| Electrical System and Solutions |
 Vander Hyde is ready 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to deal with any issue. Let our Friendly, Courteous, Highly Trained Staff handle your project, giving you the peace of mind that comes from knowing the project is done to the highest standards of quality & craftsmanship.
Everything from Electrical Service Upgrades; New Construction Projects; Remodel Projects; Emergency Storm Repairs; Lighting Control, Service Calls, and Generator Installations & Repairs. Vander Hyde can handle any project, at anytime.
Vander Hyde also offers Standby Generator Maintenance Plans & Inspection Services for your existing Standby Generator. As a Generator Maintenance Plan Client a 10% discount applies to all HVAC, Electrical, & Plumbing Service Calls during the duration of your enrollment in the Standby Generator Maintenance Plan. |
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| Is your Service Adequate? |
| Many older homes still operate with seriously outdated 60-amp electrical service —and sometimes with just a few fuses or circuit breakers to protect the entire system. Newer homes often have 100-amp service panels, but even this minimum requirement set by many current codes may fall short of your present or future needs. Consider upgrading service to 150 or 200 amps. |
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| Federal Pacific Electric |
 "Stab-Lok" service panels and breakers are a latent hazard and can fail to trip in response to over current, leading to electrical fires. The breakers may also fail to shut off internally even if the toggle is switched to "off." Some double-pole (240-Volt) FPE circuit breakers and single-pole FPE Stab-Lok circuit breakers simply do not work safely.
There are other panel-defects independent of the breaker problems, panel and panel-bus fires and arcing failures in some equipment. The failure rates for these circuit breakers were and still are significant. Failures are documented in the CPSCstudy and by independent research. It's the exceptions that cause fires. An FPE circuit breaker will appear to "work just fine" in passing along current to the circuit it feeds, until there is an over current, short circuit, or similar condition.
When those exceptional conditions occur, this equipment fails to protect the circuit and the building from overheating and fires, in some cases at a failure rate around 60% of the time. It is possible that some breakers may perform with adequate reliability, possibly those manufactured after the companies discovered safety defects and improper practices in listing the product.
In the absence of an explicit statement from the manufacturer and/or the US CPSC indicating that newer stock equipment is defect free, and considering that defects occur in both breakers and the panels themselves, and finally, that testing showed failures in both in-use equipment and new off-the-shelf devices, consumers must decide whether to replace these panels with newer equipment. |
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| Aluminum Wiring |
 Used in some homes from the mid 1960's to the early 1970's, is a potential fire hazard. How safe is aluminum wiring? According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, fires and even deaths have been reported to have been caused by this hazard. Problems due to expansion, or more likely micro-fretting and arcing at the connectors, can cause overheating at connections between the wire and devices (switches and outlets) or at splices. The connections can become hot enough to start a fire without ever tripping a circuit breaker!
CPSC research shows that "homes wired with aluminum wire manufactured before 1972 are 55 times more likely to have one or more connections reach "Fire Hazard Conditions" than are homes wired with copper. "Post 1972" aluminum wire is also a concern. Introduction of the aluminum wire "alloys" in 1972 time frame did not solve most of the connection failure problems. Aluminum wiring is still permitted and used for certain applications, including residential service entrance wiring and single-purpose higher amperage circuits such as 240V air conditioning or electric range circuits. The fire risk from single purpose circuits is much less than for branch circuits.
It's not necessarily because of a "new alloy" as some folks assert. It's because there are enormously fewer connections (four or six rather than 30 or 40 per circuit) and thus statistically a smaller chance of a connection failure. These connections do still burn up, as indicated by field reports. |
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| Size for extra demand. |
| If you're installing a major electrical appliance, like an electric wall oven, a microwave oven, a double-wide refrigerator or central air-conditioning, you'd better think about the additional power it may need. While a salesman or installer might tell you that your system can handle the load, be smart and ask your electrician for a second opinion. |
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| Consider special needs. |
| Different rooms in a home serve different purposes—an important consideration when you're planning improvements, especially where electrical work is involved. Family rooms, home offices and home theaters generally need more circuits, more outlets, and power-surge protection. Outlets in kitchens, baths, garages and outdoor areas require ground-fault circuit interrupters, or GFCIs. And you don't have to wait for a major renovation to add protection—you can install many safety devices yourself, such as outlet caps, switch guards and wire shields in nurseries and children's playrooms. |
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