Under-Cabinet LED Lighting Kit is available for purchase that contains a plug-and-play LED light strip, push-button dimmer, remote, 12V power supply, and connection accessories. If you want to build a custom kit, follow the steps below the diagram to ensure that you get everything you need.

3. Select a dimmer or controller

For single-color LED strip light setup

Select the power supply large enough to operate the amount of LED strip light you need to use. If you want to control the brightness of your light strips, you will need a Single-color dimmer shown installed with a non-dimmable power supply

For color-changing LED strip light setup

Follow the instructions above for the single-color light strip setup. However, instead of a dimmer, use a RGB color-changing light strip installation

4. Use an LED amplifier for long runs of strip

Depending on the strip chosen and its maximum run (the number of strips that can be installed consecutively before needing amplifiers), you will need to install an light strip interconnect cables. It is best to purchase a length of strip that is more than your application requires. For example, if your project requires 8 1/2 feet of strip, we recommend purchasing 9 feet of strip to ensure that you have everything covered.

Zinsco or GTE-Sylvania panels were incredibly popular during the 70s. Despite Zinsco no longer being around today, many homes still have these panels inside. The circuit breaker in these panels can melt to the main bus bar, hindering the breaker’s ability to trip when it needs to. If there is a short circuit, the wires can melt and cause a fire. Not all Zinsco panels are at risk, so have an electrician look at yours if your home has one.

Federal Pacific Electric panels are extremely unsafe, despite being installed into millions of homes throughout the 50s to 80s. These panels’ circuit breakers fail to trip when there is a circuit overload or short circuit. If a panel’s circuit breaker doesn’t trip when it’s supposed to, it can lead to an electrical fire in your home. If your breaker box has “Federal Pacific Electric” written on the front and “Stab-Lok” branded on the inside of the panel, your home could be at risk.

Fuses boxes are not inherently dangerous. In fact, many homes have fuse boxes and are not at risk. The risk with fuses comes from using them in an unsafe way to serve today’s energy demands. By placing too many things on a single circuit, replacing a fuse with a bigger fuse, or replacing the fuse with something metal creates a potential fire hazard.

Again, these kinds of panels are not dangerous by themselves. What makes them dangerous is the fact that they haven’t been used for over 40 years. If your home has a split-bus electrical panel, it could be past its expected lifespan. The circuit breakers may not trip as they are designed to.

You’re all packed for your trip, and you think you have thought of everything your family will need while away, but it is important to consider how to keep your home protected while you are gone. Taking a few steps to ensure your home safety while away on vacation can lend great peace of mind as you travel and relax on your vacation. Here are a few action items you should consider to prevent break-ins and add to your peace of mind while you are away from home.

If newspapers are piling up on your porch, it is easy to guess that nobody is home. Hold services can often be placed online, so you can have all your mail and papers delivered once you return.

Keeping the lawn trimmed while you are out will keep up the appearance of your home being inhabited and add to your home safety while away on vacation. You can hire a service to take care of cutting the lawn, or maybe you have a friend who can help keep the front yard from looking abandoned. Thieves are lazy, so if it looks like you’re home, they’ll move on.

Use timers to turn your inside lights on at the right times some downstairs some upstairs and to keep the outdoor lights on at night only. It’s a little thing, but having the porch light on all day may be a giveaway that the lights are one but nobody is home.

Of course, a window can be broken, but it is easier for a thief to keep a low profile by opening doors or windows that may be easy targets. Install deadbolts on exterior doors and keep a dowel or good window lock on all windows.

It is a good idea to look at all your faucets indoors and out to make sure they are not leaking. You would not want to come home from vacation to find interior flooding from a sink that should not have been left running.

Having adequate coverage against theft will insure that you can recover your losses should you have a break-in.

By taking a few extra steps before heading off on your travels, you can add to your home safety while away on vacation. Get your home well protected, and take care of safety details now so that you can avoid worries while you are out.

One of the most popular ways for the average homeowner to decrease their dependency on fossil fuels for electricity is solar installation. As it becomes easier to access this incredible source of renewable energy, more and more homeowners are considering it as an actually viable option for energy generation in their home. Here are a few of the options that you have, when it comes to installation solar panels on your property.

Professional Solar Installers Provide Value

Although you may be tempted to try to install solar panels on your homes in order to avoid much of the solar panels cost, there are a number of benefits that come from working with a qualified solar installer. By working with a professional, you will know that your panels were installed by someone who works extensively with this technology on a daily basis. This means that they have ongoing and extensive training installing panels and connecting them to your home under a number of different conditions. Plus, these are the people who have all of the best connections with your local solar power industry, giving you extended insight into options, discounts and special programs.

Are You Aware of Solar Leasing?

Because most homeowners have never heard of solar leasing, it’s no surprise that it is less utilized than it actually should be. This great innovation is a great way for homeowners of all different income levels to lease a solar panel array that is perfect for their home. Whenever you enter a solar lease, you simply pay a monthly fee to have the panels installed on your home. Once the panels are installed, they remain the property of the solar leasing company. All of the electricity generated, however, belongs to you. In most cases, this results in a net gain as a result of the energy savings experienced.

There’s a lot of scary information floating around when a discussion regarding electricity is at hand. Some of it is very valid, and some might be considered a bit of an exaggeration. But one area we really like to nail home is the dangers of a power surge. These are frighteningly common, and present very real danger to both you, and to your electronics. Protect yourselves (and your investments!) by learning how to prevent surges, and how to mitigate the possible threat they pose. 

Generally speaking, power is always “surging” to a minor degree. Every time a machine kicks on, or you flip a switch, the course and amount of power in your home fluctuates slightly. But more specifically, what we call a power surge is a dramatic and large spike in the current of your home.

This spike is exceedingly brief (somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousandth of a second), but can carry some real risk. More often it carries a risk to your possessions than your person, but you put a lot of money into your investments. Protect them!

Protecting your home from surges is actually pretty simple. It just takes a little preparation, a minor investment and a little bit of your (or our!) time:

You probably noted how adamant we were about that last one. So what’s the big deal? We could note a bunch of anecdotes about how a friend of a friend regretted not getting one, but let’s stick to the facts. Like we said, surges happen all of the time. Most of these are caused just by the general goings-on of a household. Whole home surge protection is hands down the number one most effective method of keeping you and your home safe.

Without getting too technical, a whole home electrical surge protection system policies and assists in maintaining proper, safe currents in your home. Do you have to have one in your home? Not really, they aren’t code yet. Should you get one? Absolutely. Surges can cost you huge money, and whole home protection is a very cost-efficient safety measure.

Want to learn more about how the expert electricians at Kolb can help you and your home stay safe? Contact our team today!