Outdoor lighting provides homeowners with the ability to make their property safe and easier to walk around at night. Not only will you feel more comfortable knowing what’s in your front yard, but you will also add visual appeal to your home too. If you want to improve outdoor safety through lighting, and at the same time add a little character to the outside of your home, then follow along to understand the potential upgrades you can make for outdoor lighting options.

Most people are familiar with smoke alarms or detectors as they are requirements in all commercial and residential buildings. But how do they work? And how do you ensure that they are functioning at their top performance?  If properly maintained, smoke alarms can and have been proven to save millions of lives in the case of a fire.

In general, there are two different types of smoke alarms.

Ionization means that the device is equipped with two plates that create a charge. When smoke passes between these plates, the charge is interrupted and forces the alarm to sound. In contrast, a photoelectric smoke detection system works similarly but is equipped with a light beam. When smoke passes in front of the light, the alarm sounds. Each function is beneficial in different instances and because of this, one is not necessarily better than the other. It is, however, recommended to have one of each of these functions on each floor of your home and in high-risk areas such as the kitchen or near fireplaces or heating appliances.

To ensure your family’s safety, it is recommended to check your smoke alarm once a month. In order to do so, you can simply push the test button on the smoke alarm. If it does not sound the alarm, you should check the battery and replace it immediately. You could also light a match near the smoke alarm to ensure that it is functioning at top performance.

For more tips and assistance with your smoke alarm maintenance, contact one of our electricians at Expert Electric – 604.681.8338.

We all know or at least heard that converting from Metal Halide (High Intensity Discharge) to LED will save you money.

But how much? Are there any other reasons or difference you should know about?

In this article, we break down all the factors that you should be aware of before making a decision to convert from Metal Halide to LED. Here are the 9 reasons we think LED wins over Metal Halide.

Let’s take a look at the information on a typical 400 watt metal halide bulb. While specifications may vary, a visit to a popular online website that sells Metal Halide bulbs shows that a brand new bulb has the following specifications:

We have just as many customers wanting to convert to LED because of maintenance savings as they do for energy savings. Think about what we discussed, over the life of the LED retrofit kit, a customer would have to do 5-6 Metal Halide replacements. The higher the installation height, the higher the cost of replacement. And if you have a facility loaded with lights, this becomes a significant budget amount every year that you must take into consideration. Now, we know that reduced maintenance time on lights does not translate into dollars saved because it is highly unlikely that people will lose their jobs over the fact there is much less work to do. However, these people will have time to now work on things that matter, like fixing the machines that make the company money instead on replacing lights that cost the company money.

When you take a measurement of light with a light meter, it reads lumens. And this measurement of all the lights that contribute to the light at that location creates a measurement called foot candles. But let’s think about that light that is being measured. Metal Halide creates all sorts of light, in all spectrum’s, visible or otherwise. This includes UV and IR spectrum’s, visible to the measuring device but not visible to the human eye. LED, on the other hand, does not produce UV and IR. Therefore, its readings using the same light meter is only picking up visible spectrum’s.

So there is a fun little test you can do. Have 2 light sources, LED and Metal Halide. And first ask, which one is brighter? And if the right LED source was selected, they should say LED. And then use a light meter, and the light meter may say the Metal Halide area is producing more foot candles. And so now you know part of the reason, but wait, there’s 2 other pieces of information you need to know.

Click here to see our infographic on Retrofitting vs Replacing.

Conclusion