The gray electrical panel located inside of your home might not look flashy, but it’s one of the most important parts of your house. It’s responsible for bringing electricity into your residence and routing it to the areas it’s needed most. If you haven’t upgraded your electrical panel in a long time, you should consider having an electrician come and do it for you. By having a residential electrician near Columbus do this, you can ensure that your home is safe as far as electricity is concerned. Here are signs that will tell you it’s time to upgrade.
Your home’s electrical panel is old.
Once upon a time, a 60 amp electrical panel provided more than enough electricity for a home. These days, a 60 amp electrical panel won’t get the job done and, in most cases, a 100 amp electrical panel won’t be sufficient, either. Unless you have a very small home that doesn’t use a lot of electricity, an electrician will usually recommend a 200 amp electrical panel to handle all of the electrical demands people have in 2016.
Your home’s electrical panel still uses fuses instead of circuit breakers.
Fuses are just as safe as circuit breakers are, however, when fuses have been tripped, they need to be replaced entirely as opposed to just reset like circuit breakers. As a result of this, many homeowners cut corners in the past and used the wrong fuses to turn their electricity back on. A licensed electrician can check your electrical panel to see if the fuses inside of it are the right ones. But do you really want to have to go through the hassle of finding new fuses every time you trip an old one?
Your home’s electrical panel was made by Federal Pacific.
At one time, about 90 percent of all electrical panels were manufactured by Federal Pacific. Many of these panels were found to be defective, though, so the brand is no longer trusted. If you have one in your home, you should replace it to avoid running into electrical problems later.