By providing early warning in the event of fire, smoke detectors can allow you and your family sufficient time to reach safety. Experts report that you can increase your chances of surviving in a home fire by 50% simply by having smoke detectors. Click here for more information about installing  smoke detectors in Los Angeles, my electrical company’s service area.

If your house was built before 1950, it likely has electrical wires with cloth insulation. Over time, the cloth dries out and becomes brittle. Eventually, it crumbles off the wire, exposing bare wires that can short-circuit and cause shocks or fires. Old cloth-insulated wires should be replaced with plastic-insulated wires. Plastic insulation lasts indefinitely and completely resolves the safety issue. Click here for more information about replacing cloth  wiring insulation.

The National Electrical Code requires that outlets in the vicinity of water be equipped with a device called a “Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter” or GFCI (also called GFI). GFCIs are required in all bathrooms, kitchens, garages, pools, and some outdoor areas. GFCIs can protect your family against deadly electrical shocks and are inexpensive to install. Click here for more information about GFCIs and GFIs.

Knob & Tube wiring gets its name from the white ceramic knobs around which wires were wound and the short ceramic tubes through which wires were guided. This type of wiring is usually found in homes built before 1935. In the Los Angeles and some other parts of the country, knob and tube can sometimes be seen in houses built as late as 1950. My electrical company specializes in replacing Knob and Tube wiring in the L.A. area — much of it is in Pasadena and other parts of the San Gabriel Valley.

Knob & Tube systems use old cloth-insulated wires and are not grounded. We strongly recommend that Knob & Tube wiring be replaced to eliminate fire and electrical shock hazards.

An electrical surge is a sudden increase in power that flows through electrical wires. Surges can cause damage to computers, phones, entertainment systems, microwaves, stoves, fridges, washers – any device that has electronic components such as sensors and timers. Today, that’s most appliances. A Whole House Surge Protector can save your appliances and electronic devices and save you thousands of dollars in damage.

Look for our $50 discount coupon for the installation of whole house surge protectors at www.theelectricconnection.com.

A properly grounded electrical system routes occasional leaking electricity through a “ground wire” into the ground. Without grounding, excess electricity can cause fires, damage to electrical appliances and computers, and also shocks to residents.

Older homes built under earlier electrical codes will often have outlets for two-prong plugs. This is often an indication of an ungrounded electrical system. Sometimes, the outlets have been replaced with the modern three-prong type, but without actually adding a ground wire. This can make it appear that the system is grounded when it’s not.

Even when your wiring system has a ground wire, the grounding may fail due to loose or corroded connections and splices. A qualified electrician can check your wiring with a special tester to determine if it’s fully grounded. The Electric Connection offers this testing as a free service with every electrical job that we do in the L.A. area.

There is now conclusive evidence that both Zinsco and Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) “Stab-Lok” electrical panels can fail. (Electrical panels contain your circuit breakers or fuses.) Fires and electrical shocks can result. These brands were installed in the 1950s to 1980s. The failure rates as they age are much higher than for other brands and represent a real electrical hazard. We recommend all Zinsco and FPE electrical panels and circuit breakers be replaced with modern electrical equipment. Click here for more information about Zinsco and Federal Pacific electrical panels. One of the specialties of The Electric Connection is panel upgrades. We’re possibly the most active company in Los Angeles when it comes to electrical panel replacements. We offer a free safety check of your L.A. electrical panel box with every job.

Circuit breakers and fuses protect your electrical wiring from overloads of electricity. Overloading can melt wires and cause fires and electrical shocks. Whenever a wire is overloaded, the circuit breaker or fuse is supposed to cut the flow of electricity.

Sometimes older circuit breakers don’t work fast enough and allow too much current through. Fuses can also be a safety concern. Sometimes, they’ve been replaced with improperly-sized fuses and no longer protect wires from overloading. These safety issues can be solved by installing modern circuit breakers. Click here for a coupon for a free check of your electrical circuit breaker box with your next electrical job.

