What is the role of Residential Electricians?

What do residential electricians do?

Electricians are tradespeople who complete electrical work for a property. This can include planning and installing brand new electrical wiring systems, or making changes to existing electrical components such as lighting, plugs, or power boards. They are highly skilled people whose typical responsibilities include:

Reading electrical, architectural, and mechanical drawings

Electrical systems are complicated, and in order to make changes or repairs to a system, an electrician must be able to read and understand any technical drawings to hand. These might be electrical drawings, mechanical drawings, or drawings from the architect.

Planning electrical systems, and installing them

A common job for residential electricians is wiring a new home. They will need to investigate and understand the following:

• The number of people living in the property, and how much electricity they are likely to be using. This will determine the wiring and power needed for the property.
• To determine the location of the outlets, they need to know which appliances are likely to be used, and where. This includes extra electricity needed for power-hungry systems such as large home theatres.
• The homeowner may be carbon-conscious and want to install solar panels.
• Custom lighting such as dimmers and LED-based control panels may be installed.

Installing lighting, plugs, powerboards, cables, smoke alarms, circuit breakers, and more

Domestic electricians will need to install common household fittings, for example, lights. When installing a new light, they must understand the parts needed, the amount of power needed, how to wire it, as well as the standard safety procedures to protect themselves and prevent the electrical system from overloading.

Finding electrical faults and fixing them

If a home’s electricity system has failed, an electrician will need to identify the source of the problem and repair it. They may need to check fuses, test for power with voltmeters, check for electrical continuity, and work through a whole list of other tests before being able to identify the problem.

Testing, repairing, and maintaining electrical equipment

Certain places need to have their electrical equipment tested, to ensure their safety and protect the people using them. These include factories, workshops, places of work, hotels, commercial cleaning equipment, and more. An electrician must complete a “test and tag” process for every piece of equipment being used, which must be re-tested after a recommended period of time, depending on where the equipment is being used. For example, a building site should have its equipment re-tested every three months.

If a piece of electrical equipment does fail, the electrician must also be able to troubleshoot the problem and repair it, in addition to completing any regular maintenance work that it may need.

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