22 Lifesaving Electrical Safety Precautions You Probably Never Knew

When I was at my teenage years, my parents had this fun game. They decided a fixed total for the monthly Electricity Bill. Me, my sister and brother had the goal of minimizing our electrical usage to reduce the monthly Electricity Bill. That’s how I started to focus on Electricity … So, in this article I’ll throw you some simple electrical safety precautions which can save YOUR life in a moment.

If you’re wondering what happened to that fun game, yeah, all we had to do was cut-down our extra electrical usage, Or let’s call that wastage. In return, three of us can divide the remaining money after the month’s Electricity Bill was settled between me, my sister and brother.

Although money was quite a nice motivator to stay on mission, I learned a lot about how monthly bill was created, how many watt hours for a single Unit, common ways people waste electricity, safety rules to follow and so on …

Let’s dive into those lifesaving electrical safety precautions and rules I promised earlier. You probably don’t know or didn’t care, but keep these somewhere in your mind.

1. Don’t Overkill, Or Underkill?

Your safety in using electricity is ultra important as you’re not that fast to beat a potential electrocution. Fuse is annoying, but it protects the electrical appliances.

When replacing a blown fuse, make sure you strictly use a fuse with exact same ampere value. Not something exceeding nor something below the blown fuse. If you exceed, you’re breaking this electrical safety rule and risk damaging the whole device. On the other hand, if it’s below, you simply create yourself a loop of fuse switching.

That might be a little fun, if you’re into time loop movies. Haha!

2. Broke The Plug?

This electrical safety precaution can REALLY save your life, I’ve seen many construction workers use just 2 wires without a plug. This procedure is freaking dangerous and a cool way to die by electrocution.

Do not enter wires directly in to the plug socket.

If you or someone else accidentally touches the wires while connecting it to the plug socket, you get hurt.

3. Please Don’t Ignore Earth

Electrical appliances with metal covers or any cover made from a material that conduct electricity require the Earth connection. Not having it or it being broken can put you in danger, if something goes wrong.

Now go and check whether your appliances such as Computer, Microwave oven have a working Earth connection.

4. Regular CheckUps Are Useful

It doesn’t matter whether you have the best Trip Switch, if it doesn’t work as expected. World is so complex and anything could go wrong anytime. Trip Switch might have worked last month, but not this month.

Therefore regular Trip Switch checkups can make you confident you’re safe with another way. Now you aren’t doing this by getting yourself electrocuted stupidly. There’s a Test Button in every Trip Switch these days to make it easy. Just press the Test Button every couple of weeks.

Expected outcome is: Trip Switch goes down disconnecting the connection.

5. OFF, Attach, ON

No wonder you’ve heard people say “Ready . Aim . Fire” and the variation “Ready . Fire . Aim”, but you can’t do that with electricity unless you ignore electrical safety precautions. You might attach your phone charger while the switch is ON, but it can go wrong.

In safety standpoint, you should always OFF the switch before fitting any plugs to the base. Same happens for extension cords.

6. Did The World Stop?

You and I know our world stops awfully when there’s a power failure. However, world really doesn’t stop, but our minds say there’s nothing much you can do without electricity. Well, that’s incorrect!

Anyway, while you wait for the power to come back painfully, don’t forget to disconnect the plugs and switch OFF any lights. Common reason is if a heavy current or a low voltage supply comes when the power is back, it can harm your electrical devices.

While I’ve seen the low voltage thing myself, I haven’t experienced the heavy current thing yet. How about you?

7. Fire In The Wire

Badly completed house wiring and unexpected damages to wires plus electrical devices can consume high electrical current and then start a fire in the wires due to one of the effects of electric current. That’s because the wires are meant to supply specific range of current, not something exceeding than that.

In a situation like this, you best move is to disconnect the power supply through Main Switch as quickly as possible.

Electric Fire can cause you serious trouble unless stopped it the right way. It can also ruin your house wiring and electrical parts completely. Rewiring is a pain in the whole body. So what do you want? Following this safety rule or simply welcome the trouble? Yep! I’d signup for the safety rule.

8. Know Something Called, Disconnect?

When electrical appliances are not in use, make it a habit to disconnect their plugs from the plug base. Who knows what happens when you’re out … If it’s lightning and you’re not at home to unplug your favorite Gaming PC, but by the time you arrive, your house has been hit by a lighting strike.

You know it’s so simple these electrical safety precautions, but they do really help. Always Think Ahead, so you don’t just skip the safety rules over laziness.

9. You . Rubber Slippers . Friends

People who care their safety in using electricity makes themselves insulators by wearing dry rubber slippers. Even if you touched the Live Wire you don’t get yourself electrocuted this way.

However, if the current is HEAVY, know that rubber slippers can’t protect you.

When using appliances like electric iron, make sure to stand on a rubber carpet or wear rubber slippers.

10. Don’t Be an Elec-Gesturician

No one asked you to be the Know-It-All person, so if you don’t know how to be an electrician, then don’t do that. Doing this and that by guessing is fine for other stuffs, but not with electricity. There are many pitfalls unless you know what you’re doing.

For necessary maintenance and complex troubleshooting, always get the service of a trained electrician.

