Electricians are expensive — and for good reason. It takes years to learn the ins and outs of home electrical systems, and neither electrical tools nor state licensing is cheap. When you pay an electrician, you are paying for peace of mind that your home’s electrical elements will function as expected and that your home won’t burn down as a result.
Still, electrical work is not always so complicated that you need to hire an expert. There are some tasks that you might be able to do on your own, if you have some electrical experience, the right tools and sufficient confidence. Here are a few tips for making electrical repairs and updates around your home safely.
Projects You Can Handle
The difficulties and dangers associated with electrical work are myriad, especially in residential settings when you cannot be certain how, when or where changes were made to the original electrical system. Digging through a home’s wiring is time-consuming and frustrating, and it can result in undue damage to your home if you lack the necessary knowledge and skills.
Thus, you should recognize that the electrical projects you can manage as a novice electrical worker are limited to tasks that involve electrical components that already exist. For example, you should have little trouble managing any of the following home electrical tasks:
Changing a Light Fixture. When you are replacing an existing light fixture with a new fixture, you are merely disconnecting and reconnecting wires in the same wall or ceiling box. As long as you shut off the power before you start and keep careful track of which wires attach to which part of the fixture — which is easy because the wires tend to be color-coded — you shouldn’t have any trouble with this project. However, if your new fixture is heavy or oddly shaped, you might call in help to hold the fixture as you fiddle with the wiring.
Updating an Appliance. Some appliances — especially older appliances — were hardwired into the wall during their installation. If you want to update that appliance, you can disconnect the hardwiring and install a new appliance following the same steps as replacing a light fixture. However, if you cannot find a new appliance that requires hardwiring, you might need to add an outlet where your old appliance connected to your home’s circuit, and for that, you should call in an expert.
Adding a Dimmer Switch. If you want complete control over the illumination level in your room, you need to connect a dimmer switch to your light fixtures. Fortunately, this process is as easy as removing your old switch and installing a switch that has a dimmer built in. Before you do this, you should be certain that the light fixture that will be attached to the dimmer has dimmable bulbs, like LEDs or CFLs.
Replacing a Doorbell. Believe it or not, doorbells are hardwired into your home’s electrical system. If your doorbell does not work, you probably need to replace the chime unit, which looks like a box attached high on a wall within your home. Though chimes look like complex pieces of electrical machinery, the truth is that they run on a few wires just like your light fixtures. You can also replace the push button of your doorbell if you want it to have a different style.
Replacing a Fan. Fans can go bad, or you can grow tired of the look of old-fashioned fan models. Fortunately, you can replace an existing fan relatively easily by installing a new fan into the same mounting bracket located in the ceiling. Even better, new ceiling fans come with remotes, so you don’t need to worry about connecting your ceiling fan to a wall switch for convenient control over speed or illumination.
Most amateur electrical workers don’t need as many tools as a licensed electrician; after all, you are not going to be completing difficult or extensive work like adding a new circuit or updating your breaker box. Still, you do need a few tools to make beginner-level electrical projects easy, fast and safe. In your electrical toolbox, you should have a variety of screwdrivers, a voltmeter to check for the presence of electrical current, a flashlight for working in the dark, a utility knife or wire stripper to remove sheathing from cables, needle-nose pliers for bending and twisting wires, side-snips for cutting wires and wire nuts of varying sizes for easy, safe connections.
If at any point in an electrical project you feel uncertain about the process, you should stop and call an electrician. However, if you carefully study the steps of these manageable projects, you should be able to upgrade your home in noticeable ways and feel the satisfaction of a DIY well done.
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