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.

If you are planning to start working out of home, it’s crucial that you have a designated work space. The best way to create a home office work area that’s productive and functional is to update your home office wiring. Turning that spare bedroom or a new room over the garage or even an extension into a home office is something that you would have to plan well.

Even the simplest of work spaces have some or the other electrical equipment and appliances and you would need appropriate electrical wiring, powerpoints, and circuits and plug points etc. for it. Aside from this, you would require Internet connectivity as well. Most homes have Wi-Fi, and even if all your office equipment like the PC, printers, scanners, phones and tablets are Wi-Fi enabled, it’s best to have a hardwired Ethernet connection in your home office.

That increases the reliability of the service and you won’t be inconvenienced due to an erratic Internet connection. While it may seem like a very simple job, the fact is that installing home office wiring isn’t an easy job and has to be done with care.

Cleaning a crystal chandelier isn’t as daunting as it may appear. These precious fixtures require a little more love and care than a desk lamp, but you can restore and maintain your crystal’s shine with common household products and a little know-how.

Everyday Care

If your chandelier is still sparkling clean, simply dust the fixture with a lambswool or feather duster every few weeks. Keep your strokes light, since leaded crystal is softer than glass—even dust can scratch it. Be sure to walk around the fixture as you dust, rather than spinning it towards you. Twisting the fixture can strain the wiring or loosen its support.

Spring Cleaning

Eventually, the fixture will need a more thorough cleaning, especially if it’s in a high-traffic area or kitchen. Mid-size chandeliers are still manageable at this stage, provided you have some clean, lint-free rags, isopropyl alcohol, and a little elbow grease.

Before touching the chandelier, follow rule number one: turn off the power to the room when dealing with a ceiling fixture. At least flip the light switch off and tape it so no one will accidentally turn the light on while you’re working. Set up an alternative light source to aid the cleaning. Once the chandelier bulbs have cooled, cover them with plastic snack bags and secure with a rubber band.

Fill a spray bottle with one part isopropyl alcohol and three parts distilled water. Spray on one section of the chandelier at a time, then wipe off with a white cotton glove or lint-free cloth, making sure you dry the frame as well as the crystal. This solution will clarify the crystal and help remove the haze, but is gentler than ammonia on crystal with a design or edge finish. Even so, gently wipe away after spraying and don’t allow the fixture to drip dry. This will help preserve the frame.

Try cleaning your chandelier every two to six months with the alcohol solution, depending on whether the fixture is in a high-traffic area or not.

Heavy Restoration

If your fixture hasn’t been cleaned in a long time (or just needs extra attention), you can go an extra step before calling a professional. This is where a digital camera comes in handy, as you’ll need to remove individual pendants for a more thorough washing. Take pictures of the connections for reference later, then carefully remove the pendants. You may need a pair of needle-nose pliers to help disengage the pendants from the fixture.

Fill a sink with warm water and some gentle dish soap. Carefully wash each crystal piece and rinse in warm water to avoid any drastic temperature shifts. Set the pendants on a clean cloth to dry. Then simply rehang the pendants and enjoy your sparkling fixture!

It may seem like overkill to prepare for a power outage when you live in the city of Los Angeles, but you probably have had to sit in the dark a time or two during one of those peak usage outages. Wouldn’t it be nice to know you don’t have to worry about even the shortest power outages? This is one of the benefits to having a standby generator installed for your home. Whether you live in the city, the suburbs or in the rural areas around Los Angeles, you can give yourself peace of mind you will never have to do without power. An electrician in Los Angeles is here to explain the benefits to a generator. The team at The Electric Connection can help make it happen.

Standby generators are wired to your home. A switch monitors the electricity flowing into your home and the second the electricity flow is interrupted, it signals the generator to turn on. There is no switching this or that on or pulling a bulky generator out of the shed. It is all done within a matter of seconds and you can carry on without worrying about when the power is going to come back on.

During the installation process, an electrician familiar with Los Angeles electrical codes will need to know what you want to be powered by your generator. You can choose to have the whole home powered or just a few key appliances and lights. The size of your generator will dictate how much you can keep running. Prior to scheduling an install, it would behoove you to do some research or talk with an experienced professional about the various sizes of generators available and what size you need for your home. The team at The Electric Connection can help you with this process. Give us a call today.

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.