11. It’s Not a Good Time To Wet Yourself

Water and electricity go along, but not for the good, but for the bad. I mean don’t get yourself wet while touching wires Or when you are maintaining house wiring. It’s also good to wear rubber slippers.

12. Leeching Every Blood Drop is Bad

You know what, a Leech can only suck all the blood inside an animal, not more. This same thing happens with electrical part you often use and that is electrical outlet or plug socket. You might have all the electrical devices in the world with you.

However, you can only fit as much as the electrical outlet is meant to handle.

In other words, do not connect a bunch of electrical appliances consuming heavy amounts of electricity to the same plug socket using a multiplug or an extension cord. If you do, you’re just trying to beat the incoming supply by a huge demand and that’s becoming a huge problem in a flash.

You have Circuit Breakers with fixed ampere ratings. You can’t surpass that limit. In an absolutely wild case, where there’s no CBs setup, you’ll continue to enjoy the device attaching rampage till the wires start to overheat and fire begins.

So don’t be the stupid leech!

13. Main Switch Is For …

Oh sucks! Your room’s plug socket worked fine yesterday, but it’s not working today. No no! Don’t jump into unscrew it right away. Turn off the Main Switch, so you can kiss even the Live Wire while checking things, Or else your tongue will explode!

So, remember this safety rule to disconnect the power directly from Main Switch whenever you maintain the plug sockets, light adapters etc.

14. Insulated Stuffs

Every house should have a toolkit such as screwdrivers, testers etc. but they should not have broken covers. Same goes for electrical appliances. If the cover is broken, you could feel the taste of electricity running inside you.

This cover is insulated meaning no electric current will flow even if you touched it.

15. Yo, Stop Tripping!

While Test Button lets you manually trip it, same can happen automatically.

If the Trip Switch opens automatically, first open the Main Switch and now you close the Trip Switch. After that, close the Main Switch.

In the unlikely event where the Trip Switch opens again, it’s time for some troubleshooting. This happens due to a fault somewhere and the solution isn’t keep closing the Trip Switch.

Unplug all the electrical appliances connected via plug sockets. Then repeat the same steps above. It happens again? Now you could try opening each Circuit Breaker and repeating the same steps till you find which branch causes the problem.

Once you find that, remove all appliances attached and Switch OFF any lights. Rinse & repeat. Still happening? Now would be a good time to say yourself, “Oh, I’m Screwed”, because you need to get the help of an electrician at this point.

16. Wooden Ladders Don’t Tingle

While you can use metals with insulated covers to avoid potential electrocutions, there are other ways to do the same. You don’t need a steel or metal ladder to reach a wire or circuit in the ceiling, wooden ladders can be used for that.

As wood also does not conduct electricity, it can protect you.

17. Light The Tester

When troubleshooting connection or sockets, always use a Tester to check the Live connection. Tester will light if the wire it touches is the Live Wire. And you can use that same Tester whenever you want to fit a 2-pin plug to 3-pin socket.

18. Colors Can be Your Foe

Different countries have different color codes for the 3 wires namely Live, Neutral and Earth. So if you’re dealing with house wiring, this is one of the most important electrical safety rule to keep in mind.

Not aware of the color codes? Then you face the dangers of touching the Live Wire thinking that’s Neutral. Again you might connect the Live Wire with a Neutral Wire which can short-circuit the circuit causing the Circuit Breaker to open.

19. It’ll Throw The Evil Within

There is an electronic component known as Capacitor which can store electricity. Touching both pins of a charged capacitor will unleash the stored electricity through your body to earth. Yep! this is nothing to fear depending on the capacitor you touch.

However, there are bigger capacitors which can be enough to hurt you.

Then similar to that, CRT TVs and Monitors have a tube which charge once you plug it. If you see CRT TV or a Monitor unwrapped, don’t just go and touch the tube. This is more dangerous than a simple capacitor hurt. Therefore, let the charge to lose for a couple of minutes before touching the tube.

20. Not Big Enough

Sometimes your phone charger pins are not big enough, other times it might be the case where your multiplug holes are bigger. Whatever the reason, loosely attached plugs can spark.

You could lose your phone or the charger, if the plug is not tightly attached.

Here I took your phone charger as a quick example, this can occur in any electrical device which has a plug.

21. Grounded Earth

Broken Earth connection makes your Trip Switch useless instantly. Earth wire should fit to the Earth Rod which is properly dumped in the ground. Should I say the number of electrical hazards you get to face, when Trip Switch doesn’t work?

22. Why Electrocute Your Bed? … When Lightning

There were couple of incidents in my city where young boys found dead by electrocuted. Do you know what all of them did before the death?

Every boy was in his bed charging as well as using the smartphone while it was raining, thundering and lightning.

You might be in a bed or a chair that doesn’t conduct electricity, but the plug socket conducts electricity. So when a lightning strike hits your house, it can hurt you. Lightning strike is not as a quick electrocution, it’s much more dangerous.

Avoid charging as well as using phone, tabs, laptops or other handheld devices when lightning even you’re in the bed or sitting on a chair.

Hey, it’s over! What electrical safety precautions you knew, but didn’t bother to follow?