The specific tips to ensure electrical safety in and around your home depend on your children’s ages. If we’re talking about toddlers and very children, the responsibility falls on the guardians to ensure their safety - things like putting covers on electrical outlets, ensuring there are no exposed wires or accessible tangled cables, and unplugging or hiding unused small appliances that are within reach of the child.
When your child is older, some of the onus of electrical safety falls on them. Here are some things you should teach them when they are old enough to follow instructions:
With some coaching and reminders, children will quickly get the idea of how to maintain their electrical safety. You, as their guardian, will be responsible not only for providing a safe environment, free from electrical hazards, but to educate them on basic electrical DOs and DON’Ts at home and beyond. You should also consult with a licensed electrical contractor if something in your home requires a repair and not attempt the fix yourself.
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Whether you just installed a new pool or had a pool for a while, it’s never too late to brush up on your poolside electrical safety knowledge. The last thing you want to do to dampen your pool or hot tub experience is to have electrical hazards lurking around you.
Here are the top 5 ways to eliminate electrical hazards around your pool:
There you have it. Some simple but actionable tips to make sure you enjoy your pool, hot tub or spa without having to worry about electrical hazards, leaving more time to play and less time to fret over whether your pool environment is safe enough. It looks like a power strip, but it does so much more than that - not only does it provide additional outlets to plug your appliances and electronics into, surge protectors protect your delicate electronics from power surges and even shorter lasting power spikes. What exactly is a power surge? There are two categories of it, internal and external. The former happens when a large appliance like a refrigerator or air conditioner unit stops or starts abruptly, leading to a diverting of electricity away, thus creating the power backup, or power surge. The latter happens from external sources such as a power outage from a lightning strike to a power line, for example.
So do you need a surge protector for every major appliance and electronics in your home? Generally, you’d need it for your important electronics or anything that contains a fragile and delicate microprocessor at the very least- think your computer, laptop, sound systems, smart phones, etc. Another option is to have your local licensed electrician install a whole house surge protector. This is essentially like a voltage shield for your entire home. So any source of power surges will be diverted effectively, regardless of which outlet it’s connected to. This means ALL your appliances and electronics will be protected, no matter the circumstance. So, to answer the million dollar question: do you need a surge protector, whole house or individual version? Our answer is: yes, as long as you have valued equipment, appliances or electronics in the house, this is a relatively inexpensive way to protect your investments. Before we get into the reasons why you should invest in an electric car, let’s get the potential cons out of the way, the biggest one being price. Electric vehicles are typically $10.000 on average higher in price than gas-powered vehicles. Even with current federal rebates (Ontario currently unfortunately does not have a provincial rebate program for EVs at time of print), the delivery price is noticeably higher than a gas car.
Another one is “range anxiety”, a term not a lot of consumers are aware of, but nevertheless exists with the potential purchase of an EV. The fear of running out of power before reaching a destination is real, whether justified or not. To address the above concerns, in regards to pricing, yes, electric vehicles have a higher upfront cost, but don’t discount the annual savings from not having to fuel up at the gas station. And for someone who drives between 15,000 to 20,000 km per year or more, the fuel savings is even more significant. In regards to needing an electric vehicle charger installation in your home, this will improve your car's charging efficiency at a relatively low cost. As for the range anxiety issue, this is currently a reality of today. When you look 5 to 10 years in the future, however, the landscape of vehicle types is likely to change. The Canadian government has a goal to transition to all electric cars (zero emissions) by 2035. Along with that goal, it has plans to dramatically improve the charging station infrastructure throughout the country. Now, let’s get to the top 3 reasons why you should consider an electric vehicle in the near future:
So there you have it. The reasons why you should buy an EV for your next vehicle, but one of the most important ones to consider is that is the direction our country is headed. In about 10 years, it will likely not be practical to continue owning an ICE, or internal combustible engine. |