ElectricMasters is the go-to electrician in Cincinnati for a variety of reasons. To name a few, we are licensed and experienced, we have a solid reputation, and we don’t charge our clients an arm and a leg either. While we are pleased to be able to help so many home and business owners throughout Cincinnati, we remain aware that a good number of people in the area elect to either “DIY” electrical work or hire a neighborhood “handyman” to try to save a quick buck.

It’s March of 2020. For people reading this in March of 2020, you already know what that means. For any folks who may have digitally unearthed this article months or years from now, we’ll clue you in — Coronavirus, the unprecedented, microscopic scourge of the earth, is sweeping across the globe as we write to our dear readers here in Cincinnati.

But whether you are in Cincinnati, another part of the United States, or elsewhere on the planet, it’s a strange time for all of us because we don’t know what the future holds. People are panic-buying toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and, strangely in some places, perishable foods. We suppose that’s a good sign, because it’s not yet reached the true panic buying stage, where people are concerned with their survival.

So, as far as we are concerned, go ahead and continue to buy up the bananas and bread, folks!

Don’t Be Left In The Dark

ElectricMasters is among Cincinnati’s top electricians because we know what we are doing. This isn’t our first rodeo, although we can’t claim to have experienced anything quite like what is unfolding here in early 2020. That said, we are your go-to electrician if you have any electrical problems, commercial or residential.

electricity! Seeing as how it’s in our name, ElectricMasters, we thought we might take the opportunity to dispense a bit of industry knowledge for our readers.

As Cincinnati’s top electricians, most of our time is taken up by handling the commercial and residential needs in our service area, which extends into Northern Kentucky, we’d like to add. However, any time we get the chance to pound out a blog about “DIYing” some electrical work (and why it’s probably a bad idea), why HVAC maintenance is so important, or something related, we’ll gladly take the time to do so!

While most of our blogs are practical in nature, today’s is more entertaining in its intent. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this blog with fun facts about electricity and electrical work from Yours Truly here at ElectricMasters!

