Common Electrical Terms for Farm Fire Prevention

By Karmin Garrison
Published on October 18, 2024
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by Adobestock/bilanol

Learn how to prevent fires from starting by understanding common electrical terms while taking extra precautions to avoid tragedy on your homestead.

“If you’re cold, they’re cold” is a common adage. Unfortunately, it’s led to many preventable fires. Winter brings a chill, and with it, heat lamps, heaters, and plenty of other hazards for the barn.

No one wants to walk into their barn and find frozen livestock, so here are some tips on keeping your critters comfortable and as safe as possible – though there’s no such thing as zero risk when it comes to heating a space.

Common Electrical Terms

Often, barn fires are caused by electricity. And, understandably, an electrical fire is one of the scarier things that can happen, given the many unknowns electricity represents for many of us. So, first things first: Let’s unpack some basic terms. Amps are the measurement of the flow of electricity through a circuit. Volts are the measurement of two points in a circuit. Watts are the rate the electricity is produced as one amp flows through a volt.

A standard residential outlet is 120 volts (V); the heavy-duty outlets, say for a washing machine, are 240V. You can’t plug a welder into a 120V outlet and expect it to work. Heaters are considered more on the heavy-duty side as well; it takes more electricity to power a heater than to power an air conditioner. (Truly! A 10,000-Btu window unit takes about 1,500 watts to run, while a standard space heater takes about 1,800 watts.)

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