keep doors open throughout the house, along with cupboards where exposed piping may be. Do not block off vents, and insulate all exposed pipes in and out of the home. Clean out roof gutters and repair any leaks in the roof long before winter picks up.

Your gas heater should vent any combustion byproducts—like carbon monoxide (CO)—safely to the outdoors. While today’s heaters have safety switches to shut down the heater in case this doesn’t happen, a safety switch could fail.

Be sure you schedule an appointment with a heating maintenance technician every year, as early in the winter or fall as possible. Keep the air filter clean and replace it monthly.

Test carbon monoxide detectors and smoke detectors monthly as well. If you do not have these devices throughout the home, now is the time to take this step to enhance safety and give you peace of mind. Replace CO detectors every 5-7 years and smoke detectors every 10 years. Change the batteries every 6 months.

If your power went out in the middle of a cold winter day or night, would you have a backup plan? Elderly family members and children often cannot get by without heat, and it could be dangerous. We recommend a whole-house generator, or a portable model at the very least, or that you have a backup plan and a place to stay, just in case.

Many older homes have old wiring systems and obsolete switchboards and fuse boxes. These have very poor functioning and are unable to provide proper supply to the type of devices that are used in the home today. Over the last few decades there has been significant advancement in circuit breaker technology and many people are now proactively getting these old ceramic fuse boxes replaced with current-day circuit breakers.

However, as mentioned earlier, there are some older homes that still have these re-wireable fuses. This is largely because people aren’t aware of the dangers these fuse installations pose. Those who have heard it’s important to upgrade to circuit breakers feel that it’s just something people do because their electrical contractors tell them they should.

The rationalisation they have for it is that when they haven’t faced any issues with it for so many decades, there must be nothing wrong with it. They feel it’s just a way in which electrical companies make some money by telling their clients this and getting them to upgrade to newer systems. They couldn’t be further from the truth. Here is a list of all the dangers associated with re-wireable fuses:

Most people, electricians or otherwise, tend to use regular copper wires to replace the melted fuse wire. They aren’t really aware that a fuse wire is different from a common copper wire and that the latter isn’t designed to take the load of the circuit. In many ways, this inappropriate replacement in itself is a problem. And when the fuse blows again, they simply take another wire and replace the older one.

What they fail to realise is that fuse wires generally have very low melting points. Contrastingly, normal copper wires have a very high melting point. In addition, it’s not possible to standardise the current carrying capacity of these wires as that depends on how they have been positioned inside the base and the fuse carrier.

As you can see, re-wireable fuses are a distinct danger and this is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s best not to wait till a catastrophe occurs. Simply call Allround Electrical for an evaluation of the electrical installations and the old fuse box in your home. We will provide objective advice and a reasonable quote for replacing the re-wireable fuses in your home. The number to call is 1300 169 263. You can also drop us a line via email or use this online contact form.

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