All too often, small business owners attempt to cut corners when it comes to building maintenance. However, sometimes this corner cutting can cause more trouble than it’s worth.
One thing that you often see is small business owners hiring the same general handyperson or local, small “handy,” business for every job.
However, when it comes to jobs like:
- Mold remediation,
- Groundbreaking,
- Electrical work,
- Plumbing, and
- Emergency lighting planning and installation
… business owners take a huge risk.
There are many laws workers must follow when they are doing this type of work. These laws also change every year on town, city and state levels.
In addition, building styles are unique to every state as are the native electrical systems, entryways and exits they feature. If the workers you hire don’t know how to follow the laws, their work will not be compliant. Then, unfortunately, the mistake will fall on you, not them.
When it comes to emergency lighting, 
in most cases, it’s impossible for a general handy person or handy team to know everything that a trained expert will know about:
- The laws in your city and state,
- The industry standards and best practices,
- The safest way to deal with wiring and electricity issues,
- The weakest and strongest points in your building’s structure, and
- Much more.
In addition, every building is different even though every town will often feature common architectural trends. An expert will take many things into consideration before he or she plans a lighting design or installs emergency lighting for you.
- Experts will install signs out of reach. People are tempted to touch things and lean on things casually for no reason. This casual or even intentional and jovial tampering could break your lights. However, the powers that be will blame you when your lights don’t work properly. An expert knows this and wants to keep you compliant. Depending on your situation, an expert might also recommend you install vandal-resistant exit signs and cages around your signs as well.
- Experts will not install lighting near an internal or external heat source. Extreme sun for just a few hours daily can even be too much. At best, heat damage will cause the exit signs to not function properly. However, most often, heat damage breaks your signs.
- An expert will choose backup batteries that meet OSHA regulations and that last for at least 1.5 hours or more after a power outage. Your technician will charge the batteries first and teach you how to care for them. He or she will then visit you regularly to maintain your batteries, make sure the batteries aren’t leaking and update your entire system.
If you have an untrained professional install your lighting, that person can burn the circuit board during the installation and totally destroy the light you just paid for. The wiring technique he or she might come up with may not be safe or efficient. Sometimes self-illuminating lights are your only option because of the structure of your building. However, for some situations they just aren’t reliable enough. Only an expert can tell you what to do.
Trust the Professionals Today!
- Contact us today at Lighting Services Inc.
- We require all of our technicians to be Licensed Electricians or Certified Lighting Technicians.
- You really have nothing to lose by trusting a company that you know will do the work properly.
