Could Your Home's Wiring Damage Your Electronics?
Loose outlets, sparking wires, flickering lights, and buzzing fuse boxes are just a few signs of home wiring problems that can cause a lot of trouble for home electronics. Whether it's a short, flickering outage or a full blackout, it's hard to understand how severe a power problem is until something actually breaks. Here's an overview of how power problems can ruin your expensive and vital home electronics, along with ways that an electrician can help.
Rapid Power Loss And Computers
More devices are adopting computer-powered features that can be complex, but with a lot of new ways to fail. Desktop computers, laptops, and devices with onboard computers are sensitive to power failure because of the way they save information--the way that they save the very data that makes them exist and work the way they do.
When power failure happens, there's a somewhat random chance that the computer's system data can be corrupted. Modern computers have gotten better about such failure and include at least a basic recovery/repair system, but even that system can be corrupted.
Rapid and repeated power loss is the main problem when it comes to corruption because it increases the chance that critical failure can happen. To troubleshoot this problem, an electrician needs to check the outlet for tightness, damaged wiring, or overloaded circuit issues.
Wiring Damage From External Factors
Does your area have a lot of electrical storms? Do you lose power fairly often, either from storms or because of problems at the power company? Damage can happen over time, and it's hard to know exactly when the damage begins or how extensive it is.
One particular problem is that wiring can overheat and become brittle, but not entirely separate. Frayed wiring can still touch and provide some power, but may be too weak for certain devices to stay on without some failure.
The wiring failure can damage electronics as they lose power and repeatedly, but the electronics aren't the only problem. The wiring itself can become even more damaged, which leads to worse blackout problems and potential burns behind the walls.
Don't assume that the problems are small or just the power company's problem. Contact residential electrical services professionals and discuss any blackouts you've had or flickering lights you've noticed, and schedule an inspection to get to the bottom of the issue. Without a scheduled inspection, you could be missing a problem that could be cheaper to fix now than later.