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ELECTRICITY

• Electricity travels at faster than 186,000 miles per second. If you didn’t know, that’s the speed of light.
• Your body has its own electrical system: the heart. The heart contains a specialized group of cells which generate their own electricity, effectively causing the heart to beat.
• Did you know that static electricity is the responsible agent in print and photocopying documents? It’s static electricity which attracts the toner or ink to the paper. The same thing happens for other devices as well — including air conditioners when the air filters capture dust!
• Most people will tell you that Benjamin Franklin was the first person to “discover” electricity, but this is far from the truth. Franklin did conduct several experiments which served to establish a more concrete understanding of the connection between lightning and electricity, but it was the ancient Greeks who noted that when amber and fur are rubbed together, they are attracted to one another. This, as you might be able to guess, is static electricity. The Greeks discovered this some 600 years before the Common Era!
• Similarly, it was not Thomas Edison who invented the first light bulb. He did invent the first light bulb that stayed illuminated for longer than merely a few seconds. This isn’t to say that Edison wasn’t influential; his research and discoveries informed the invention of thousands of products and applications, many of which are essential to how society operates today.
• Electricity can come from many sources, but perhaps the most interesting source can be found in Albertville, France. It is there that the people make electricity from Beaufort cheese. That’s right folks, cheese. You see, the thing about Beaufort cheese is that it doesn’t use whey in its production. Instead, bacteria are added to remove the whey, which in turn releases a by-product of biogas. The gas is utilized to heat water which creates energy. To be precise, the water gets up to 194 degrees Fahrenheit, which produces 2800 MWhr / year of electricity. That’s worth a trip to Albertville in its own right!
• LED bulbs are much more efficient than conventional light bulbs. In fact, they use just about one-sixth of the electricity when compared with traditional light bulbs. They cost roughly a quarter as much to use and last a whopping 40 times (!) longer.
• So, someone, somewhere, out there, took the time to calculate how much power it would take to power a human being for a day based on a calorie to Joule’s conversion rate of 1 to 4.2. It would take 648 AA batteries to make it 24 hours!
• You can’t get electrocuted and live to tell the tale. Why? Electrocution is fatal by definition, so be sure to amend your language to something like, “I was nearly electrocuted when I was a child and messed with that outlet.” Hopefully you don’t have to tell too many stories of that nature, however!
• Speaking of electrocution, have you ever thought about why it is that birds don’t get killed when they sit on a power line? Surely you have seen one or two dead birds hanging on a power line at different times, so what exactly is happening here? It has to do with electrical currents. If a bird is only sitting on one power line, it will be fine. It’s when a body part touches a separate line that causes issues. Doing so creates a circuit, which in turn causes electricity to flow through the body of the bird. This, as you can probably guess, results in electrocution, which as we now all know is fatal.
• Pedal-powered cinemas exist in Africa, out of necessity. One person sits down on a cycle and goes to work so that everyone else can watch a film which hundreds can enjoy. This is used in schools in Africa where they do not have electricity.
• Google, that hideous beast, actually doesn’t use too much in terms of energy. It accounts for .013 percent of the world’s energy usage, which is still fairly significant when you realize that that is enough to continuously power 200,000 homes.
• Coal still produces the most energy in the world. But how does it happen? Coal has to be burned in furnaces which heat up water. The heated water produces steam which spins turbines. The turbines are attached to generators which convert the locomotion into energy ready to be distributed.
• This one is a bit discouraging: idle power uses more electricity than all of the solar panels in America combined! In the typical home in the United States, some 75 percent of the electricity used to power electronics is used while the products are turned off or idling. For instance, the Sony PlayStation 3 uses roughly 200 watts — when it’s idle and active.
• Energy wasn’t always called energy, in the modern sense anyway. It was Thomas Young who coined the term as it relates to power usage. It replaced the traditional term of the time, vis viva, which meant “living force.”
• We’ve established the fact that it takes quite a bit of energy to meet the global demands of earth’s population — but on the other hand, that “quite a bit” is relative; enough sunlight hits the surface of the earth every minute to satisfy the world’s energy needs for an entire year!
• Here’s our final fact for the day: a volt is the unit of measurement used to describe electric potential energy. Just a single spark might measure up to 30,000 volts, while a bolt of lightning can reach up to 3 million. One bolt of lightning could light up over 200,000 homes!

It’s been a little while since we’ve had the opportunity to blog here at ElectricMasters, your go-to licensed electrician in Cincinnati. In fact, it’s been since the middle of the summer. In those summer blogs, we highlighted the full range of electrical services we offer in Cincinnati and beyond, why HVAC maintenance plans make so much sense, and even a more basic question — why should you hire an electrician in the first place?

We’d encourage you to go back and read through those posts when you get the chance, but for the purposes of today’s blog, we are going to shift gears a bit. You see, we want to let our own work do our marketing for us. But, seeing as how our work can’t exactly speak for itself, we figured it would be appropriate for our satisfied customers to reveal the level of customer service and general quality we perform each job with.

WHY REVIEWS MATTER TO US

Before we dive head-first into the reviews we want to showcase in today’s blog, we’d like to write a word or two regarding why exactly it is that reviews, and our reputation more generally, matter so much to us.

From a general stance, it’s easy to grasp that online reviews matter a good deal to any business’ viability in 2019; it’s a primary way consumers get information about which businesses are trustworthy. But beyond that surface level, we think of our reputation as the lifeblood of our company. Whether it’s expressed on Google, Yelp, or simply between neighbors, we recognize that the quality of our work impacts our future success. It’s a helpful reminder to us that there are ripple effects for every job we complete with excellence — and that helps us be consistent and passionate about the work we do.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? If you choose Electric Masters, the best electrician in Cincinnati, just mention this website and/or blog and you will receive a discounted $59 service call.

Is that all the convincing it took? Great!

