Seasonal Electrical Upkeep for Columbus Homes

Columbus weather is hard on a house’s wiring. Spring brings thunderstorms and wet basements. Summer keeps the air conditioner running for months. Fall adds space heaters and long evenings under the lights, and winter can bring an ice storm that takes the power out for days. A few checks each season catch small problems before the weather finds them.

Most of these are a homeowner’s jobs: pressing test buttons, looking things over from the ground, keeping cords and heaters where they belong. Anything that means opening the panel or changing wiring is an electrician’s.

Tick Off This Season’s Electrical Checks

Every job on these lists is safe for a homeowner: nothing inside the panel, no bare wires.

Which season are you getting ready for?

Spring Summer Fall Winter

Show the Season’s List

Choose a season and press “Show the Season’s List” for jobs you can tick off as you go.

Who Handles Each Job, Season by Season

The bigger seasonal jobs split between what a homeowner can safely do and what needs an electrician, and now and then the utility.

Seasonal electrical jobs

Season	Task	Homeowner or electrician	Why it matters
Spring	Look over the service wires, the mast and the meter from the ground after storms	Homeowner looks; the utility handles its wires and an electrician repairs the mast	A bent mast or a loose weatherhead lets water into the meter base and the panel
Spring	Test the GFCI outlets outdoors, in the garage and in the basement	Homeowner, with an electrician for any that fail	Rain finds cracked covers, and an outdoor GFCI that won’t reset often has water in its box
Summer	Watch for lights that dim when the air conditioner starts	Homeowner notices; an electrician checks the connections and the service size	A short dip is a big motor starting; a deep or growing one can mean a loose neutral or a service too small for the load
Summer	Add surge protection before thunderstorm season	Electrician	Storm surges, and the AC cycling all summer, wear down the control boards in appliances
Fall	Test smoke alarms and change the backup batteries in hardwired ones	Homeowner tests; an electrician wires new or interconnected alarms	Heating season brings more house fires, and alarms past ten years old should be replaced
Fall	Check outdoor lights, timers and the outlets you use for holiday lights	Homeowner, with an electrician for a new outdoor circuit	Longer evenings put outdoor circuits to work, and wet cords trip GFCIs
Winter	Before an ice storm, charge phones, find the flashlights and know where the main breaker is	Homeowner	Ice-laden limbs bring down lines, and an outage can last days
Winter	Have a generator hookup in place before you need it, through a transfer switch or an interlock	Electrician installs; homeowner runs the generator	A generator plugged into a wall outlet can send power back onto the utility’s lines
Winter	Keep space heaters on their own wall outlets, away from curtains and bedding	Homeowner, every time a heater comes out	One heater can draw most of a 15-amp circuit, and shared outlets and cords overheat

Air Conditioning Load and Lights That Dim

An air conditioner’s compressor pulls a burst of current for a moment as it starts. In a house with tight connections and a service sized for the load, the lights barely notice. In an older Columbus house running central air on a 100-amp service sized before air conditioning was common, or with a neutral connection that has loosened over the years, that burst shows up as lights that dip every time the AC kicks on.

A short, faint dip is normal. A deep dip, one that is getting worse, or lights that brighten as well as dim point to a loose connection, and loose connections run hot. Have it looked at before the hottest weeks of the summer.

Our dining room light would dim every time the AC kicked on, so we had Frank take a look. He checked the panel and found a loose neutral and tightened everything up. He explained why a big motor starting can show up as dimming elsewhere in the house…

Window units add load of their own. Plug each one straight into a wall outlet, keep it off extension cords and power strips, and if a breaker trips when two run at once, move one to a different circuit.

Connecting a Generator Without Backfeeding the Grid

Ice storms bring the outages that last. If a portable generator is part of the plan, the way it connects to the house matters as much as its size.

There are two safe ways to connect one. A transfer switch is a small panel beside the main one: its switches move chosen circuits from utility power to generator power, and the house can never be fed by both at once. A panel interlock is a sliding plate on the main panel that lets the generator’s breaker turn on only after the main breaker is off. Either one connects to the generator through an outdoor inlet and a heavy cord made for it, and either one normally needs a permit.

The unsafe way is a cord with a plug on each end, run from the generator to a wall outlet. It pushes power back through the panel and out onto the utility’s lines, where it can injure a line worker who believes the wire is dead. It can also overheat the cord and the outlet, and damage the generator when the utility’s power comes back.

Polaris Electric installs generator hookups. Planning one starts with the circuits that matter most in an outage: the furnace, the refrigerator, the sump pump and a few lights.

When the power first fails, the generator comes second. The first steps in an outage start with finding out whether the whole street is dark and reporting it to your electric utility.

Storm Surges, Flicker, Generators and Wet Outlets

A Monthly Check of GFCI Outlets and Smoke Alarms

Makers of both recommend a monthly test. If that won’t happen, tie it to the clock changes in spring and fall. Bring a lamp or a plug-in tester.

1. Find every GFCI outlet: kitchen counters, bathrooms, the garage, the basement, the laundry area and outside. Some houses also have GFCI breakers in the panel, each with a TEST button.
2. Plug in the lamp or the tester and press TEST. The power should cut with a click.
3. Press RESET and check that the power comes back.
4. If a GFCI won’t trip, or won’t reset, stop using it and have it replaced.
5. Press and hold the test button on each smoke alarm until it sounds. With hardwired, interconnected alarms, every alarm in the house should sound together.
6. Replace backup batteries as the maker directs, and replace any alarm more than ten years old. The date is printed on the back.

A hardwired alarm that stays quiet while the others sound, or keeps chirping with a fresh battery, often has a wiring or interconnect fault. Smoke detector wiring is part of the work Polaris Electric does, from replacing old hardwired alarms to linking them so they sound together.