Serving The Chicagoland Area Since 1998
When powerful storms roll in, they bring more than just heavy rain and strong winds—they often cause dangerous power surges and prolonged outages. But do you really need a generator in Evanston, IL? If your home isn’t prepared, you could be facing everything from damaged electronics to spoiled food, discomfort, and even safety concerns. That’s why two essential systems should be on every homeowner’s storm-prep checklist: a whole house generator and a whole house surge protector.
Our electricians in Chicago, IL provide many different services to help homes upgrade to modern electrical demands and the highest safety standards. One of the ways our electricians can improve household safety is with the installation of AFCI and GFCI outlets.
We’ve written before about these outlets, which you can easily recognize because they have buttons between the socket pairs marked TEST and RESET. In this post, we want to address what makes the two different and where we recommend having them installed in a house.
Spring is always a good time to make big plans regarding your HVAC and electrical needs for your house. As the weather becomes warmer, you’ll have a nice window of opportunity where you won’t be dealing with temperature extremes. You can schedule updates and upgrades to your heating and cooling systems. Another job you can take care of is to install that whole-house generator you keep meaning to get.
However, arranging for the installation of a whole-house generator in Chicago, IL isn’t as simple as pointing toward a unit and saying, “Let’s go with that one!” You have to make a few important decisions, such as what size (i.e. how powerful) a generator you need.
Any home that uses natural gas to power its appliances, from the heating system to the stove and range in the kitchen, must have carbon monoxide detectors installed strategically in different rooms. And all homes, regardless of what type of energy they use, need to have smoke detectors to alert the family in case a fire starts. It’s common today for most detectors to have both smoke detection and carbon detection abilities. If you don’t have proper detectors in place or need help finding the right places to have them installed, an electrician in Chicagoland can help you. Our electricians are experts at hardwiring smoke and CO detectors into homes to provide the best defense in case of carbon monoxide leaks and fires.
The recent polar vortex dropped Chicagoland into an extreme deep freeze, bottoming out the temperature at a record-breaking low. We hope you and your family made it through this intense weather—you’ve probably never loved your home heating system as much as you did during this time!
Now that the freeze of the vortex has passed, you may be thinking about what might have happened if the power went out in your home during the extreme cold. It’s not a pleasant thought. In fact, it’s bit terrifying. Unfortunately, extreme weather conditions are when power outages are most likely. During this warmer stretch of weather, you might be giving serious thought to having your home’s electrical power protected with a whole-house generator. This is great planning, and we offer professional services to install a whole-house generator in Wilmette, IL or elsewhere in Chicagoland. Don’t hesitate to call us to ask for more information.
Electricity is such a basic part of our lives that we rarely stop to think about all that it does for us. It’s simply always there when we flick on a switch, turn on an appliance, or plug in a phone or laptop to charge. But what if that electricity suddenly vanished? Stopped working and didn’t turn back on a few minutes later? What if it stayed off for hours or even days? Think about the impact an extended power outage like that would have on your life and on your family.
Unfortunately, long blackouts are a possibility during winter. Downed power lines, accidents at power plants, or grid failures can mean whole blocks going black for extended periods. You can’t prevent these power failures, but you can protect yourself with a generator.
One of the important jobs to have done before fall is over and the serious cold weather starts in is to have your home’s heating system maintained. One of our technicians will come to your house and give your furnace or other heater a thorough inspection and take care of necessary cleaning and adjustments. This helps ensure the best heater performance during the winter, with little chance of repair troubles and needless energy waste.
If you have a whole-house standby generator to protect your home in case of a power outage, you should also arrange for generator maintenance as part of your regular seasonal maintenance.
The temperatures in Chicago are dropping rapidly into the 30s and 20s, and of course it’s only going to get colder. We hope that you’ve already scheduled an inspection and tune-up for your heating system (it’s always best to have this arranged in the early fall) so that your heater can have an easy time for the rest of the season. But have you arranged for maintenance for your home’s standby generator? If you haven’t, call our generator specialists right away!
We’re still enjoying the summer weather, but now is also a good time to think ahead toward the end of the year and period when you may need to rely on your whole-house generator in case of an extended power outage. Sometime during the next few weeks is an excellent period to arrange for your annual generator maintenance.
If your home has an automatic standby generator, it’s essential that you schedule annual maintenance for it. After all, what good is an emergency generator that will see to your home’s electric needs during a power loss if you can’t count on it to actually work when the time comes? Regular generator maintenance is like and insurance policy for an insurance policy, essentially.
