You only need to type a few words into a search engine to pull up numerous DIY guides for repairing and replacing electrical lighting outlets in your home. Just grab a screwdriver, pliers, and wire cutters and you’re set.

But hold on—do you really know what you’re doing? These DIY guides can be notoriously sketchy, and some depend on you knowing far more about electrical repair than you probably do. Because of the risk of electrical shock and bad wiring that can lead to fires, you should leave the outlet repairs to trained electricians. Outlet shorts and faults are a common cause for household fires (the Electrical Safety Foundation estimates electrical troubles account for 55,000 fires a year), so you should never take such chances.

If your home has a fuse box, it means it has older wiring. This is not automatically a bad thing—the wiring put in was up to code at the time of installation—nor does it mean your home is unsafe. If the fuse box malfunctions, you can choose to have it repaired instead of replaced with an upgrade to a circuit breaker panel.

A fuse box and wiring can wear down over time like anything else in a home. If your house is old enough to have a fuse box, chances are strong that it and the wiring are starting to deteriorate and will begin to malfunction more and more often. You can expect to require a larger number of repairs, and in the long run it isn’t worth it to keep patching up a fuse box and aging circuitry.

An old fuse box will also have trouble keeping pace with growing household energy demands. When the fuse box was first put it, there were lower voltage demands on the circuits in most houses than there are today. Your home likely uses more power than it did only 10 years ago, and the fuse box may not be enough to handle this higher power load.

Finally, fuse boxes are simply less convenient than circuit breaker panels. Instead of replacing fuses when they get blown, you only have to reset the tripped breaker.

Replacing a fuse box with a circuit breaker panel does more than simply tear out one component and put in a new one. The wiring around the panel will probably also need to be replaced with upgraded wiring so that it matches the capacity of the new installation.

Keep that old wiring in mind as well. This might be a good time to schedule a whole-house re-wiring to go along with the circuit breaker. This will bring your home up to current electrical code requirements, offer more efficient power, and lessen issues from outages.

We strongly urge homeowners who still have fuse boxes to make the change to the modern electrical panel.

The seasons are finally beginning to shift, bringing us (somewhat) cooler weather and a few unique activities. As we settle into fall, our experts at Hoffman Electrical would like to take a moment to clue you in on some potential electrical dangers unique to the season.

To our team, the only thing more important than our service is your safety! Electrical appliances and tools are indispensable these days, but without the proper care, understanding, and preparation, you could be looking at some serious injuries. To avoid risks and keep your home safe, keep up with these safety notes!

These tips and points are really quick and simple, so don’t worry about some involved and frustrating nonsense. For the most part, it’s all about being prepared and staying wary of potential threats: