Ensuring Electrical Safety in your Workplace
The damage caused by electricity can vary in level of injury depending on the individual circumstances. For instance, a voltage as low as 50 volts applied between two parts of the human body will cause a current to flow which can block the electrical signals between the brain and the muscles. This may lead to several effects such as muscle spasm, stopping the heart, preventing the person from breathing. The risk of injury is typically greater with higher voltages. Electricity can kill or critically injure people and cause damage to property. Therefore, electrical safety should be a major priority in all project planning and ongoing electrical maintenance.
The HSE website gives further guidance on electrical safety in addition to the article
Without absolute precision in terms of safety and precautionary measures. Electricity can kill, critically injure people or cause damage to property. However, our team consists of technically competent electricians who are fully qualified with a vast amount of post apprenticeship experience.
Warning Signs for Electrical Safety
- Smell burning, smoky or odd odours
- Discolouration, scorching and smoke
- Regular Circuit breaker trips
- Lights buzzing, dimming or flickering
- Hot/Burnt electrical sockets
Experienced any of the above before? Feel free to contact our accredited team of electricians to ensure your home or place of work is a safe environment. Our team has an extensive amount of experience ranging from private homes to large commercial venues.
Minimizing the Risk (risk assessments)
As an employer, risk assessments are mandatory by law. Although this may seem like a pointless exercise, these measures are put in place to protect yourself, employees and members of the public. Of course these measures are not compulsory for private homes, however for the safety of your family its not totally irrelevant.
Damaged Sockets
Electrical sockets with heat scorch marks or a plastic odour may have already suffered from an electrical fault. These sockets are not to be used under any circumstances. Generally, the damage to the socket may have been caused by dust build up, faulty appliances, corrosion or poor wiring. To rectify this, the main electrical wiring should be checked and tested as it may be the reason for the damaged socket.
Faulty Lights
Flickering, dimming or buzzing lights can be more of a hindrance rather than an electrical safety issue. These issues are often ignored due to their commonality. For the most part the solutions can be straight forward ‘loose light bulbs, bulb type or weather’. If these are not the reasons for your faulty lights, it could be an indication of a serious problem such as circuit overload, a faulty connection somewhere along the circuit or insufficient current. If your lights are dimming when you plug in certain appliances it means the electrical circuit is overloaded and there is not enough current available for the lights.
When you are experiencing any of the above it is crucial to discuss this with one of our fully qualified electricians. In conclusion, ignoring these issues can lead to catastrophic damage.
Electrical Safety - Did you know?
CPR ‘Construction Product Regulation’ is a governing body put in place to monitor construction products. Following the tragic loss at the Grenfell tower fire, CPR regulations were reviewed. Building and construction cables manufactured after 1st July 2017 are to be accompanied by a Declaration Of Performance (DoP) and to have CE marking under the CPR. The requirements relate to ‘Reaction to Fire’ performance of the cables. As a result, the cable rating is from A to F. In the UK there is a long history of developing low fire hazard cables with low smoke, halogen-fee performance. Furthermore these ratings and guidelines may vary from country to country. In the UK there is a low rating requirement but for the most part, higher ratings are always recommended. Training and qualifications in the UK are provided by bodies such as the NICEIC & NAPIT.
We have written a more detailed article on these CRP cable regulations, and this can be viewed by Clicking Here