During a recent trip down to Washington, DC I stopped by the National Mall to tour the astonishingly energy efficient homes on display as part of the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathalon.  The Solar Decathlon is one of the DOE’s signature programs to promote cutting edge design and green techonology.

An inexpensive way to help ventilate your bathroom is with the installation of a bathroom fan. If you already have one, is it adequate? Homeowners have probably realized an improperly operating or nonexistent bath fan results in excess moisture in the bathroom. This leads to numerous problems including mold growth. An electrician in Los Angeles can take care of the installation or replacement of your bath fan.

Why You Need a Bath Fan

Bath fans are essential tools needed to keep the humidity level down in the bathroom during hot showers. Without a way to pull the hot air out, condensation builds up on every surface in the bathroom, including the toilet paper! This is clearly not something you want to experience. Mold growth can become problematic and leave the bathroom with an unpleasant mildew smell.

DIY or Electrician?

If you have an existing bath fan that needs replaced, it is typically a fairly simple swap. You will need to handle some electric wires as you disconnect the old and wire in the new one. If you are familiar with electrical work this is a pretty easy task. If you have never dealt with wiring, it is advisable you contact your Los Angeles electrician to handle the job for you. You will need to consider your personal safety before embarking on this task.

If there is not a current fan, you have a little more work to do. You will need to properly vent the pipe, cut a hole in the ceiling and bring in an electrical connection to hook the fan up to. This is definitely a job you will want to leave to the professionals. A switch to turn the fan off and on will also need to be installed.

If you are ready to keep your bathroom dry and mildew free, give The Electric Connection a call.

There are a lot of reasons to love your older home.  Whether it’s a part of history or simply more cost effective than buying a brand new home, older homes can be just as nice as a newly built home with the right care.  Unfortunately, that level of care is often overlooked when it comes to licensed Dallas electrician to ensure that your home is as safe as possible.

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.