It’s full-on spring, and there seems to be a lot of activity in the landscape lighting world. That’s probably because landscape lighting is generally a great and affordable way to significantly improve the curb appeal of your home. Landscape lighting ideas abound on the internet, and, since it’s a popular season for landscape lights, I thought I would curate for you some of the best landscape lighting I have seen out there on the Web.

1. Wall Grazing at Its Finest

Wall grazing is a lighting technique in which light is cast up or down a wall in order to let the light and shadow play off the wall’s texture. Wall grazing works especially well on this wonderfully textured stone wall. Interesting walls like this almost demand uplights to play off their texture.

2. Cinematic Pond Beacon Situation

Very bright light on this structure in the middle of a pond creates a dramatic, almost cinematic effect. Bright uplights on the trees give some context to the attractive structure.

3. Variations on a Path

Using different styles of path light can make the walk to the house much more interesting. Never assume it’s law that all your path lights match. Mixing it up a little gives the eye a lot more to look at, and the outdoor lighting design looks more calculated, in a good way. Instead of the string of path lights that come in a pack, this is conscious design that makes every trip to the front door pleasant.

4. Variation on Variations on a Path

Another way you can break the monotony of path lighting is to place your path lights according to the visual features along the path, like plants or garden ornaments. Setting up the path lights to be spaced a little farther apart and placing them in different proximity to the path – now directly on the path, now set back near some interesting plants – leads the eye farther down the path, which creates a spectacle and gives the eye much more to admire.

5. Path Lighting without all the Path Lights

Landscape lighting doesn’t always have to include path lights. Here, adequate illumination and very attractive lighting design is achieved by uplighting trees and using downlights mounted on the house.

6. Moon Lighting: A Supernatural Experience?

Moonlighting is a technique in which lights are hidden higher up in trees to create an ambient effect. Pretty cool!

7. Under Counter Lights

One really cool outdoor lighting effect is under counter lighting. Led rope, tape, or LED tape rope hybrid can be run under the edge of counter, stone wall ledge, bar, island, or bridge to create a wonderful lighting effect. This is one application in which LED landscape lighting works really well.

8. Water + Lighting =  Awesome

What’s cooler than light fixtures giving an almost otherworldly beauty to outdoor water features? This is my personal favorite kind of landscape lighting. It just provides such a reliably relaxing and comfortable atmosphere. If your home is your sanctuary, you might want to consider this one-two-three punch of water, sound, and light.

9. Shadowy Magic

Moonlighting can also be used to create cool shadows on the path. See that light mounted up in that tree? It mimics the light of the moon, creating interesting shadows on the ground and enough ambient light to see where you’re walking. Great lighting design.

10. Lit Up Night Time Oasis

There are a lot of interesting things going on here. The space feels large and luxurious, in part because that uplight at the back draws the eye directly to the back edge of the space, making the whole spread look larger. The path lights around the perimeter draw attention to the landscaping. Of course, the star of this show is the cove lighting used around the bridge, making it look almost as if it is floating on light. Yes to this.

11. Epic Landscape Lighting in a Park

I mean, this pretty much speaks for itself. The high powered uplights illuminating the tall canopy creates an amazing effect. Not only is it beautiful, but it also represents the dual purpose of landscape lighting: To beautify and to make safer. Urban parks can be dangerous, but this one looks even more welcoming at night.

Your business operations are probably reliant upon electricity, like most operations in the modern world of today.  Do you have a backup plan in case the power goes out?  Most other businesses will simply shut their doors and deal with the consequences when the power is restored, but you can maintain business as usual thanks to the innovation of backup power systems.

Also known as emergency power generators, these units are delivered to you with a fully-charged battery that can be put to use the moment you need them.  If your business has experienced frequent power surges or outages in the past, hiring a Dallas electrician to install an Indoor GeneratorTM for your business could be incredibly beneficial.  For certification or insurance reasons, you may have an even greater need to remain up and running.  Your valuable computer or medical equipment will thank you when you save them from the devastation of power surges and outages.

Consider these benefits of having backup power systems installed in your business:

If you are ready to have a reputable Dallas or Plano electrician get you set up with the best investment you have ever made for your business, you can explore your options for a backup power system and receive a quote today.  The next power outage that hits can either leave you with regret, or a feeling of immense satisfaction with your decision to plan ahead.

