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If you have lights and, or plugs nonoperational through-out a section of your house, you may just need to reset a circuit breaker. Most often caused by a temporary overload, but if the breaker will not reset you might have a short circuit, or a defective circuit breaker.
If you have plugs nonoperational in your bathroom, kitchen, or on the exterior of your house you may need to reset a GFI receptacle. A single GFI receptacle often protects several plugs fed "down stream" from it, so you may have to do some detective work to determine which GFI in the house you have to reset.
Your smoke detector is beeping, or chirping; it probably needs a new
battery. Sometimes though, it may be defective and needs to be disconnected until a new one can be installed. Please note that newer smoke detectors have an easy access battery door on the outside of the unit.
Unsafe electrical panels may reside in your older home and should be replaced.
Code required in new homes, Something to consider in an older home.
Protect your valuable electronic equipment and appliances.
Seamless control of your home's lighting, shades,
drapes and more. Easily retrofitted.
Affordable total home control: lighting, shades, heating and air conditioning, irrigation, audio and video and more.
Easily retrofitted.
Besides replacing a light bulb, with a new yet defective light bulb, these three items under self-help are the most common unnecessary electrical service calls electricians make. If you replace a light bulb in a fixture and it is still not working, try the new light bulb in a fixture you know is working before calling an electrician.
I encourage you to locate and reset that tripped circuit breaker before calling, look closely for one whose handle is out of line with the others, some breakers have a red trip indicator if you're lucky enough to have them. If the breaker will not reset - call an electrician.
I also encourage you to find that tripped GFI receptacle and reset it yourself. Sometimes it requires a little detective work, the GFI receptacle might be on the other side of the house, or on another floor.
Many houses have GFI circuit breakers, so check your electrical panels too.
Put down that broom handle, that hockey stick, that baseball bat - your smoke detector is just telling you it needs another battery, if it keeps on beeping after a new battery make sure the battery is installed correctly, or that the new battery is not defective. And while you're up there blow out the smoke detector with a canned air duster. Still beeping after all that, it should probably be replaced.
Zinsco and Federal Pacific circuit breaker panels are potentially hazardous. If you have either one of these manufacturers' panels installed in your home, at the very least you should have an electrician come out and inspect it. A qualified electrician can check for bad contacts, overheating and defective breakers.
Arc fault protection does save lives, and especially recommended when there are young children, or elderly living in the house.
It astounds me that whole house surge protection is not as common as it should be. Thousands of dollars worth of electronic wizardry can be destroyed in an instant by a surge, or ruined over time by transients on the power line.
Lighting and home control systems besides making your life more convenient, really help to manage your energy use, and are surprisingly affordable.