Most homes have copper electrical wires. However, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, over 2,000,000 U.S. homes were wired with aluminum. The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission has determined that aluminum wiring is hazardous as, over time, connections and splices can fail, resulting in fires and shocks.

Fortunately, a qualified electrician can upgrade an aluminum wiring system without replacing all the wires with copper. It’s possible to eliminate the fire hazard by upgrading only connection points and splices. Aluminum wiring safety retrofits should be done only by electricians specifically trained to upgrade aluminum wiring safely.

If you think it’s possible that your Los Angeles home has aluminum wiring, you can get a free checkwith your next electrical job. One of the specialties of The Electric Connection is efficient and effective safety upgrading of aluminum wiring in the Los Angeles area.

Click here to visit our website.

Smoke alarms are an important safety measure to protect your family and home from fire. You should have at least one installed on every floor. Unfortunately, a smoke detector beeping intermittently is a major irritant, disturbing your sleep and alarming your children and pets.

However, you should never permanently disconnect a smoke alarm to stop it from beeping. Instead, figure out the cause behind a beeping smoke detector and work to solve the problem. We can help!

If you just cleaned your fire alarm and replaced the battery yet the intermittent beeping continues, this could be a sign it’s time for a smoke detector replacement. These devices typically only last 8 to 10 years. If you’re not sure how old your smoke detector is, remove it from the wall or ceiling and check the manufacturing date on the reverse side to see if old age could be the cause of the malfunction.

The smart grid can be thought of as national and personal all at once. On a personal level, the smart grid connects all of the electronics in your house, letting them communicate on an internet for electronics. This electronic internet also communicates with you via your smart phone or computer in real time, letting you monitor your electricity usage.

Your appliances will talk to each other and organize times of non-peak electrical usage for them to complete cycles that use a lot of energy. Your home will talk to you, letting you know if you’ve left your television running or if the light in the garage is still on.

On a national level, your home will be tied into the national grid like it is already, but two-way communication will happen with the power plant. If your home has solar panels installed by an electrician, any extra energy you produce will be sold to the power plant. The power company will be able to monitor your electrical usage too. They will use this information to create a picture of your neighborhood. This tells them exactly how much energy needs to be sent in your direction.

This system will be a replacement for our current power grid, and it will allow two-way communication between the power plant and your home. The meters for this system will report themselves. You won’t need a stranger tromping through your yard once a month to read your meter anymore.

This system will create a more efficient use of electricity by sending it where it needs to be. It will also report problems as soon as they happen. Before you could find a flashlight during a blackout, the power company will know exactly what wire went down and why. This will cut repair times. Since everything will operate more efficiently, there will be less cost to keep everything operating, which will translate into cheaper power prices for you.

Maintenance for your home will be easier. Having an electrician wire your house for this system will let you know exactly what your home is doing. If your water heater sees problems that could indicate a breakdown, you will get a text message alert. This will let you drain it before it turns your basement into a hot tub.

While you will need to replace your current electronics with applicances designed for this new grid, the cost will be worth it. The power grid will be more reliable, which means fewer blackouts. Your house can even report suspicious electrical activity to you, creating increased security. You may find yourself pressured to have an electrician install solar panels, but the power company will pay you for the extra energy. It will be an improvement for everyone involved.

It's safe to say that few people actually look forward to doing laundry, and when you have a poorly functioning washer and dryer, the process is only made all the more painful. This is especially true if you live in a space where you have to share your laundry machines with others and are forced to pay for every load you wash. Sending your clothes through a dryer twice is a waste of quarters that you could be saving for your next load - not only that, but running your dryer more times than you need to is sure to start taking a toll on your electric bill.

You have a few options that you can look into to address this issue. If your dryer isn't heating up as much as it should be to actually remove the moisture from your clothes, don't jump to the conclusion that you need to replace it. Many homeowners will make the mistake of buying new appliances, spending hundreds of dollars picking out a top-of-the-line model, only to find that it too isn't adequately drying your clothes.