Enhancing Home Safety: Essential Electrical Upgrades You Need to Know

As homeowners, ensuring the safety and efficiency of our electrical systems is crucial. Whether it’s protecting your family from potential electric shocks or preventing fire hazards, staying updated on the latest electrical standards is a must. In this post, we’ll walk you through some essential electrical upgrades that every homeowner should consider.

Safety Switches – Are Your Circuits Protected?

Current Electrical Standards require ALL final sub-circuits in your home (ie. General Power, Lighting, Oven, Stove, Hot Water, Air Conditioning etc.) to be protected by a Type A safety switch.

Previously circuits in your home weren’t required to be RCD (safety switch) protected and required circuit breaker protection only. A circuit breaker is installed to protect your wiring from over heating due to high power usage or an electrical fault, where as a safety switch is designed to protect you and your family from electric shock by cutting the power in milliseconds when current leakage is detected.

How to Check If You Have Safety Switches:

There are a few different types which can make things confusing.

• The main indicator is safety switches will have a “test” button on them. This is the easiest way to identify if your circuits are RCD protected. Note, this button can be vastly different across different brands.

• Older homes that haven’t been updated may have circuits that aren’t protected and a lot of older homes may have safety switches protecting power circuits only. You will need to check that your other circuits, particularly on appliances like ovens, air conditioning, and hot water systems, are safety switch protected.

• Think of a house that doesn’t have its wiring protected by RCD’s (safety switches) is not unlike driving an older car without modern safety features like airbags, seatbelts and ABS brakes.  Although you don’t need these features in normal driving conditions, they could save you and your family’s life in the unlikely event of an accident.

In this example, you can see on the left that there is a separate safety switch that is labelled to indicate that it is protecting the general power circuits only, on the right you can see that there are 4 circuits that are protected by a circuit breaker/safety switch combo which you can identify by the test buttons.  In between, you can see there is 5 circuits for the oven, 2 light circuits, air conditioning and hot water which are protected by a circuit breaker only, indicating that there is no electric shock protection on those appliances and fittings in the home.

If you find that some of your circuits aren’t protected by safety switches, it might be time to consider a switchboard upgrade. Get in touch with our team to find out how we can assist you with this.

The Queensland Govt has also provided additional information regarding safety switches in the home:

Watch This Video on Safety Switches

Smoke Alarms – The Silent Guardians of Your Home

Smoke alarms are your first line of defense in a fire emergency. However, they require regular maintenance to ensure they are functioning properly and there are key regulation upgrades coming for all dwellings.

Maintenance Tips:

• Smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years. The expiry date / installation date should be added by the installer and can be found by flipping down the cover.

• Yellowing alarms are often a sign that they are approaching or past their expiry date and can therefore making them potentially unreliable.

• Regularly dust or vacuum your smoke alarms to ensure they continue working properly,

• And test them by holding down the “test” button to ensure the alarm will sound.

When Do You Need to Install More Smoke Alarms and interconnect them?

• From 1 January 2022, for dwellings being leased, re-leased or sold.

• From 1 July 2024, for caravans or motorhomes whose registration is commencing or being transferred.

• From January 2027, for all other dwellings and registered caravans and motorhomes

The smoke alarms installed after these dates will be required to be powered by either hard-wired 240-volt or 10-year non-removable 10 year battery and be interconnected by either wired or wirelessly to all other required smoke alarms in the dwelling.  All smoke alarms that are required by legislation must be AS3786–2014 compliant smoke alarms. 

Smoke alarms must be installed:

• on each storey

• in each bedroom

• in hallways that connect bedrooms and the rest of the dwelling
  - if there is no hallway, between the bedroom and other parts of the storey; and
  - if there are no bedrooms on a storey, at least one smoke alarm must be installed in the most likely path of travel to exit the dwelling.

Also take note of the warranty on your smoke alarms. At Summit, we use Voltex Smoke Alarms that come with a 7 year warranty, which is more than the industry standard (most are normally 2 years with the closest competitor, Brookes only provides 5 years).

Halogen Downlights – Time for an Upgrade

Did you know that halogen down lights can reach temperatures of up to 370°C, creating a high risk of fire is ceiling spaces where they come in contact with combustible materials. 

The heat generated by halogen lights can encourage vermin to create a nest around the fitting which is often made with leaves and other combustible materials.

Halogen downlights are highly inefficient and can greatly contribute to costly energy bills.

Upgrading to LED downlights will reduce your power consumption and eliminate the high fire hazard in your home. 

Inspect for Cracked Switches

Inspect your power points and light switches for any brittle and cracked switches, particularly in areas that prone to being exposed to higher heat and cleaning chemicals like the kitchen and laundry.

Directly behind these switches are live parts which are potentially dangerous when the PVC face is cracked or broken.

Electrical safety in the home is not something to overlook. Regularly check and upgrade your electrical systems to ensure the safety and efficiency of your home. Whether it’s upgrading to safety switches, maintaining smoke alarms, or replacing outdated halogen lights, these small steps can make a big difference in keeping your home safe.

If you would like peace of mind in your home, we can send out one of our team to check any of the above and / or do a general electrical safety audit of your home. Get in touch with us today to discuss.