For some reason, some homeowners seem to think that their ceiling fans are more fashionable than they are functional. This could not be further from the truth, though. While your ceiling fans are not going to actively cool the air in your home, as an air conditioner will, they are able to help distribute cooled air throughout the house more effectively. This can help to make your home feel more comfortable, allowing you to raise the temperature at the thermostat a bit. They also use far less energy than ACs, so put them to use, rather than your air conditioner, on stuffy nights that aren’t quite intolerably hot.

Not only will ventilating your home when the sun goes down help you to boost the quality of the air in your home, but it can also take a serious amount of strain off of your air conditioning system. It sounds simple, but simply shutting down your AC and opening up the windows when the air outside cools down can make a big difference. Close the windows early in the morning when you wake up in order to trap cool air therein.

While there are many ways in which you may go about cooling your home more efficiently, the best is simply to dial our number and to schedule routine air conditioning maintenance service. Our professional technicians will thoroughly inspect your system and tune it up as needed. This will allow it to cool your home with as little energy consumption as possible. Contact us today to schedule maintenance with professional technicians you can trust.

In some of our previous posts, you’ve likely seen our experts mention the presence of “ungrounded” outlets in homes and buildings. But what exactly makes an ungrounded outlet such a negative? Are they dangerous? Our certified electricians come to you today with answers to the real important questions regarding ungrounded outlets!

If you have ungrounded outlets and need an outlet upgrade, contact us today!

Ungrounded outlets are easily identified by simply taking a look at the face of the outlet (where you plug things in). On nearly all modern homes, there should be three holes. Two are the vertical slits, and one roundish one located underneath the pair of vertical ones. That’s a grounded outlet, which have been required by electrical safety standards for all structures since the mid-1960s.

Ungrounded outlets lack the third hole, the roundish one on the lower portion where the, somewhat obviously, ground plug goes.

To understand the why, you kind of have to understand what a grounded outlet does. The two vertical slots represent both a “hot” wire, and a “neutral” wire. The ground wire in a grounded outlet ties into the neutral vertical slot. Why the redundancy? Well, it acts like a failsafe. Should anything go awry with your outlet, such as a short, the renegade electricity simply travels safely along the ground wire back to the panel. Without the ground wire, that electricity can channel into materials, such as fabrics located close to the outlet, or a very unlucky person.

Is it dangerous in that it might jump out and bite you? No. Is it dangerous in that it dramatically increases personal and property risk? Yes, absolutely. Ungrounded outlets increase the chance of:

We’ve encountered a few arguments over the years about the safety of ungrounded outlets. Like how they were used just fine in the past, or how the home that has them hasn’t “burned down yet”, etc. Well, that’s just the thing. Yet.

We haven’t been hit by a car, but that doesn’t mean we should go walking down the center of a busy highway at midnight. Grounded outlets became a standard in electrical code for a reason. They prevent possible problems that homes consistently encountered in the past. It’s all about preparedness and prevention!

So to conclude, are ungrounded outlets dangerous? Yes, they represent a very real potential risk. Worried that you may have ungrounded outlets in your home or business? Contact the certified master electricians at Kolb Electric today! We’ve been bringing our consumers the very best in electrical advice and service for years, and your complete satisfaction and safety are always our top priority!

As energy costs continue to climb, and many people become more concern with their overall impact on the environment, solar power has become a serious consideration for more homeowners than ever before. When choosing to have solar installers install solar panels on your home, one of the first things that you need to do is get a good estimate of your home’s average energy usage. You can then work closely with your installer to determine the size of solar power system that works best for your home.

Gather Your InformationThe easiest way to get an estimate for your home’s average energy consumption is to gather your electric bills for the last year. You can then add all of the kilowatt-hours (kWh) that you used each month and divide this number by 12. This will give you the average number of kWh that you used each month. You can then divide this number by 30 to get a daily usage estimate. Because the average number of peak sun hours in the United States is 5 hours, you can divide this daily estimate by 5 to get an idea of how much electricity your system will need to generate each day during these peak sun hours.

Naturally, the number that you arrive to by this process is only an estimate. The cost of solar panels depends largely on the size of the system that you install. The estimate that you create will give you and your solar installers a good place to start when it comes to determining the size of your solar power system. If you are looking for more information about solar panels, the installation process, purchase and finance options, take a look at the rest of the information that we have available here at Solar Panel Info.