Cold Alert

The Blackest and Darkest Part of the Year

What’s the best action I can take to ensure my house is safe from a winter fire emergency?

Get a Sharpe Group electrician to test and inspect your household electrics and wiring. They will also confirm you have the latest type of circuit breakers and the best quality safety switches. These are your first line of defence if something fails in your wiring.

What causes wiring failures?

A range of issues that can include vermin chewing through cabling or people overloading circuits by plugging in too many appliances to a single power point. If your house is more than 25 years old and you don’t know if it has ever been inspected, don’t delay. It’s also worth having any appliance that is older than five years examined.

Someone told me there’s been a lot of news about house fires around Adelaide in the past couple of weeks?

Just last week in Elizabeth South an electrical fault caused $20,000 of damage in just 30 minutes. It took 15 MFS firefighters using four appliances 10 minutes to control and another 10 minutes to fully extinguish it. Early last week a Christie Downs house was destroyed by a heater fire, the third such blaze MFS crews have dealt with around Adelaide in just 10 days.

Are there warning signs of danger before a blaze?

If your system is up to standard you get warnings such as circuit breakers and safety switches tripping. But the simple message is: if there is any doubt about your home’s electricity and the components fitted, contact Sharpe as soon as possible. For a fixed fee our technicians can do a full safety check of a house, examining everything from down lights, power points and smoke detectors to earthing and load checks on the switchboard.