Serving the Buffalo Area since 1995
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Serving the Buffalo Area since 1995
We haven’t written the end of this story yet, and we’re hoping to give it a happy ending. If you live in the vintage house and it’s the one with the bad wiring, you can write the upbeat ending yourself by calling us to help you with vital Clarence, NY electrician services.
How long to you expect the light bulbs in your house to continue burning before you need to replace them? It depends on the light bulb type. The standard incandescent bulb can burn for around 900 hours and usually will need a replacement after a year, or even less. LED bulbs can go for far longer, lasting for several years before a replacement.
But when light bulbs seem to burn out at a rapid pace, regardless of type, it’s a concern. Not only because you don’t want to be putting in new light bulbs every month—which is costly and annoying—but because it may indicate troubles with your electrical system.
Our Clarence, NY electricians can help repair whatever is going wrong. Below are some of the possibilities for his light bulb dilemma, but please don’t attempt to guess at the problem and fix it yourself. This can be dangerous! Call us instead and we’ll be happy to resolve the issue safely and effectively.
We can’t completely discount that the buzzing sound you hear coming from your wall is from supernatural or other-dimensional force. But in our long history as a Buffalo, NY electrician, we can say that most of the times we’ve received calls about buzzing coming from walls, it was an electrical problem—except the occasional wasps’ nest. We’re glad those customers called, because this buzzing sound can indicate serious electrical issues that need certified electricians to investigate and solve. (Sorry, we aren’t equipped for the wasps.)
Now you may not find the buzzing sound “scary,” but it’s irritating. Let’s look into what might be happening to cause it.
A home has two hard-working “circulatory systems,” plumbing and electrical. Because both are mostly hidden from view even as they do essential work, it’s easy for a homeowner to dismiss them as something that will last as long as the house does.
But that’s not the case. When it comes to electrical wiring in Orchard Park, NY, you do need to have concerns about the age of the wiring. Not just for as long as you’ve been in the house, but for as long as the wiring has been in the house, period. If you live in a vintage home and the wiring has never had an update, it’s important to know about how long the wiring can expect to endure.
The electrical panel for your home is the vital “switching station” where the voltage entering your home divides into separate circuits. The panel protects the electrical system in case of shorts and other electrical troubles by tripping breakers. It’s important that your house has a working electrical panel that will keep your home safe. If you have an old, outdated panel, or one that has suffered damage, it’s time to schedule an electrical panel replacement in Buffalo, NY.
There is a specific case where we recommend you call us right away for a panel replacement, and that’s if you have a Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) circuit breaker panel installed. Many homes still have these panels, and they pose significant fire hazards.
Are you looking to get a generator as an electrical back-up in your house in case of a power outage? Good plan. In Western New York we don’t only suffer from blackouts during stormy seasons. The heat of summer puts immense strain on the power grid because of air conditioning systems, and this can lead to widespread power failures that trap people without cooling during the hottest times of the year.
But if the generator you’re considering is a small portable unit, we want to steer you a different direction and draw your attention to a whole-house generator in Buffalo, NY. We strongly advise consumers to use these generators if they want to help out with residential power outages. They are a bigger investment than a portable generator, but they’re also more beneficial long-term solutions—and you’ll be glad to have one when the time comes.
What does it mean to have your house grounded? We could go into some lengthy engineering explanations about how electricity works, but we can provide a simpler discussion of the electrical flow in your house. Electricity is always trying to “ground,” which means it gets rid of all its negative energy so it can get back to being balanced. In your home, the way the electrical systems allow electricity to return to ground is through the neutral wires. The “hot” wires carry the negative half of the polarized charge of electricity, and the neutral wires contain the positive half. These wires run next to each other through your electrical system.
For an example of this standard grounding at work, look at an outlet. One slot is the “hot” side, and the other is the “neutral.” The current flows through the hot side and then into the neutral side to eliminate the negative energy.
An important job we often focus on here at Scherer Electric is making upgrades to electrical panels for homes. In our long history as a top Amherst, NY electrician, and as Western New York’s Favorite Electrician, we’ve seen plenty of outdated panels in homes that needed to be replaced many years ago. There are also specific panel types that are hazardous, such as Federal Pacific panels that we advise all homeowners have replaced as soon as they can.
If you’re asking this question, it’s because you either have a suspicion that your current electrical panel is out of date, or you know it’s out of date because it’s failed on you. Perhaps you have an old fuse box, and now realize that this antiquated technology isn’t viable anymore as you keep putting larger and larger fuses on it. Maybe you’ve found out about the danger of the Federal Electric panel installed in your house and want this fire hazard eliminated.
Great—replacing your electrical panel is almost certainly beneficial, and could even prevent a house fire. But if you came here looking for advice on how to install the panel yourself … well, we hope we stopped you before you wandered over to any hazardous recommendations on how you can do it yourself. Because even if you could, you shouldn’t.
The electrical panel in your house, a.k.a. the circuit breaker panel, is the main “switching station” for the electrical system. This is where the incoming electrical current from the grid divides up into the circuits for the rest of the house. The breakers are in place to prevent an overload on a circuit from damaging the electrical system and causing problems like electrical fires.
When a circuit breaker trips, it means there was too much draw on that circuit. The switch temporarily shuts off the circuit, and you’ll lose power to part of the house. When this happens, we recommend you shut off all appliances in the area and unplug the outlets. Then go to the panel and find which breaker has tripped. Reset it, and then go back to plug in the appliances and turn them back on.
In most cases, this will solve the problem. But what if the circuit breaker keeps tripping? This indicates a larger problem, and you’ll probably need professional electricians in Clarence, NY to help you solve it.
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