Tips To Maintain Electrical Safety In Your Home And Your Neighbourhood Community

Keeping residential electrical installations in perfect condition can become a valuable prevention tool. One should always know how to resolve electrical installation damage that may occur from natural disasters such as thunderstorms, floods or earthquakes. If you want to save yourself from the worse, the best thing to do is to be careful in the day to day, and know how to avoid electrical hazards, such as short circuits, fire and even material and personal damage.

To prevent these incidents, it is essential to plan the maintenance of the electrical installations. Likewise, one must think and review carefully the correct health and safety procedures to follow. Here are some of the most important tips when working with electricity:

Privilege security

Before starting any work, you must go to the place where the electricity distribution box is located, normally called "load center". In these boxes are the thermomagnetic or differential switches that protect the circuits of the house. Once this box is located, you must proceed to '' turn off '' those switches, so that electrical power cannot circulate through the wires of the house. Some houses do not have a load center, in those cases, we must disconnect the main switch, which is usually on a low wall in front of the house.

Avoid excessive use of extensions

It is not advisable to abuse this resource since it is the most common cause of short circuit due to heating. The same applies to the use of multi contacts since they can generate an overload. It is advisable to use a contact for each application. In this regard, it must be borne in mind that temporary electrical installations can cause electric shock and fire.

Respects the separation of lighting circuits and special outputs

As the overloads are so dangerous, the lighting circuits and the special output circuits in the houses are separated. Do not try to connect, for example, an air conditioner to the common circuit of the house. It must have its own circuit due to the higher load it needs.

Always work without electrical energy

Even when we have to change a lamp we must be careful, disconnecting the plug from the contact, replace the lamp and then try again.

Keep the artefacts in perfect condition

Never use appliances with bare wires, broken ends, damaged plugs or damaged lamp holders.

Beware of the presence of water and electricity

This combination means that both the kitchen and the bathroom are dangerous areas for using electrical appliances. In the bathroom, the use of the hairdryer is dangerous. Also, being barefoot in critical areas, such as the kitchen, near the refrigerator or electric ovens or microwaves, carries an unnecessary risk. This is equally applicable when manipulating extensions in the house. You have to put on shoes and dry your hands well before starting the task. And, of course, do not touch electrical equipment in the shower or during an immersion bath. To avoid the risk of electrocutions in damp areas of homes, the regulations of several countries have made the use of ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI) mandatory.

Disconnect the appliances correctly

Finally, never disconnect an electrical equipment (vacuum cleaners, lamps, among others) pulling the cable, since there is a risk of detaching the ends of the cord and producing shorts.

Through these tips. The work in small electrical repairs will make your installation more efficient and the security of the home regarding the use of electricity will keep the family safe from accidents.

13 Home Plans You Should See Before Designing Your Home

To contribute a little bit with your inspiration, if you are planning the construction of your new home, if you do not know how to explain to the  architect what you want or simply because you are collecting ideas for when you specify your dream.

We all know the architectural plans, but sometimes it becomes difficult to understand them: the architects and engineers fill them with data and numbers, with symbols that only they understand and what we think is a cover can be only the level where the measurements are indicated of the land. So nothing better than observing a raised plane, as if the house was built to a certain level, to know how the walls are being moved, where the doors are, what the corridors are and what the rooms would look like.

We invite you to continue and surprise yourself.

1. A House In Detail

This house is on two floors and in this image we show you the first one. Each element, structure and furniture is careful to detail and has been thought of everything: a room for visitors, a family room, dining room, kitchen, stairs, a bedroom, garage and garden.

2. First Floor With Bedrooms

The upper floor is beautiful. It has three bedrooms, bathrooms, a terrace and many details in wood. This element makes it a project that promises a lot of charm and warmth.

3. Small And Functional

This little house is very small but has everything you need to live comfortably: it has a dining room and kitchen sharing the space with a living room, a niche for television, even a terrace to share! The private area is kept away from the view of the visits, two full bathrooms and two bedrooms complement the distribution.

4. When There Is Enough Space

This house is directly entered into a large social area, with a nice room and an elegant dining room, and then leads to the semi-private area, which overlooks the kitchen with a large dining room, a small family room and the lobby towards the stairs.

5. The Distribution Of The Social Area

In this image we can see how certain areas are privatised and separated by means of light elements. The first case is to enter, we are located in a hall that separates us from the room through a bookseller, maintaining some privacy. The other is the lattice that separates the room from the distribution of the bedrooms and bathroom, creating a corridor in the center and generating intimacy in that area.

