A Quick Guide to Safety Switches

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With today’s rapidly changing technology, there have been continuous developments in almost all fields, and the electrical services industry is no exception. Faulty wiring and short circuits can pose a danger to lives, but with the advent of safety switches, this danger has been brought significantly down. So here is a quick guide that will give you a deeper insight about safety switches:

Myths about Safety Switches

Every home has, or should have, circuit breakers and fuses to gain control over the excess electricity passage. Safety switches do not just protect your appliances but also the people in your home, too. They can even detect faults in the wirings, which you may not be aware of. It is easy to overlook such faults, but safety switches can detect them and protect your house from potential risks by alerting you to these defects. When making use of safety switches, ensure that you keep a regular check on them so that they work in a proper condition.

How Safety Switches Are Different From Fuses and Circuit Breakers

People are often confused about how safety switches work with circuit breakers and fuses. Yes, all these three electrical devices prevent the excessive flow of current and help in saving your electrical appliances, LED lighting, and wiring, but safety switches also provide protection to the people residing at that place. Fuses and circuit breakers cut down the current when it exceeds what an appliance or wiring can cope with and thus prevents it from being damaged. Safety switches provide an extra layer of protection by safeguarding the people against any kind of serious injury, electric shock, or death.

Installation of Safety Switches

Installing safety switches does not cost a fortune and is quite easy to do, taking into account the extent of safety that they offer. Every home should have safety switches to ensure the utmost safety. In fact, in Australia, since 2006, it has been mandatory for property owners to install safety switches before renting out a home if they fall under the residential tenancy agreement.

Safety switches are capable of detecting fluctuations and can shut off the power automatically when they are detected. Your business and home switchboards run all day and night. Thus it is mandatory that you protect them with safety switches to prevent any kind of mishap or fatal accidents. Safety switches are no less than an extra defence army that safeguards your home, saving lives.

Conclusion

There are many benefits of installing safety switches in your home or business as it is a way to keep yourself and your surroundings electrically safe. You should seek professional assistance from safety switches electrician to have this done by an expert.

Everything You Need to Know About Electrical Wire Colour Codes

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Opening up a switch box and seeing all the different colours of wire is quite scary especially when you don’t know which colour of wire you should be working on. Every colour of wire has one specific purpose. Knowing the purpose of each wire will help you keep your house safe and sound. This will also keep the electrical system in good working order and if any problem occurs, you can always call a Brisbane Electrician to fix it. Now, let us see how many wire colours are there and what are the functions.

Why Do Electrical Wires Come in Various Colours?

Colour coding is done for the purpose of setting out which wire is for what purpose. Understanding wire colours will essentially help the person working on a circuit to identify the function of each wire. Before you begin any repair make sure you learn about the colours.

What Are the Different Colours and Functions?

There are mainly hot, neutral, and ground wires. The colours are:

  • Black electrical wires: Black colour wires are mainly found at any residential constructions and are ‘hot’. This means these wires carry power to the switches and channels in various types of circuits. They are not used as neutral or ground wires, as they mainly act as a medium or the carrier of live electrical currents. South Brisbane Electrical Services can help if you need to do any work on or around hot wires.
  • White and grey wires: These two types of colour wires are neutral. A neutral wire acts as a connection with the neutral bus bar. The conductive part of a neutral bar is made out of metal that attracts and distributes electric current throughout the circuit. We can say that these wires help the current to return to the power source. There is the potential of getting a shock from these wires if mishandled.
  • Blue and yellow electrical wires: These colour wires play an important role as live wires pass through a channel. Yellow and blue wires work as carriers of a single current circuit consisting of three or four ways switches where multiple switches are controlling the same utility. These wires are also known as travellers as their function is to conduct current between the switches and poles.
  • Red wires: This is also a hot wire and is sometimes used as the second hot wire in 240-volt installations. A useful application is to interconnect the smoke detectors in smoke alarms Cleveland.
  • Green wires: Green wires are used as protective measures against shock. You can see them as the grounding terminal through the outlet box. If a live wire comes in contact with the conductor, the green wire can safeguard you by sending this current into the ground.

Bottom Line

These are the colours you need to keep in mind before undertaking any repair task that will bring you close to electrical wiring. It is always better to call an expert from Electrician Coorparoo for any such job.

How to Test Your Smoke Alarms

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A smoke alarm is a crucial safety device that should be featured in every home. Plus, as of 1 January 2022 all domestic premises leased and sold; must have hard-wired interconnected photoelectric smoke alarms installed. And, as of 1 January 2027 all domestic promises; must have hard-wired interconnected photoelectric smoke alarms installed.

How do Smoke Alarms Work?

Smoke alarms are devices that detect smoke and sound an alarm when activated. Smoke alarms alert and wake people allowing valuable time to get out of a house during a fire.

