If you own or manage apartments or offices, how can you tell whether your Beverly Hills electrician is treating you right? I’ve been providing electrical services to property managers and owners for over 30 years in the Beverly Hills and surrounding areas and have learned a lot about what they really need and want and how to treat them right. There are eight benefits that your electrician should provide you if are a property manager.

1) The electrical contractor should be easy to reach. A live person should always answer the phone during business hours. After hours, there should be an emergency number that you can call.

2) If you have an urgent electrical situation, your electrical company should handle it right away. Let’s say that one of your office buildings loses its exterior lights at 8 p.m. on Sunday night. You want an electrician who can fix it, whether it’s as simple as flipping on a circuit breaker or whether troubleshooting is needed to find where bare wires are touching. The electrical company should be large enough that it can send you experienced and knowledgeable electricians right away to get the lights back on.

3) Your electrician should quote you prices in advance of doing work. If you want something new installed, the electrician should be able to give you a price up front in writing once he’s seen the job. New installations include, for example, a new light fixture, a rewire of an apartment, an electrical panel upgrade, or installing any other new electrical equipment.

If there’s something broken, for example, an electrical outlet that no longer works, he’ll want to charge you per hour for troubleshooting. However, within about an hour, he should either have fixed it or have figured out the problem and be ready to give you a written estimate for fixing it.

4) You should be able to trust that the electrician has the judgment to give you accurate estimates. For example, the doorbell for one of your apartment units has broken. Even though door bells look small and simple, in this case, looks can be deceptive. Hunting for an electrical short or loose wire somewhere in the walls could turn into a larger project. Your electrician should have the judgment to realize this and give you an accurate estimate early on so that you can decide if you want to go ahead.

5) The electrician should act professionally with your tenants. Electricians should have a friendly, professional manner with tenants. They should also have the training to give information to tenants on a need-to-know basis, knowing what to say and what not to. For example, an electrician should start by saying something like, “The management company asked us to come out to get your power back on for you.” The electrician should know not to say, “The wiring in your apartment is scary. I’m going to recommend a rewire to the management before it burns down!”

6) The electrician should make sure that you know when the job is done. When the electrician finishes, he should check that everything works, clean up after himself, and if the tenants are home, let them know that the job is done. He should also tell you.

7) The electrician in Beverly Hills should keep you posted on the condition of the electrical in your units. Let’s say that you asked the electrician to add a circuit for a computer. He adds the circuit, but also notices that a bedroom has no smoke detector. Or the tenants might tell him that at night, when a hair dryer is turned on in the lit bathroom, the circuit breaker trips off. Without saying anything to the tenant that would obligate you to do electrical work, the electrician should give you a heads up.

8 ) The electrical office should provide you with accurate bills. Bills should arrive when expected with the detail needed to provide you with a clear accounting for the property owners. Paperwork should be smooth and simple, just as the electrical work should be smooth and complete. During business hours, an office manager should be available to answer any questions about billing.

If your electrician gets the job done, charges honest and reasonable rates, and offers you these eight benefits, you’ve found a keeper. Keep his contact information at hand and you’ll know who to call the next time you have an electrical problem.

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St. Paddy’s Day is nearly here -- do you have your green outfit picked out? Regardless of whether or not you choose to go green in your mode of dress, St. Patrick’s Day is as good a day as any to go green with your energy consumption.

For most of us, conserving energy comes down to changing personal habits, and that can be difficult. So in the interest of starting small, Mister Sparky challenges you to pick one day to go green and see how easy it can be to make a change for the good of the planet.

To help you along the way, here are several ideas you can implement to reduce your carbon footprint over a 24-hour period:

Turn your thermostat down one extra degree all day, if you’re still using the furnace. If you live in a warmer region and are already using the air conditioning, turn the thermostat up a degree or shut it off altogether and open the windows. It’s an almost imperceptible difference in terms of comfort, but it adds up to real energy and money savings.

Turn off all electronics when they’re not in active use. This includes shutting down your computer fully -- sleep mode still uses energy!

Take public transportation for the day, or if the weather cooperates, ride your bike. If you have to take your car to work, ask around the office to see if anyone will carpool with you.

Be diligent about recycling. Many areas now have curbside recycling, which makes helping the planet easier than ever. But some trash still needs to be sorted or cleaned before it can go into the recycling bin, and unfortunately, not everyone takes the time. For your day of going green, make the effort to recycle every scrap of suitable trash.

Find a new way to go paperless. If you’re still receiving certain bills in the mail, see if you can register for an email alternative. If you’ve never e-filed your taxes before, make this the first year. You can even ditch the Post-It Notes and grocery lists by storing those little reminders on your phone.

Only run your washing machine or dishwasher when you have a full load -- otherwise, save it for another day.

If it is a laundry day, hang your clothes to dry. You don’t need to string up a line outside; just pick up an affordable drying rack that allows you to dry a whole load of clean clothes in a compact space.

Try dialing the temperature gauge back a notch on your hot water heater. We all like hot showers, but if your water heater is storing water at a higher temperature than you can comfortably tolerate, there’s room to cool things down a few degrees.

These are just a few quick and easy ways you can make a change. But if you’re ready to get serious about energy efficiency in your home, contact your local electrical experts to ask about energy audits, eco-friendly upgrades and other opportunities you maybe haven’t even heard about yet.

Have you considered the thought your house may be in need of a checkup? We visit doctors to make sure we are in good health even if we don’t have any major symptoms. Your house should be afforded the same privilege to make sure it is in good health and does not pose any safety hazards to you and your family. There are things that could be lurking behind the walls that we would never suspect. Electrical problems are often a hidden danger that many homeowners are not aware of until it is too late. A Burbank electrician, like those at The Electric Connection, can give your home a checkup and look for any underlying problems. Taking care of problems before they become serious is always the best prevention of home fires.

An electric safety inspection is one way for an electrician to check out the wiring in the home. If the home is older, the wiring will be evaluated to determine whether or not it is safe or if it needs an upgrade. This is typically only something that is needed if the home is more than 50 years old. Along with the condition of the wiring, the electric panel will also be inspected by the electrician. Burbank homeowners may need to have a breaker replaced or added depending on the needs of people living in the home.

Another facet of an electric safety inspection is to check out the outlets in the home. Any outlets that are not working or have black streaks around the outer casing typically need to be replaced. Loose wires to the outlet can cause an electrical fire and should be taken care of as soon as possible. If you would like to give your home a checkup, give The Electric Connection a call today and schedule your appointment.