6. An Apartment That Takes Advantage Of The Best Distribution

In this house, the main entrance does not lead us to the room, but it leads us through a corridor through which we cross the bedrooms and the bathrooms, to finally reach the living room, the dining room and the kitchen, always having as background a beautiful terrace on the other side of the window.

7. A More Open Distribution

In this case, we also go to the social area through a corridor, but the arrival is almost immediate, and the large room opens to the center of the building, distributing the bedrooms to one side and ending with a shared terrace between the room and the main bedroom

8. Wide Space

This residential and commercial properties covering Essex presents a much more proportionate distribution, wide and open. After crossing the door you will reach a large room where the kitchen, living room and dining room are located, leading to a small private terrace. It only has one bedroom and one bathroom, but they are large and quite well-organised.

9. Playing With Spaces

This house has a master bedroom with its own bathroom and dressing room, a secondary bedroom and a cosy reception, a large room that shares the area with the dining room and kitchen.

10. Compact But Bright

In this residence, a corridor leads us to the shared room with the dining room and the kitchen, privatising the bedrooms and the bathroom, keeping the areas independent.

11. A Complicated Design

If you like to play with spaces and break angles, this design is great, daring and very attractive. Use cuts at 45 degrees to break the monotony of the four walls and, by means of a turn, a diagonal corridor brings us closer to the kitchen and the living room, while the bedrooms with their bathrooms and dressing rooms are distributed in angular spaces but very functional

12. A Simple View

On this floor we can see only the distribution of spaces, with all the freedom to decide what to designate in each one. The cabinets and bathrooms are easy to identify, now it's up to you to decide where to put the master bedroom.

13. A Beautiful Facade

And finally, we say goodbye with the 3D view of a facade, so that you put face to the design you have chosen. Remember that the volumetry of the exterior depends on the interior layout, and the charm of the designer depends on the creativity of the designer.

Decoration Ideas: Basic Tips For Furnishing Your New Home

It is never easy to face an empty house, but with these tips you will get to enjoy decorating your home with your family. When we buy a house we face the hard task of furnishing it. We propose several ideas so that this moment that has to be of happiness does not turn into a nightmare.

First of all, do not be overwhelmed. The house does not have to have all the details ready at the moment of entering to live in her. It is a process that must be done in the medium term. The important thing is to have the kitchen furnished, part of the living room and part of what the bedrooms or your luxuriousbathrooms in Essex will be. The rest can wait. Involves the family. Each one has his little hobbies, his little whims and his own way of seeing space. Let everyone think, process the information..., and the decoration of your home will be a success.

Step 1. Collect information and file ideas. Forget about the traditional method; that happens by trimming photos and keep them without order in folders, because it does not work. How about building an album of ideas here where you can then be inspired to decorate your home?

Step 2. Define which style is the one you like the most or the one you feel most comfortable with. The most normal thing is that you do not identify with a specific style, but you like certain aspects of different styles. Nothing happens! Archive all those ideas on your computer. They will be a good starting point to start decorating your new home.

Step 3. If you have already selected several images of that style that you like so much, it is time to look again one by one and analyze if that decoration can be moved to your home. This is the time to sit down and think.

Step 4. Define a budget. If you already have a little clearer what you want, it is time to analyze how much money you will allocate to the furniture or to the reform, in case it is necessary.

Step 5. Hands to work. It's time to draw a plane. It is a difficult but necessary step, since taking measures is the only way to know that everything we are thinking about buying will fit without any problem. With this step we avoid last minute surprises, either because we do not enter everything we have bought, or on the contrary, we should be cautious and the result should be too empty.

Step 6. Once we have the style, the ideas, the budget and the distributed space, it is time to decide the color palette for the walls, the ceiling and the furniture. For the roof it is advisable to always use white. It is on the walls where we can play with different tones and textures. Generally, we think of painting, but if we look for something different we can also think, for example, of putting wallpaper or vinyl.

Step 7. We go shopping! This is the most complicated step, since there are many options in the market. One of them, and increasingly interesting, is doing it online. It is comfortable. To the reticent... Have you ever touched the countertop in your kitchen before it was installed? And the lamps? In any case, it is always better to sin by default than by excess, that is, it is better at first to buy the basics, the essential pieces, and, with the passage of time, you will be completing the furniture.

Step 8. The complements are in charge of giving the final touch to our decoration. They will make the spaces warmer and more welcoming. When we talk about accessories, we refer to curtains, cushions, carpets, paintings, vases, photographs... Everything necessary to make the decoration less cold and much more personal.