Woody Hayes was the coach at The Ohio State University between 1951 and 1978. One of the things he was best known for was a grind-it-out style of football known as “three yards and a cloud of dust.” He said on more than one occasion, “There are only three things that can happen when you pass the ball (incompletion, interception or completion), and two of them are bad.”
It sounds a lot like working on the electrical system of your home if you aren’t a trained, qualified electrician.
When it comes to performing electrical maintenance, repair, or custom work, perhaps you can expand the possibilities of Professor Hayes’s words a bit more. Let’s run down the list. You can:
- Electrocute yourself or a loved one who could die or be permanently disabled
- Catch your house on fire and lose everything else as well
- Not fix the issue and not know why so you try other things leading to possibility #1 above
- Damage your electrical system to the point that you need professional help anyway
- Fix the problem or complete the addition but not know if the way you set it up could be a ticking time bomb
Sounds like discretion might be the better part of valor here. Not enough to discourage you, you say? OK, how about these numbers.
In the 15 years between 2003 and 2018, nearly 3000 qualified electrical professionals died from being electrocuted. Approximately 36,000 more were injured. These were professional electricians. That means that even if you are an experienced professional that someone regularly hires to do intricate electrical work, you run a significant risk just doing your job.
At Mr. Electric of Chapel Hill, we work every day repairing and installing electrical systems. We are trained and certified so that we know the risks and how to minimize them. We see a huge variety of different kinds of setups. This experience helps us prevent accidents and give your home a safe, secure electric grid so you can sleep well at night.
Electricity is unforgiving. The cost of a mistake is high. When something bad happens, it’s not like in the cartoons where the character ends up crispy around the edges and in the next scene he’s all better. Even if you are willing to take the risk, is it worth risking the ones you love? If you die, you leave others behind. If you end up permanently maimed, your loved ones will pay the cost of looking after you. Think of them. Do yourself a favor and calls us before you get in over your head.
