Safety Tips

1.) Smoke Detectors:

Smoke detectors are great safety devices. But occasionally a smoke detector will start “chirping” or worse, sound a non-stop alarm for no reason. Here’s what you can do if this happens to you:

• If it’s a battery-powered smoke detector, take out the battery and replace it with a new one. If there’s still a problem, replace the entire smoke detector.
• If it’s a 120 Volt powered smoke detector (hard-wired), turn off your circuit breakers one by one until the noise stops. Then turn on all the circuit breakers again except the one controlling the smoke detector. Replace the faulty smoke detector and turn its circuit breaker back on again.
• You will then need to replace the 120 Volt smoke detector or if it is a battery powered smoke detector, replace the battery.

2.) Lights Dimming:

Lights will sometimes dim for a few seconds and then come back to complete brightness again. This can happen when a light is connected to the same wires that provide power to an appliance that takes a lot of power, like a refrigerator, a microwave oven, or an air conditioner. The reason the light dims for a few seconds is that the appliance is using a lot of power when it first starts up. After the appliance is running for a few seconds, it will use less power, and the light will return to normal again. If you have central air-conditioning, the lights may dim each time the air conditioning comes on.

You will usually notice this dimming more at night (for obvious reasons!), but you might also notice it in the daytime. If this dimming bothers you, you can handle the problem by having an electrician add another circuit specifically for the appliance that is causing the dimming problem.

NOTE: If you haven’t changed anything electrical in your home or office, and you suddenly start to have dimming problems or power fluctuations, then you probably have a loose wire somewhere. You should contact an electrician skilled in troubleshooting to find and correct this problem.