Picture this scenario: you’re sitting at home with your family watching television and enjoying an otherwise run-of-the-mill evening. Then, all of a sudden, *poof*! Your power goes out, leaving you in the dark.

Here’s a quick question: do you know what to do when this happens?

Have a look at our guide to understand your best course of action after an outage. That way, you can keep you and your family safe no matter the situation.

When the power first goes out, take the following steps:

This is a non-issue if there’s a power interruption. But in cases of extreme weather or other emergencies, guarantee the bodily safety of you and your family first.

If you have telephone or cellular service, a quick call to the power company can give you information on the cause, extent and estimated restoration time for an outage.

Depending on the expected outage time, you may want to put a plan in action for your food/water. If the outage is less than two hours, food in your refrigerator and freezer will be fine. After that, however, temperatures may rise high enough to cause food-borne illness. To minimize the risk, avoid opening and closing the refrigerator as much as possible.

In most power outages, municipal water should remain unaffected. However, extreme weather or extended outages could compromise water safety. In cases like this, it’s recommended to avoid using it for anything that could come in contact with your mouth or body:

If possible, use boiled or bottled water to avoid the risk of getting sick.

If an outage knocks out air conditioning during hot weather, your risk of heat stroke will increase significantly. It’s important to identify the signs of heat stroke and address it as soon as it happens. Symptoms include hot/red skin, dizziness or nausea, headaches, rapid heartbeat and a high body temperature.

To reduce the risk of heat stroke, follow these guidelines:

Just like the heat, a prolonged power outage in the cold can quickly create an emergency situation. This holds especially true with most in-home heating systems that rely on electricity in some capacity.

Remaining warm is especially important in these situations. One of the largest risks with prolonged exposure to cold is hypothermia. Signs of hypothermia risk include cold skin, shivering and a body temperature below 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Without proper steps in place, hypothermia can quickly escalate into a life-threatening situation.

Maintaining a warm environment is the most important step in a cold temperature power outage. Use all the following tips to keep your family safe in the cold:

Electricity may either be connected by 230 or 240 volts (these are called single phase circuits that are installed in most residential applications), or 400 & 415 Volts (3-phase). The latter are typically best-suited to provide power to heavy-duty appliances and equipment and in industrial settings as well as larger commercial applications.

Some people have electric kilns installed in their homes or garages because they indulge in making pottery or ceramics products. Certain homes have very elaborate and large, ducted air-conditioning systems. In all these situations, a 3-phase circuit would be required to support this heavy power usage.

The type of circuit used is dependent in the equipment or appliances installed on your property. It is important that you check the power & voltage requirements of the installations properly, before deciding what type of circuits you need. In most instances, even massive ovens and high energy-consuming heaters are typically singe-phase.

This current in amps has to be multiplied by the voltage to give you the power in watts. If a 3-phase supply is available, the total voltage of 24,000 watts will be divided by 3; this means 8000 watts will be used in each phase. This means the current in each phase is lower than 1/3rd of what it generally is in a single phase power supply (about 30 amps in each phase instead of 100).

The aspect to keep in view here is that if you have a 3-phase electrical connection, you will end up paying higher connection fees for it. In addition, you would have to pay fixed annual charges for 3-phase as well, so you shouldn’t be considering it for your new home unless it’s really needed.

Depending on the locality you live in, your property may also be connected to a SWER electrical line and many country areas have them. The SWER (single wire, earth return) delivers single-phase power. It is a very economical way of power distribution since it requires only a single transmission or active line. The earth is used as the return conductor and there is no neutral line.

In case you need to use any 3-phase motors in these settings, you would have to get a single-phase to 3-phase converter installed. Choosing the right phase is crucial to the optimal working of your equipment and for the safety of your property as well.

Well, it happened again. The kitchen and bath pros who make up the via www.marketwatch.com

Giant windows are great if possible. That’s a big IF, though. Sometimes, natural light isn’t an option, either because the laundry room is subterranean or otherwise windowless. Obviously, in the image below, natural light is not an option. Yet, the color temperature of the ceiling light is neutral enough to make this laundry room bearable while another, poorer lighting choice could have made this tiny laundry room annoying to visit and kind of scary.

You didn’t think I was going to avoid talking about lighting solutions just because natural light is such a great option for laundry rooms, did you? So, how should you light your laundry room? For any type of laundry room, there are some fundamental guidelines.

I’ve already suggested that you ALWAYS USE NATURAL LIGHT, when and if possible. And for your other light sources? Consider choosing lights with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of as close to 100 as possible. A light source’s CRI is, in effect, a metric by which to compare the ability of artificial light to render color as well as the sun. 100 is the maximum CRI. Some lamps, like low-pressure sodium lamps, can actually have really low CRIs, while there are now some LED lights with CRIs of 95 – 98. If the sun isn’t shining in your laundry room, there are plenty of excellent options that closely match natural light’s ability to render color and help you keep your clothes clean and fresh as can be.

Layer your lighting.

OK, so this is the main theme in pretty much all lighting design guides. Layering your light pretty much means that you should think about general light, accent lighting, and task lighting. In the main section of a house, this might look like mini recessed ceiling lights with square bronze trim, elegant track lighting to spotlight a painting or picture, and a reading light by the chair or some under cabinet lights illuminating the bar counter. In a laundry room it might look like the image below.

Sometimes, in larger laundry rooms, you can have all three kinds of light. But, generally speaking, laundry areas are on the smaller side and are too focused on pragmatism for decorations that would benefit from accent lighting. Keep in mind that this is a generalization with exceptions galore, but, generally, the two kinds of lighting you’ll find in laundry areas are ambient overhead lighting and task lighting, and this scheme usually takes the form of a ceiling light or two and under cabinet lighting.

Creative Options.

House wiring has undergone some dramatic changes in the last hundred years. What was once a relative luxury is now accessible (and even required) in just about everyone home in the country. That isn’t to say that all wiring is created and maintained equally, nor can we confidently say that any Des Moines home is safe for your family without giving it an on-site look.

If you’ve ever done a renovation or addition to your home, you know the nightmare that city and county building codes can be. It seems like someone at the city and county clerk’s office is sitting around all day dreaming up new ways to make your progress come to a screeching halt. While your home may not have been built anywhere near today’s level of code, it still works just fine. Right? Well, while some building codes may be a tad excessive, often they use technologies that the electricians of the past would love to have had a chance to use. While it may come as an inconvenience, remind yourself that the technology available today can keep you and your family safe in a number of impressive ways. From safer walls and greatly decreased risk of house fire to GFCI outlets that will automatically detect an unsafe circuit and trip the breaker, killing the power and potentially saving a life.

Homes built after the 1940s were made with far safer wiring than any before that. Hopefully, by now, any home that predates that period would be completely re-wired with a new electrical panel for the longevity of the home, but this is wishful thinking. Today, millions of homes across the country and a good deal in Des Moines are essentially ticking time bombs, putting all of those inside at risk for electrocution or worse. While we don’t want to spread fear heedlessly, if you are considering the purchase of, or currently own, an older home, then you should get in touch with a licensed electrician to check the safety of your electrical system. Hopefully, everything will look and respond correctly, but there could easily be opportunities for improving the safety of your home.

In addition to the much older homes in the Des Moines area, newer homes are home to their own problems. If you ever notice an outlet begin to stop working unexpectedly, hear a buzzing in the wall, or even feel a current running, then you should make calling an electrician your top priority. Thousands of homes catch fire every year due to poor or faulty wiring, making this nothing to wait on, ignore, or even attempt to DIY; electricians should handle any blatant problems with your house wiring to keep your home safe. With homes popping up in and around Des Moines, our electricians have seen a surprising number of errors that could have been avoided by a more attentive installation, but that is a blog for another time.

If you suspect that your home’s wiring may be facing some issues, it really isn’t worth delaying to get in touch with the local electricians at Electrical Gurus. We have the tools and experience necessary to quickly determine what, if anything, the problem may be and then implement a fix that will keep your family safe. We understand how important it is to find affordable, trustworthy service for your household, which is why we take each call seriously and employ only the best local electricians.