Photoelectric smoke alarms are designed to detect changes in the intensity of light passing through the air as a result of the smoke. They can operate on two principles – light obstruction and light scattering. Plus, what makes photoelectric smoke alarms very effective is the fact that they respond fast to smoldering fires which have proven to be lethal in most cases of residential fires.

Hence, we may all conclude that installing smoke alarms at your home is of utmost importance. So, call Thomas Blake Electrical – the number one electrician in Brisbane offering expert electrical services including smoke alarm installation and replacement. Whatever your smoke alarm need is, Thomas Blake can assist you quickly and professionally.

How to Test Your Smoke Alarms?

In general, smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years to ensure that you have a reliable source of safety in your home. The reason for this is that over time, just like other electrical devices, smoke alarms develop mechanical issues and become less effective.

So, you have to test your smoke alarms from time to time to make sure they are in good condition. In this case, you’d better seek professional help from a qualified electrician, like Thomas Blake, to do the inspection.

Here’s a step by step guide on how to do a smoke alarm test:

Step 1 – Notify Your Family Members

First and foremost, you should tell everyone in your household that you are going to test your smoke alarms. Also, notify your security company if your smoke alarm is hardwired to a monitored security plan.

Step 2 – Check How Far the Alarm can be Heard

Evaluating the distance at which your alarm can be heard is also of crucial importance. To do so, ask a family member to go as far as possible when you do the test and tell you whether or not they can hear the smoke alarm.

Step 3 – Conduct the Test

To see whether or not your smoke alarms work you will need an aerosol spray that can be purchased at any home improvement store. Then, sprinkle some amount of the spray into the alarm and wait. If it produces a sound, then your alarm works well. Otherwise, you need to replace it.

Step 4 – Turn off the Alarm

Finally, once you have tested your smoke alarm, you have to turn it off. You can do so by vacuuming the aerosol spray from the alarm unit. Or, switch the silence button if there’s one on your smoke alarm.

To sum up, testing your smoke alarms is essential if you want to ensure that you and your family are safe. So, don’t hesitate and contact Thomas Blake today to test, fix, replace, or install smoke alarms in your home.

6 Things You Should Know About Surge Protectors

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Whether you want to protect against damage from random power spike, or just want to add more outlets, surge protectors are needed. But, how to choose the best of the many types offered on the market?

No worries! The number one electrician offering the ultimate electric services in Brisbane and the surrounding area – Thomas Blake Electrical – is here to explain what makes a good surge protector.

So, read on and find out everything you should know about surge protectors:

  1. Surge Protectors and Power Strips

Even though both of these are referred to as surge suppressors, they are different. In general, power strips are an expansion of a wall outlet and are usually quite cheap. They include a circuit breaker but cannot protect from electrical issues 100%. On the other hand, surge protectors are rather cheap but offer power spikes protection to some extent.

  1. Portable Power Strip

You already know that they don’t offer a high level of protection, however, a portable power strip can help avoid marital friction or invoke bliss from travel companions. In general, hotels and motels don’t have enough outlets so a portable power strip can really come in handy, especially if it comes with a USB connection.

  1. Protection in Joules

As we already mentioned, surge protectors offer some protection which is usually expressed in joules. The higher the surge protector joule rating, the better the protection against electrical hazards. Precisely speaking, this rating tells you how much energy the surge protector can absorb before it fails. Eventually, as time passes by, some surge protector parts wear down and the device becomes less effective.

  1. The Need for a Power Conditioner

The truth is, various manufacturers try to sell different products on the market one of which is a power conditioner claiming to improve the performance in your gear by conditioning the power from the wall. But, your gear does that already. A professional electrician has a power supply that takes the wall current, filters it, and converts it based on the device needs. Hence, you don’t really need a power conditioner.

  1. Outlets Number

Without a shadow of a doubt, you’ve certainly had a situation in which you have regretted not adding more outlets in your premises. Over time, we all purchase more electrical devices and gear without ditching the old ones. Hence, once your electrician starts with the electrical installments, make sure to ask for more outlets than you currently need.

  1. One for Chunky Plugs

If this occurred to you, you definitely know how annoying it could be not being able to plug in a device. Namely, certain devices use wall warts and look like little boxes with prongs sticking out which is hard to accommodate in a normal surge protector. Therefore, consider getting one with enough space between sockets or one on which you can rotate or move the sockets.

To sum up, everyone should get at least one surge protector, based on their needs. They are efficient and beneficial in protecting from power surges. And, since they are relatively cheap you can really afford to replace them from time to time to ensure maximum protection.

For any further information, please don’t hesitate and contact Thomas Blake Electrical! We’ll be glad to help you!