There are many home repairs that you can do yourself. With the help of a little Google research and a trip to your hardware store, you can mend holes in the wall, do minor plumbing repairs, and build yourself a gazebo. However, one home repair you should never attempt to do yourself is electrical problems.
There are numerous reasons to use a professional electrician instead of attempting electrical repairs yourself. Electrical wiring repairs gone wrong can cause incredible damage, including burning your house down if you don’t know what you’re doing. More importantly, attempting to make an electrical repair yourself can lead to injuries that cost you your life. If this stern talking-to hasn’t convinced you to stop being a cheapskate and call in a pro for your electrical issues, we’ve put together an irrefutable list of 6 reasons to use a professional electrician instead of DIYing your own electrical repairs.
Reasons to Use a Professional Electrician
- Your safety. Any live electrical current can cause injuries that could be lethal. The current that flows in a residential home (15 or 20 amps) is more than enough to kill you if you come in direct contact with it while doing your repair yourself.
- The long-term safety of your home. If your electrical repair isn’t done properly, it makes your entire electrical system unstable going forward. Even if you do not hurt yourself in the process of doing it, you are increasing the risk of the inhabitants in your home being exposed to dangerous electric shocks and potential fires down the road.
- To save money. In an attempt to save yourself a few dollars on a professional electrician, you could end up flushing all the money you spend on parts and materials down the toilet. If the work isn’t done right and you have to do the repair again (or call in a pro like you should have to begin with), all of the money you poured into the project will be lost. If your lack of know-how leads to secondary damage, your cost for repairs will continue to pile up.
- To troubleshoot the problem. You might think you know why your lights flicker when you plug the blender in. You might think you know what the root of your electrical problem is and therefore what to research and teach yourself in regards to repairing it. However, unless you are an electrician who comes across a variety of electrical problems and how to solve them every single day of your career, there’s a significant chance your home-brewed diagnoses could be wrong. If you do a repair that wasn’t the needed repair to begin with, once again you’re out of all the money spent on parts and supplies and are no better off. Not to mention, now you’re probably in a terrible mood for the wasting the time.
- To protect the expensive things that you plug into your home’s outlets. Your home’s wiring is an intricate highway system where electrical current travels throughout your dwelling, to every single outlet. If you mess up the circuit system on your DIY project, it could impact the amperage delivered to other outlets, or carry excess voltage drop to the computer you have plugged in a room away. You saved yourself a couple hundred dollars by not having a professional do the work, but cost yourself thousands in fried electronics across your home.
- Your homeowners insurance might not cover DIY oopsies. If you burn your home down trying to install a ceiling fan, your insurance claim is not going to be treated nicely. Why should your homeowner’s insurance have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars because you didn’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars to have it done right to begin with?
While we’re on this subject, it’s important to only hire a professional electrician who is licensed and bonded, so that you know they’re following safety compliance as mandated by the state. This also means that their work (and your home) is protected by an insurance bond.
Do you know of any other reasons to use a professional electrician that we didn’t mention? Please share them in the comment section below. See more.