Electrician, Crofton MD
Written by Larry Cook

Future Proof Your Home With Top Electrical Trends – Part 2

Part 2 will cover two more top electrical trends for future proofing your home: Senior Friendly and Future Proof Wiring.

Senior Friendly

Homeowners living with baby boomers or older seniors will receive benefits from future proofing their homes. Specific electrical aspects can be modified to better accommodate seniors or physically disabled individuals. We will focus here on lighting and standby generators.

Properly lighting the interior and exterior areas of your home will help improve safety and security. Lighting should be correctly positioned and strong enough. However, lights should not be distracting or glaring, which might affect the movements of the older individuals.  

You should focus on adequately lighting those areas where a person needs to have more balance and agility when walking through. These include bathrooms, kitchens, and stairways. For example, light switches should be located at the bottom and top of stairways and both ends of a hallway.

Installing rocker type switches that can be activated even with an elbow if your hands are full promote safety. Nightlights can be utilized for lighting the way to a bedroom bathroom. Think about installing emergency lights at your home for exits, kitchens, and stairways in case utility power is lost.

The top way for protecting seniors when there is a power outage is having an emergency standby generator installed. Severe weather might lead to losing utility power for days. A generator unit can help ensure your senior loved ones stay comfortable during blackouts. In addition, lighting, heating, and cooling will remain available for your household. Needed assistive and medical devices will stay powered. Medicines seniors need that require refrigeration won’t spoil.

Future Proof Wiring

Homes that are several decades old were probably not wired to handle rapidly developing technology. Coping with modern power demands brought about by the electrical requirements of modern appliances, big screen TVs, computers, and HVAC systems may require electrical panel and wiring upgrades.

If you need to upgrade your home’s infrastructure, work only with a reputable licensed electrician. This professional will be able to install upgrades that will meet modern electrical demands sufficiently and safely for many years to come. Moreover, new Ethernet cabling might be needed for carrying broadband internet, which is needed for high definition video streaming such as 4K.

Electrical Peace of Mind

Providing professional electricians since 1988 in Maryland, Cook Electric is the company you can rely on for all your electrical service needs. For knowledgeable, fair, honest, reliable, and conscientious service, call Cook Electric today at (410) 266-9040. We will be very glad to help you.