When you decide to start renovating your older house, one of the things you are going to need to deal with is your electrical system. An outdated electrical system can cause shorts in the system or even cause electrical fires. An electrician coming in to do the electrical work on your home will mean that your electrical system is up to current code and is in as good a shape as possible.
There are several things that the electrician will want to update when they are bringing your electrical system up to code. One of those things is installing ground fault circuit interrupt outlets in your kitchen, bathroom, and anywhere else there may be water.
GFCI Outlets
Not everyone is familiar with what GFCI outlets are, even if it's likely that they've seen them before. The outlets look like normal three-prong, grounded outlets but with two buttons in between the sockets. Those buttons act the same as the circuit breaker in your house. When they sense an overload in the system, one of the buttons pops up and cuts the circuit, cutting power to the entire outlet and anything plugged into it.
Once the other button gets pushed in, the power will go back to the circuit because the circuit will be functional again. For example, if you are blow drying your hair and the hair dryer falls into a puddle of water, there is going to be an overload on the system. The GFCI outlet will automatically cut the power to the outlet and the hairdryer, making it possible for you to deal with the hairdryer without hurting yourself. What are some of the benefits of having a GFCI outlet?
Quicker Reaction Time
One benefit of using GFCI outlets is that the reaction time is going to be much quicker than if everything had to happen at the circuit breaker. It may be in fractions of a second, but even fractions of a second are very important when it comes to electricity. If you or someone else is getting hurt because of a short in the system, those fractions of a second can limit how much they get hurt.
If you are going to update your electrical system while you are renovating your house, you are going to want to hire electricians to do it. They are going to suggest that you get GFCI outlets as part of bringing it up to code.
When we purchased our first home, we realized that there was a problem with some of the electrical work. Some of the lights flickered when we turned them on, and others really seemed to have issues if they were left on long term. I thought the issues was the light bulbs themselves at first, so I replaced several of them. However, after making those changes, it seemed like things were still having trouble. I began going through and thinking carefully about how to identify and resolve the challenges, and it occurred to me that working with an electrician could be helpful. I turned to the professional for help, and it was a good thing I did. Read more about electricians on this blog.