Ah, some of you want more — understandable. In that case, read on, because not only are we the best electricians in Cincinnati, but we are also the best electricians that blog. Why would we care about blogging? To answer the many questions that folks, such as yourself, frequently ask to the search engines that be, of course! For instance, you’ve made your way to this blog after asking why you should hire an electrician, haven’t you?

Exactly.

If you have an electric emergency in or around Cincinnati, we have 24/7 emergency electrical services available. While we’d be pretty surprised if you DID have an emergency and went looking for a local electrical contractor with the query, “why should I hire an electrician?”, it’s technically not impossible, so we wanted to cover our bases.

Now, without further ado, we’ll cease and desist with the meandering so that we can comprehensively answer the question the title of this blog has raised. Let’s dive in.

Whether you live on the Kentucky side or the Ohio side of the Tri-State border, Electric Masters is the licensed electrician with the experience you need to get the job done. But what is the job in the first place?

Excellent question! We aren’t sure what kind of electrical services you need. They might be residential or commercial in nature. They might have to do with a new construction project. It might even be an emergency issue that requires a Cincinnati electrician to come out to solve a 2 AM electrical emergency! There are plenty of electrical hazards that can cause electrical emergencies out there, so it certainly wouldn’t be the first time when something like that has happened!

As the title of our blog already revealed, the rest of today’s blog concerns highlighting the full scope of electrician services we provide at Electric Masters. We are passionate and experienced about what we do — that’s exactly why we want to describe what it is that we do in greater detail!

That being said, sit back, relax, and see if our breadth of electrical services will suffice for the project/repair you have in mind!

We are back with another blog about all things electricity and electrician-related! Over the past several months, we’ve been focusing most of our energy on discussing HVAC repair, maintenance, installation, and other related subjects.

But, after all, our name is ElectricMasters, so we feel the need to get back to our bread-and-butter service. That said, today’s blog is all about offering up some interesting, random, entertaining, and perhaps even some practically useful facts regarding electricity and electricians. Usually, we’ll hone in on the “practical” side of things, with blogs about HVAC maintenance tips for your 2019 spring cleaning, why regular HVAC maintenance in Cincinnati is crucial, or even a few signs you need a new electrician.

So, in the spirit of variety, we are going to shift gears a little bit in today’s blog! Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of listing of the aforementioned fun facts, however, allow us a few moments to describe who we are and what we do at ElectricMasters of Cincinnati.

*Ahem*

In our last post, we took the opportunity to share a few tips regarding what folks should look for when looking for an electrician — in Cincinnati and beyond. To be fair, however, you don’t have to live in Cincinnati to find a few practical guidelines in that post. No matter what part of the country you live in, we think you’ll find our tips helpful!

And as an aside, Although we are based out of Cincinnati and the majority of our customers and clients hail from there as well, we extend our service area to include parts of Northern Kentucky as well. So keep that in mind if you are in the Tri-State area!

The aforementioned tips we provided in our previous post were far from revolutionary — but they are necessary reminders. Go back and read it if you have the chance, but we’ll remind you briefly below. You want to find a local electrician who is:

• Licensed and certified
• Experienced
• Communicative
• Upfront about pricing
• Honest and accurate about timelines and appointments
• Has a solid online reputation, with the BBB and otherwise

If you are on the hunt for a reliable electrician, utilizing these tips is a great place to start. Of course, if you live near Cincinnati, we’ve got you covered right here at Electric Masters!

Whether you are in-market for residential electrical service, commercial electrical work, or a local electrician who is experienced in new construction projects, we’ve got you covered at Electric Masters, Cincinnati’s Top Rated Local® electrician!

Now that you know which electrician in Cincinnati you should choose, you can stop reading the remainder of the blog so that you can give us a call and get your electric repair or installation issue resolved as soon as possible!

Okay, okay, we understand that you probably aren’t going to just take us at our word without learning anything else about us. And that’s exactly the right way of doing things as a consumer in the modern world. You have myriad resources available to you, many of which are no more than a few clicks and swipes away! Specifically, you can find at the local electricians with the best online reviews. Though online reputation isn’t everything these days, it goes a long way toward ensuring you don’t get burned — no matter what kind of product or service you are interested in!

