If your house was built within the past few years, it must, by law, be equipped with Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters, or GFIs. If it isn’t, you are leaving yourself and your family vulnerable to dangerous electric shocks. What’s a GFI? Essentially it’s a very sensitive circuit breaker. Installed in your electric line, a GFI senses and compares the current flowing through the hot (black) wire and the neutral (white) wire.
Generally electric plugs last a long time, but even they have to be replaced sooner or later. Fortunately, plug replacement is probably the easiest electrical job you can tackle, next to changing a light bulb.
Are you looking for the easiest way to join two or more electrical wires together? It has to be the wire nut. But don’t be fooled. As easy as wire nuts are to use, it’s still possible to use them incorrectly. And when that happens, the results can range from the annoying (say a ceiling fixture that won’t work) to the disastrous.
One of the biggest reasons for the popularity of cordless electric tools has to be the extension cord. Sure, extension cords get power where you need it, but along the way, they can cause a variety of problems. They can snag, hang up and unplug, just as you reach the top of a ladder. Undersized cords can cause voltage drops, reducing the power of your tools, making them overheat.