Among the more obvious pieces of electrical safety advice you may have encountered is to never saw the third prong off of an electrical plug in order to fit it into a two-prong outlet. But just because we can recognize that as a self-evidently bad idea doesn’t mean everyone knows why it’s dangerous.

Two-prong outlets have only two wires: a hot wire and a neutral wire. But a three-prong outlet also has a ground wire, which is a safe place for unexpected bursts of current to go when they occur. Without that connection between the ground wire and the plug, wild current can go anywhere: into your electrical device, where sensitive components can be destroyed, or worse, into your body. Shock and electrocution are more likely to occur when no ground wire is present.

Moving On Up

Three-prong outlets didn’t become standard in North American homes until the late 1960s, so while modern homes should be in good shape, there are plenty of homes out there with old two-prong outlets.

As a quick fix, you might be tempted to use adapters that convert two-prong outlets to fit three-prong plugs. You should resist the urge to use these so-called “cheater plugs”, however -- the ground wire is there for safety, and simply bypassing it creates a potentially serious hazard.

Instead, you should seriously consider upgrading the outlet if you need to regularly use three-prong plugs in that area. If you live in an older home where most of the outlets are two-prong, this is an upgrade you’ll need to do sooner or later.

When it comes to upgrading two-prong outlets, there are two basic options. The best choice is to have ground wires installed so that the outlets are fully up to the current standard. Unfortunately, this can involve several hours of electrical service and may require some cutting into walls, depending on how many outlets are being upgraded and how the home is configured. It may be a big undertaking, but it’s a quality investment in your home and safety.

A cheaper alternative is to upgrade to a ground fault circuit interrupter outlet, or GFCI. These outlets are capable of shutting themselves off if an electrical shock risk is present, but they won’t protect sensitive electronics from surge damage. The trade-off is that there’s no need to run a ground wire.

Out With the Old, In With the Old?

If you don’t like either of these options but you’re having trouble with a two-prong outlet, it’s technically not a violation of code to replace the outlet with another two-prong version. Just keep in mind that this arrangement leaves both people and electronics vulnerable, so use these outlets with care and consider making a plan to upgrade later.

Ready to upgrade those old outlets? Start the process today by scheduling a no-obligation consultation with your licensed, local electricians.

Question: A contractor wants me to sign a Partial Release form on a job he hasn’t paid me for yet. Doesn’t that put me at risk of not collecting the money if I’m not really paid after I sign the release form? – Greg Storn

Answer: The good news here is that there is an easy solution to this issue. There are four different legal documents that apply to contracted work: 4. Unconditional Release Upon Final Payment

The only “condition” of a Conditional Release is that the release is valid only if the money specified on the release is paid to the contractor. In other words, if you are 50% complete with a $10,000 job, you can safely sign a Conditional Release Upon Progress Payment for $5,000. If you aren’t paid the $5,000, the release is not valid and you have not given up any of your lien rights to this money.

On the other hand, if you sign and Unconditional Release, you have just given up your rights to whatever amount of money that was on the Unconditional Release from. So the rule is, don’t sigh an Unconditional Release from until the money you are releasing is in your bank account. I’m not talking about a check in your hand, either. I’m saying that you should never sign an unconditional release until that check has cleared and the funds are literally in your bank account.

Some or my company’s corporate clients always ask for a release before they will pay an invoice. No problem, we just send them a Conditional Release Upon Progress Payment or a Conditional Release Upon Final Payment. Later, after their check has cleared into our bank account, we will (if they ask) follow up with an Unconditional Release.

By the way, Conditional Release forms protect both the client and the contractor. If a client gets a Conditional Release form a contractor, they know that they are protected from getting a lien from that contractor, but only if they actually pay the contractor the money specified on the lien.

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The world of lighting, LED specifically, can get overwhelming for those that are not directly in the space. From lumens, to watts, efficacy, and more; jargon and terms aren’t doing you any good if you don’t know what they mean.

Not only is it just about LED terms, but also general concepts, facts, and methods of LED lighting technology and the fundamentals that are important to understand to use LED to it’s fullest potential.

In this post, we’ve gather the 7+ “must read” LED lighting articles you should read if you want to understand LED lighting a bit more and be much better off when you dive into the industry and technology. Whether you are a facility manager, electrical contractor, or building owner; all of these articles we’ve gathered will certainly give some value and we hope you enjoy them all