When it comes to your home electrical system, safety should be your number one priority. Electricity can be dangerous when your wiring isn't connected properly, and a house fire can rip through your home and possessions with alarming speed, putting you and your family's very lives at risk. One common cause of fires is an electrical arc in the circuits behind your walls, when current jumps on an unplanned path from one conductor to another, potentially igniting wood or insulation along the way. Fortunately, you can protect your home against electrical arcs with arc fault circuit interrupters (AFCIs). Read on to learn more.

Your Electrician Can Keep You Safe

According to the National Fire Protection Association, there were 47,700 residential fires caused by electrical failures in 2011, causing 418 deaths and $1.4 billion in damage. Any steps you can take to prevent becoming a victim to one of these disastrous events is money well spent. And while conventional circuit breakers will automatically shut down if a circuit shorts or gets overloaded, they are unable to detect most electrical arcs. That's where the AFCI comes in.

The AFCI works by monitoring the current passing through the circuit, searching for unusual activity that could indicate an arc. When a problem is detected, the device immediately shuts down the circuit, lowering any opportunity the arc could have to start a fire. Keep in mind that some of your appliances or equipment may intentionally create arcs, but in a safe manner – the AFCI should recognize them and only trip during dangerous arcing conditions.

Find Out if Your Family is Protected

Your local code almost definitely requires your home to include ACFIs for circuits that lead to bedrooms, and if your municipality has updated its code in the past year, it may require interrupters for every circuit in the home. However, if your home was built before 2000, it may not have AFCIs installed at all, and it may be worthwhile to make an upgrade.

If you aren't sure if you have arc fault circuit interrupters, open the door of your main panel and look inside. Circuits that have AFCI capabilities are usually indicated by a yellow or green label. If you can't tell, ask an electrician to inspect your wiring and verify whatever safety features are included. The electrician can also make recommendations about whether you should consider upgrading your circuits and give an estimate on how much it would cost.

Don't Let Your Circuits Create a Disaster

If you need help installing arc fault circuit interrupters in your home, or otherwise bringing your wiring up to code, contact an expert electrician today.

It’s agreeable that we all wish for the generations in school now and to come on all levels (elementary, middle / high school, and college) to be given a better environment than we were when in school.

Specifically in this post we will be talking about the importance of efficient and more importantly study that was conducted found that an environment in which the lighting that consisted of LED at 6500 k proved to be the best lighting for test taking. Studies found that the group testing under 6500 k light scored the highest against 5000 k and 3500 k. This in it of itself shows proof that with a dynamic lighting system in place (possible with LED), we can change the lighting around to meet the needs of the classroom activities. If you want to read, 5000 k was found to be most optimal. While test taking performed best at 6500 k.

Increase in productivity. Office managers have reported that when making the conversion to LED they noticed an uptick in productivity. Now you could say it’s just a coincidence due to the fact that it’s just a “new” or switched up environment. But we think it is a great way to increase focus (proved by the previous point), which in turn allows more tasks to get down.

Helps with students Circadian Rhythm. Teen’s and young adults health are crucial to keep in check especially in their school years. LED lights mimic natural light, which allow the body to feel as if they are in real sunlight when they are in reality indoors 90% of the school day. By balancing out students circadian rhythm; you allow them to stay on track when it comes to their sleep, health, and overall functionability.

Conclusion

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This issue almost exclusively applies to instructions on how to safely repair it.

The average rated life of a light bulb represents how long it took for half of the bulbs to fail during testing (given perfect conditions). If your bulb lasted 12,315 hours (you counted!) but the label touted an average rated of life of 20,000 hours, you’re actually still within range of an acceptable life span.

We measure LED bulbs a bit differently since they never technically burn out, but rather fade over time. Instead, the Lighting FactsTM label indicates LED lumen maintenance (LM), which is an estimate of the bulb’s lumen depreciation over a given time.

Solution: Understand that the expected lifespan of your light bulb is simply an estimate based on testing that was performed in a controlled environment. When a bulb burns out earlier than that estimate, it doesn’t always mean something is wrong with it.