It’s no secret that a business’ online reputation is of chief importance to the modern-day consumer. Whether we are talking about finding a quality electrician in Cincinnati or shopping online for tech gadget gifts for holiday gifts, you want to make sure that the provider you choose is reliable and trustworthy. Luckily, we have numerous review platforms where we can find this kind of information. Urbanspoon, Yelp, Google, Facebook, HomeAdvisor — they all help folks find reviews that help us make sure we get the most bang for our buck.

But from a business’ perspective, it can be difficult to adapt to the newfound world of online reviews. No matter the service or product offered, there are times when things don’t go to plan and/or customers are seemingly impossible to satisfy. You can’t really control the 1-star review they leave, even if you have done everything in your power to provide exceptional customer service.

While that is certainly a challenge of the online-review system, we’d like to take the opportunity in today’s post to highlight what sets us apart as Cincinnati electricians. We fully understand that most people are more likely to post reviews when things haven’t gone according to their expectations, and that is exactly why we wanted to highlight a few testimonials where people were so thrilled with the service they received from ElectricMasters that they felt compelled to tell the world about it!

With the temperatures dropping, it’s the perfect time to go over the dos and don’ts of using space heaters in your home.

November is upon us, and although the first official day of winter is still more than a month away, the temperature has already started falling. When it’s cold out, nothing is cozier or more comforting than cuddling up next to your space heater, but it’s important to know the dos and don’ts of using a space heater in your home. Every year, that are more than 65,000 house fires that are related to heating equipment, and the improper use of space heaters certainly increase your risk for electrical fires. Luckily, our electrician in Cincinnati is here to help you understand all of the dos and don’ts of spaces heaters:

You rely on your electrical outlets each and every day, but sooner or later, they will need to be replaced or you may need additional ones installed.

Contrary to popular belief, electrical outlets don’t last forever. In order to prevent electrical fires and shocks, it’s important to know when to invest in new electrical outlets. At ElectricMasters, we know that the average homeowner probably never gives a second thought to their electrical outlets, let alone when to install new ones. That’s why we’ve come up with this list of signs that your home needs new outlets:

Enjoy a fun, safe Halloween with electrical safety tips from our experienced electrician in Cincinnati.

Fog machines, decorative lights, black lights, strobe lights and animatronics all add to the spookiness on Halloween night, but all of these electrically-powered decorations can also lead to danger if you aren’t careful. Here at ElectricMasters, our electrician in Cincinnati is dedicated to helping you enjoy a spooky and safe Halloween, and that’s why we’ve come up with this list of electrical safety tips:

An electrical shock can be a life-threatening situation, and it’s important to know what to do if one occurs.

Electrical shocks are some of the most common electrical emergencies. Luckily, electrical shocks are also easily prevented, and in a previous blog, our electrician in Cincinnati, OH went over the common causes of electrical shock. It’s also important to know what the symptoms of electrical shock are and when to seek medical treatment, which we went over in our latest blog. Today, we will be finishing up this blog series with what to do if an electrical shock occurs:

Electrical shocks can be scary, and it's important to know what the symptoms are.

Electrical shocks can be mild and unconcerning, but they can also be life-threatening. However, electrical shocks are also very preventable, and in our last blog, our electrician in Cincinnati went over several of the most common causes of electrical shocks. Understanding the symptoms of electrical shock, as well as when to seek medical care, could be the difference between life and death.

Electrical shocks can be deadly, and to prevent them, you need to first understand what can cause them.

Did you know that electrical shocks are some of the most common electrical emergencies? Electrical shocks are all too common, and while they can be minor, they can also be deadly. As a homeowner, it’s important to take steps to prevent your family from getting electrical shocks, but in order to do that, you first need to know what causes electrical shocks in the first place. The following is a list from our electrician in Cincinnati, OH of a few of the most common causes of electrical shocks:

There’s nothing more frustrating than intermittent beeping coming from your smoke detector!

