Three Electrical Problems You Can't Avoid

Some electrical problems are flat-out unavoidable. No matter what you do to keep your home or business safe and protected from them, these issues can still find a way to impact you, resulting in potential damage, outages, and more. However, that’s not to say you should stress about these issues constantly—while they are out of your control and you can’t avoid them, you can protect yourself from the consequences they can bring.

Here are three electrical problems you can’t avoid, as well as some simple and stress-free ways you can mitigate or even prevent the damage that each of them can potentially cause to your property.

Electrical Surges

A power surge is a name for a sudden, sharp spike in electrical energy flowing through the power lines that feed your home or business. While surges are incredibly rare thanks to redundant and well-engineered electrical infrastructure, surges most frequently happen during periods of high demand or during inclement weather conditions like brutal excessive heat or a lightning storm. When a surge happens, a sudden overflow of energy floods through your electrical system, damaging wires and outlets, destroying devices that are plugged in at the time, and potentially causing injury or fire. However, because surges usually originate from your electrical supply, meaning out of your control, you can’t really avoid or prevent them.

However, you can prevent them from damaging your home with proper surge protection measures. While surge protection strips are a great way of protecting the devices plugged into them, you can protect your entire electrical system with a whole-home surge protection system.

Power Outages

Power outages are far more common than power surges, and they can vary widely in their shape, size, and severity. Most of the time, a power outage is just a short blip in service that’s more annoying than anything. In some cases, power might go out for several minutes or even hours at a time, with rare outages sometimes lasting for days. Much like power surges, outages are almost always the result of something happening that’s out of your control.

However, you can protect yourself from long-term outages with a backup generator system. Portable generators are great because they can be easily moved and set up and they steadily provide a limited amount of power you can use for your most important appliances. Standby generators are generally installed into the land near your home and use a connection to natural gas to provide backup power, making them even more popular for areas where power outages might be more common. However, they do generally cost more and require professional installation to ensure they are set up properly. However, if you want true peace of mind regarding power stability, these are a great investment.

Aging Infrastructure

Your property’s electrical infrastructure will age, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Over time, wires will wear out, plugs will begin to fall apart as they are used, and important safety and operating components like circuit breakers and interrupters will stop working as they are supposed to. It’s important to make sure you repeatedly and frequently update and replace these outdated components to ensure every aspect of your electrical system continues to work as it should. However, there is no way to prevent aging when it comes to different parts of your home.

Instead, what you can do is simply slow the process of aging by continually making sure your home is in good condition. For example, using outdoor-rated components in outdoor applications means longer-lasting electrical systems that are also safer to use. You’ll spend less time replacing broken infrastructure and not have to stress about your system nearly as much.