Playing with electricity is a job best left to the pros, after all, they’re the ones trained, licensed, and insured if anything goes wrong. If you’re incredibly handy and love electricity then, by all means, attempt electrical repairs or work by yourself, but just remember that you’re legally liable if anything goes wrong. If your house burns down due to the poor workmanship of a civil electrical contractor, your insurance will cover it. If it burns down because you undertook technically illegal repairs yourself- not so much.
Here are the top 5 benefits of hiring a licensed and insured civil electrical contractor to undertake any electrical repairs or installations on your property.
Reliability
Electricity can be seriously dangerous. If your house has gas heating or cooking, you’re surely aware of the care that needs to be taken when getting anything fixed, and how serious a gas leak can be. What many people don’t realise is that electricity can be equally as dangerous.
A worn out or poorly built electrical connection or fitting will cause a fire as surely as gas and a spark. Hiring a good, reliable and reputable electrical contractor means that you can have peace of mind knowing the work has been done right. You can also rest assured that they’ll find and repair any potential hazards, preventing potentially catastrophic accidents.
Safety
Playing with electricity is more dangerous than playing with fire. If you stick your hand in a flame, itll- grab a live wire the wrong way and you could end up far worse off. While you might be experienced and confident in doing the job yourself, there are many things that could catch you out. An electrician has years of training and experience behind them, much of it exactly for spotting hazards and staying safe. You might think the circuit is off when it isn’t, and find out in a really nasty surprise.
Staying safe is one of the major benefits of hiring an electrical contractor, safety for you because you’re not doping the hazardous work, and safety for your family that the work was done professionally.
A Professional Job
Let’s be honest here. Have you ever done a job at home, looked at it after and thought, ‘Man, that’s not quite as good as I thought it would be.’? It’s happened to all of us at some point or another. While that’s not to say every job is worth hiring a professional, or every job turns out worse than you expected, but electricity is something you want to get right the first time.
A professional job is one of the benefits of a professional electrician. They’ll get it right the first time, and it should look and work like it’s supposed to. If you have to do it a second time because it didn’t work the first time around, you’re exposing yourself to danger twice. And if the licensed sparky doesn’t get it right the first time, well at least you’re not doing it right?
Licensed and Insured
We touched on it earlier, but essentially, under Australian laws and regulations only a licensed electrician can perform electrical repairs or installations on your home. The regular person is only legally allowed to change light bulbs and use electrical appliances as recommended by the manufacturer. You might think that this doesn’t matter in your own home, only if you’re being paid to perform electrical work. But your insurance company cares very much about whether you’re licensed or not.
Your insurance company, depending on the specifics of your policy, should pay out to cover damages caused by an electrical fire, as a result of poor workmanship carried out by a licensed electrician. But if you do the work yourself, and that causes your home to burn down, most insurance companies won’t give you a cent.
Surely, staying insured and having that peace of mind is a big benefit of a licensed electrician!
Hopefully this short list of major benefits will help you to make a call on whether to hire a contractor or do it yourself. If you’ve got an electrical job that needs doing and want more information or are looking for an Electrician in Perth, head over to Scott Comms. We’re a team of friendly experts always happy to help and answer any questions you might have about hiring electrical contractors.