When your smoke detector randomly beeps, it can make you want to pull your hair out. Unfortunately, you can’t simply turn the beeping off or pull the smoke detector off of the wall because it is an essential safety measure. The good news is that you don’t have to deal with a beeping smoke detector on your own, because our electrician in Cincinnati, OH is here to help! If you haven’t already, check out our last blog to learn about a couple of the possible reasons why your smoke detector is beeping, and keep reading to learn more:

Have you noticed that your smoke detector randomly beeps?

From a safety standpoint, your smoke detectors are the most important things in your home. Fire fatalities are all too common, but by simply having a smoke detector, you are greatly reducing your risk for fire-related deaths. However, no matter how beneficial smoke detectors are, if they beep intermittently, they can be a major annoyance. Before your rip your smoke detector off of the wall and throw it into the dumpster outside, here are a couple reasons why your smoke detector may be beeping and what to do about them:

Your electrical wiring won’t last forever, and eventually, your home will need to be rewired.

You rely on your electrical wiring each and evewirery day. Whether it’s for catching up on the evening news or warming up your leftovers, you need electrical wiring that is dependable and safe. Unfortunately, electrical wiring can get damaged or just outdated, and eventually, it will need to be replaced. In our last blog, our electrician in Cincinnati went over a few signs that your electrical wiring needs to be replaced. Here are a few more:

ou depend on your home’s wiring to deliver your electricity safely, but outdated wiring could be dangerous.

Every time you turn on your toaster, dry your hair or watch your television, you depend on the electrical wiring in your home. Your wiring is designed to deliver electricity efficiently and safely, but if your home’s wiring is damaged or old, you are at risk for electrical fires and other issues. According to Electrical Safety Foundation International, electrical problems are responsible for more than 53,000 fires every year. Rewiring can reduce your risk for electrical fires, but how do you know when it’s time to rewire? Here are a few signs from our electrician in Cincinnati, OH that you need to rewire your home:

At ElectricMasters, we believe that every homeowner should know what to do when a circuit breaker gets tripped.

Tripped circuit breakers are quite common, and most of us have to deal with them at some point or another. When it comes to your electrical system, it’s definitely smart to leave repairs and maintenance up to a professional electrician in Cincinnati, but in most cases, you are safe to address a tripped circuit breaker on your own.

Circuit breaker trips are incredibly common, but do you know what causes them?

Whether you are renting or buying your home, chances are, you’ve dealt with a tripped circuit or two. Most people think that tripped circuits are always due to overloads, and while overloaded circuits are certainly the most common reason why circuit breakers trip, there are a couple of other possible reasons. If you haven’t already, check out our Cincinnati, OH electrician’s latest blog to learn all about overloaded circuits, and keep reading to learn about the other two common causes of circuit breaker trips:

Many homeowners have had to deal with a tripped circuit or two, but do you know what causes them?

We’ve all been there: you are trying to start the washing machine and it just won’t start; you’re about to get to the big reveal in the movie you’re watching and suddenly the power just goes out; you’re making your coffee and toast, when suddenly everything turns off, including the lights. All of these situations are probably the result of a tripped circuit, but do you know what causes tripped circuits in the first place? The following is a list from our electrician in Cincinnati of the main causes of tripped circuits:

Your circuit breaker is an incredibly important part of your home’s electrical system.

Did you know that, without your circuit breaker, using electricity in your home would be very dangerous? Although our circuit breakers are commonly used by homeowners, many people are unfamiliar with what they do and how they work. At ElectricMasters, we know that knowledge is important for keeping you safe, and that’s why our electrician in Cincinnati, OH has set out to help you understand your circuit breaker a little better.

DURING SUMMER THUNDERSTORM SEASON, IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH ELECTRONICS THAT HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO WATER.

Thunderstorms are commonplace in the summer, and if you aren’t careful, excess water could damage your electronics and put you in danger. If you have electronics in the basement, your garage, outside or in any other flood-prone areas in your home, you need to know about the risks of using water exposed electronics. Here are some of the risks that are associated with electronics that have been exposed to water