In the news this week was an article on the effectiveness of existing domestic smoke alarms to wake up children and that further in-depth research was about to start.

Initial studies indicated that a large percentage of children slept through the noise of the existing beeping sounding alarms but children were more likely to wake up with a lower pitch sound alongside a woman's voice.

Our company installs and tests thousands of smoke and heat alarms each year so this story grabbed my attention and I knew I would be curious to eventually find out the results of this further research and after dialogue it looks like we will be involved in the new research to find out what type of and what level of sounds wake up children more effectively.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38918056

It may be the weekend and some of us will be enjoying some downtime but electricity doesn't know its Saturday or Sunday and continues to power our lives which means electrical safety is a 24/7/365 concern and something we all must be aware of to make sure we keep safe as best as we can.

Electrical safety especially in private rented homes has improved greatly over the last few years due to a change in electrical and fire safety regulations meaning mandatory electrical wiring testing and increased fire detectors has improved the safety for the tenants.

Improving electrical safety in homes and businesses continues to be at the top of the agenda for our electrical trade organisation in Scotland SELECT and their hard work so far should be congratulated and their efforts for continual improvement supported.

Last year I wrote a small article on electrical safety and efficiency in homes which was published in the popular Love Local magazine which covers Stirling and Clackmannanshire areas.

The article can be read below and if you have any questions about how you can improve electrical safety and efficiency in your premises please ask by commenting on this post or contact me via our website. 

Another good source for safety advice within your home can be found at the Electrical Safety First website.

I'm delighted that we have won two contracts over the past week that will have our electricians travelling to all corners of Scotland over the next few months carrying out electrical testing work.

Our work includes fixed wiring, emergency light and fire detection testing and we may be able to get some more cracking scenic photos on our travels.

It's not only electrical services we provide but also audio visual, security alarms, cctv and access control.

We are not frightened to embrace technology at Stirling Electrical Services and throughout the years we have introduced to name a few: vehicle satellite tracking, computer based customer database and job scheduling management software and we have an excellent back office IT set up which we design and maintain in-house.

To supplement the many electrical test equipment that the electricians have, for a good number of years now we have produced our electrical reports and certificates on computer software meaning our customers have professionally designed and looking certificates and this set up allows us to maintain and view the thousands of test results in one place.

Although we have always had one laptop out in the field for completing test reports/certificates while at the customers premises our electricians have mostly completed them by hand and paper which means our office staff have to then input the results onto our computer software after the job.

Well from today we are introducing a new Apple iPad out into the field where some report/certificate results will be inputed straight onto the special software we have on this device while the electrician undertakes the tests. 

The completed onsite report/certificate will then sync back to our office software and with very little back office work they will be ready to be forwarded to customers. 

The new devices will also have pre-loaded electrical wiring regulations and technical documents to aid the electrician while on-site.

We plan to trial this over a period of time with one device with the aim to roll out the new devices and set up to our other electricians as we look to improve efficiency and service.