For those of us who love the idea of doing it ourselves, it feels good to expand our horizons and learn something new. We get a sense of accomplishment from acquiring a new skill. In the case of the wiring in your house, however, it is best to leave that to the professionals. Here are five reasons why.
- Live Wires and Inexperience Don’t Mix
First and foremost, when you are undertaking any project, safety is always the most important factor, always. That said, because of the nature of electricity, a simple mistake can have reasonably dire consequences.
Whether you’ve forgotten to make sure a wire wasn’t live (meaning it wasn’t running a current) or if you’ve made a mistake with the soldering and something accidentally catches light…inside of your wall. Better safe than sorry.
- Materials Expense
A lot of the appeal of DIY is getting things done for less. It’s like bargain shopping, but it comes with a tangible and useful result, like a properly functioning toilet or a lovely custom coffee table. But in the case of electrical work, there is no equivalent to getting palette wood to craft your awesome coffee table.
All materials must be up to code, which means that you are going to need to invest in quality materials. And because you haven’t received training, you may find you need to repurchase these materials several times as you will inevitably make mistakes. In the end, it may be more expensive and more frustrating than hiring a professional.
- Quality
You can read up on currents and circuitry and tackle that codebook if you want to; however, when it comes to learning new things, mistakes are just part of the game. That’s fine if you are experimenting with things like new composting methods or a different way to apply paint, not great when dealing with electrical work.
You may be shocked about how much can go wrong in your novice hands, and since you lack the training, the quality of the repair is going to be subpar at best.
- Following Code
As mentioned above, all materials must be up to code, and they also must be installed to code. This means that you are going to need to invest a good chunk of time studying the regulations. To properly do a residential electrical job, you need to know a good bit about your state and county laws concerning code and install rules.
Considering that electricians study for five years to acquire this knowledge, it is not a weekend job.
- Efficiency
Taking your time to puzzle things out is fine when you are making your custom bird feeders, spending that much time on the electrical issue in your house isn’t typically an option.
If you add it all up – factoring in acquiring materials, reading up on circuitry, attempting to digest code, and then however long it takes you to make heads or tails of the project, typically won’t be saving you anything, money, or time.
It is much more prudent to have a professional come in and do a same-day fix, rather than try and tinker with an issue over a couple of weeks and possibly accidentally make it worse in the process.
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