Staying Out Of Trouble With Electricity: Times To Call An Emergency Electrician To Check Things Out | Myrtle Beach, SC

3/12/2021

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Do you know when to call an emergency electrician? Sometimes the clues are a bit confusing. If you smell something like plastic burning at dinnertime, you might think it was just a kitchen mishap. Perhaps the smell wandered into the living room and whoever is cooking is already handling a burnt utensil or food package. A similar smell could also be a wiring fault that’s generating heat behind the walls, and could soon lead to combustion and smoke. Even if it doesn’t happen this time, perhaps someone unplugged the device that was drawing enough current to cause the problem, and the disaster was just postponed.

Electricity Is a Silent Servant, But It’s Good to Be Aware

At Mister Sparky of Myrtle Beach, SC our emergency electricians serving the Myrtle Beach, SC area know that you won’t have to call them very often. Modern all-electric homes are wonderful because electricity is fairly straightforward to deal with if you have the proper training and experience. If you do have repeated problems, our team of professional electricians can review your home’s wiring and recommend changes to improve your electrical safety. Because such problems don’t arise often in the average household, sounds, smells, and other indications that it’s time to call the emergency electrician do tend to go unnoticed by many people.

Three Types of Electrical Trouble to Watch Out For

From an article published by the International Association of Electrical Inspectors, here are three main concerns that their experience has raised.

Electric Shock

The potential for electric shock is the first, as the risk of life is a critical concern. Surviving an electric shock can leave lasting damage, too, from burns to neurological damage. Most incidents of this type involve accidentally conducting electricity through the body, but sometimes the risk of that happening is not so obvious. A person might believe a wire is not attached to anything, a circuit is disabled, or the appliance they touch is off and therefore safe. The risk might also be a pool of water. After calling for emergency assistance for victims, a call to an emergency electrician is an urgent next step. Don’t make any assumptions that the problem is now totally identified.

Electrical Burns

Power flowing through the body can also produce a burn, even across a fingertip. Burns from electricity can run deep, even affecting muscle tissue and bone. Heat from wiring problems and high-powered equipment can also produce burns if touched. If you suspect that a certain smell is an overheated wire don’t touch to find out, just call an emergency electrician for help. While not as common with regular household wiring, as the power increases, the risk of arc burns does as well.

Arc Blasts

As with welding, electricity can produce intense heat when arcing across contacts, or even through short circuits. Temperatures as high as 35,000 degrees F can occur. High enough power can even vaporize a metal wrench dropped across electrical contacts. The injuries produced by these arcs and explosions are often severe, involving bodily harm, vision damage, and even hearing loss. This is an important reason why there is so much protective equipment in your electrical service, and why wiring and other electrical standards are so involved. Electricians are well-trained to avoid hazards like these. If you suspect a problem with your home’s power, let an emergency electrician take a look. Outside your home, if you suspect problems with power lines, transformers, or other power equipment outdoors or in commercial buildings, call the power company as well.

The Sounds of Trouble Can Blend Right In

Buzzing, crackling, and humming from your power box, electrical fixture or appliance, or even outlets and wiring, can indicate that something’s not right. The sound may be followed by an unusual smell, but don’t wait for that to happen, as the risk of fire could increase. Call an emergency electrician to check out the issue, and let them know where you heard it, how long it has been going on, whether lights have been flickering or smells accompanying the sounds, and whether devices were connected or turned on nearby. Also make note of whether there have been any water leaks in the area, or could have been such as leaks from a bathroom directly above.

Water Leaks and Electrical Trouble

There are many types of electrical conductors, with copper and aluminum providing conveniently efficient ones for use in wires. The human body, unfortunately, can be a conductor, water can conduct electricity whether in a puddle or dampening an absorbent object, and metals like gold while too expensive to use as wiring in most cases, make amazingly good conductors of electricity. If you know or suspect that there’s a loose wire that could be energized, call an emergency electrician.

Even if you don’t come into contact with it, nearby moisture could create unexpected hazards. If you touch an object or surface and feel a tingling sensation, that could be a sign of an electrical problem which should be checked out by an emergency electrician as well. The tingling, in that case, is just a low-level version of an electrical shock that could get much worse if something changes, from where you stand and what your other hand is touching, to whether a bit more moisture becomes involved.

To Be Safe with Electrical Emergencies in the Area, Call Mister Sparky

Our team provides your local electrical experts, with broad experience in home and industrial electrical safety. We’ll ask you the right questions and diagnose what can be elusive problems in your electrical box, circuit breakers, wiring, or other areas of your home’s electrical network. Since electricity does carry significant risks, we also appreciate it when you trust us to install, repair, and maintain your home’s electrical equipment. We want to make sure you’re safe and enjoying all the benefits that electrical power offers. Give us at Mister Sparky of Myrtle Beach a call.