Home Repair Safety Tips

Making your own repairs to your home saves you time, worry and money, but you must not overlook some safety concerns when performing these repairs. Below, we list some simple safety tips for homeowners that will be making their own DIY home repairs.

Heating and Cooling Repairs:

Always make sure that capacitors are discharged thoroughly when working on the electrical service box of an air conditioning or heating unit. Capacitors may still hold an electrical charge with enough electricity to kill a person even with the power turned off.

If you're working around gas lines, make sure not to damage them, as a gas leak make allow gas to build up and cause an explosion in your home. If you do damage a gas line, remove your family and yourself from the home immediately and call 911 to report the gas leak. A gas leak is definitely an emergency and requires quick action.

Electrical Repairs:

Always turn off electricity to the circuit you're working on. Never attempt for a moment to make a repair with electricity running through the circuit or it may be the last repair you'll ever make.

Remove jewelry, such as watches and necklaces when working around electricity. Try to always keep the odds in your favor. A dangling piece of metal touching a live circuit has the potential to draw electrical current right through your body.

Unless you really know what you're doing, do not work on any part of the circuit box in your home. Unless electricity has been turned off to the circuit box from outside the home, there is still electrical current running to the main circuit breaker. Even with the main turned off, there is still current running to the main switch.

Never work with electrical cords that are standing in water. The cord may have a break in the insulation surrounding the wire and cause serious electrical shock.

Plumbing Repairs:

When working on plumbing lines or plumbing fixtures in your home, make sure that the valve is closed to the line or fixture you'll be repairing. Some fixtures such as the bathroom toilet have their own cut-off valves, but even these are sometimes prone to failure.

Water traps in plumbing waste lines are designed to hold water that prevents sewer gases from entering the home. Sewer gases can build up quickly in a home when repairing waste lines where the trap has been removed. Always cover any waste lines completely where a trap has been removed temporarily.

When using caustic drain cleaners, be very careful if they do not unclog the drain. The drain cleaners will still be in the water and use of a plunger or other tool may splash the drain cleaner into your eyes or on your skin causing serious harm.

Repairing your home can be a fun and educational experience. Follow the simple safety tips above and may all of your future home repairs be safe ones.

To learn more information about home repairs and auto repairs, visit our website where you'll find tips, hints and guides for assorted do it yourself projects.