Your home is supposed to be your safe place, your sanctuary, but if you have an older home, it can quickly become a nightmare. Old home wiring, especially if the wiring is 50 years or older , can put your home and everyone it it at risk for an electrical fire. While wiring doesn’t quickly age, it does age, it does break down, and it does carry risks. Keeping an eye on your home’s wiring and the way that it behaves is one of the best ways to avoid an electrical fire and protect your home. Your home is trying to tell you exactly what it needs more often than not, so keep an eye out for some of the following signs that your home’s wiring is too old and needs to be replaced by a professional electrician.

While there could be a variety of reasons you might have dimming or flickering lights in your house, if it becomes a regular occurrence, it’s time to get an electrician out to your house. These kinds of symptoms are your house telling you that there is something going on in your electrical system. Whether it’s that there is too much power being drawn at one time or that the wiring is failing, a licensed electrician can help to diagnose and fix the issue.

If you’ve had a rodent problem in your home at any time, it’s exceptionally important to have your electrical system evaluated. While rodents would prefer to munch on the cereal in your cabinet, there is something about home wiring that is exceptionally appealing to them. While they’re burrowing around in your walls, there is a high chance that they either chomp through wiring or knick it enough to expose the wiring to the insulation in your walls. Both scenarios can put your home at risk for an electrical fire at any time.

If you’ve never had a circuit breaker trip on a regular basis, then you probably don’t know how absolutely frustrating it can be, especially when the problem is probably hidden somewhere behind the walls. A circuit breaker that continues to trip is a big indication that something is wrong with your wiring. Instead of trying to force it on, make sure to call your electrician to help root out the cause of the problem in order to fix it.

If you’ve ever gone to plug in an appliance and been shocked, that’s probably not a good sign. However, if this happens regularly where you get shocked or your switches and outlets start to look discolored from burns, you have a big problem on your hands. These signs are indicative of a wiring problem and wiring shorting from the energy heavy appliances that are more common today. Don’t just hide the problem with a new outlet cover, have the problem checked out and repaired.

Lastly, don’t dismiss random burning smells or the sharp smell of burning ozone. Both could be indicators that something is going on behind your home’s walls that you can’t see. When you flip a light switch, this connects a live electrical wire and allows power to continue into a light fixture or appliance. If there is burning when the switch is flipped on, the odds are the problem is in the wiring that connects the switch and the light fixture. However, a licensed electrician can determine the extent of the damage and what the problem is.

Mortgage lenders try to look at the big picture, considering things like taxes and insurance when deciding how much they can loan out to homeowners and buyers. However, there's a major ongoing expense that appraisers currently don't take into account – monthly utility bills. You don't need to be an electrician to understand that the money you pay for power each month makes an impact on your budget and even affects the value of your home. A bill currently in front of Congress – the SAVE Act – would acknowledge that reality and let federal mortgage lenders make energy efficiency part of their formula.

Increasing the Value of Your Home

Essentially, the SAVE Act would make it easier to get financing for efficiency upgrades, even folding funding for it into traditional mortgages.

“This bill would require federal mortgage agencies to recognize the energy efficiency upgrades in a home during the mortgage underwriting process, thereby increasing the value of the home,” President of the Alliance to Save Energy Kateri Callahan said in a statement. 

The SAVE Act claims it would bring a number of benefits in addition to loosening the drawstrings on bank financing for efficiency. Among them:

A Diverse Group of Supporters

The SAVE Act was first introduced in 2013. Although Congress has yet to vote on the measure, it has lined up a diverse group of supporters who aren't typically on the same side of major issues, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers to the Alliance to Save Energy, the National Resources Defense Council, the U.S. Green Building Council and others.

In the meantime, there are a number of steps you can take around your home today to cut down on your utility bills. If you need any help installing efficient appliances or upgrading your home electric system, contact an expert electrician today.

If you have determined you need an electrician, you are probably wondering how to best find the right electrician for you and your needs. It can be tough to find an electrician in Santa Monica you can trust to get the job done right without overcharging you or doing work that is substandard. You can always count on the crew at The Electric Connection to provide you with excellent service every time. The following tips will help you find the perfect electrician for your needs. Yes, you do have the right to “interview” potential candidates.

Do not waste your time or money by hiring an electrician who is unlicensed. Ask for the license number if it is not readily available on their business card.

Ask if the electrician is insured and for how much. If the electrician isn’t insured for at least $500k, it is best to look elsewhere. Although this may seem like a lot of money, it doesn’t take much to burn through that much money if there is major damage or injury caused by faulty wiring.

Ask to see references or ask for numbers of clients who have used the electrician’s services in the past. Do your due diligence and make the phone calls. You can also check Angie’s List and online for reviews.

Ask the potential electrician how they go about the job. Will they give you updates about the status of a job? Will they contact you about unforeseen expenses that might pop up before making the decision to tack the extra money on to your bill? Communication is crucial when you are dealing with any contractor.

Ask if there will be a detailed estimate of the job. You need to know just what kind of Santa Monica electrical work you are paying for. An estimate will help you budget and compare prices to other electricians.

If you need a reliable and reputable electrician, give The Electric Connection a call.

Prisons and correctional facilities are full of security threats, it’s just common sense.

That is why it’s a major task and a seemingly forever ongoing one to try everything in the book to reduce threats and increase security for everyone in, near, or even outside the facility.

Today we wanted to address how we can solve 2 major correctional lighting system and things you should look out for when finding fixtures perfect for your building and budget.

Firstly, a LED prison lighting system will reduce indirect stress and irritability in both inmates and staff.

Secondly, LEDs within correctional buildings will improve detection of movement, which we all know is crucial.

How you ask? Well, lets talk about each one individually and break it down a bit more than just one sentence. From there, we will talk about how to go about making the conversion over to LED, like we mentioned at the start.

Have you ever been around a light that was flickering and or buzzing? It can get annoying, and fast. Imagine living under these conditions, everyday all day; no break other than a few hours when you go outside. Sounds like no fun, and it can lead to some serious stress and irritability issues for both inmates and staff.

For obvious reasons, additional stress on inmates will never produce a good outcome for anyone. But, another important point is that this can effect your staff and guards too. It can affect their ability to perform at full capacity, which in combination with highly irritable inmates is not a good mix whatsoever.

With LED technology, they will never be susceptible to flickering nor buzzing. Not even near the end of the lights lifespan will they flicker or buzz, unlike other technologies commonly still used in such facilities. Thus, you can avoid any stress or irritability which may be caused from flickering / buzzing lights.

If you can’t tell where everyone is at every second, you’ve got an issue. This is especially important for outdoors during the time when it is dark out. Sure, some light is better than none; but why jeopardize your operations with a flickering light when you could upgrade to LED and get rid of the issue entirely?

As you may or may not know, flickering lights make it harder to not only detect movement, but also identify humans. Think of a strobe light, it’s a bit harder to actually make out what is going on entirely. This holds true with a flickering light, even if it isn’t as bad as a strobe light is.

Here we are going to list a couple of the other major general benefits that LED technology offers over other technologies such as metal halide, HPS, fluorescent, and similar.

There are really only two routes you can take, LED retrofit lighting kit will work perfectly. On top of that, retrofitting is a much cheaper option (typically) then a full replacement is. So, if you don’t need to fully replace then stick with retrofit kit LEDs and you will save a lot on your lighting system investment.

Conclusion

Flaws can always be picked at, especially in such tedious and unpredictable environments like the one we are discussing in this topic.