A modern convenience often taken for granted, electric power, can be found everywhere. To route electricity from the power station to your wall outlet requires many steps. Residential house wiring includes a variety of wiring and control devices to ensure safe and reliable service.

Electricity in the home is distributed by means of branch circuits. Furthermore, each branch circuit is supplied via a circuit breaker sized per the expected load on the circuit. A typical lighting and receptacle circuit will be rated at 15A. Because of their size, larger loads like ovens, clothes dryers, and air conditioning units are given dedicated circuit breakers.

A typical home can have dozens of 15A circuits, and several 20A, 30A, or even 50A circuits. Yet the total of all these breakers is much more than the size of the main breaker. However, this is intentional. It’s highly unlikely that every circuit will be fully loaded at any one time, so a demand factor is taken into account to keep the main breaker at a reasonable size.

A wood-framed home will typically use solid copper non-metallic sheathed cable for the majority of wiring applications. Solid conductors are easy to terminate and cheaper than equivalent stranded wire. The AWG size of the wire is determined by the expected load on the circuit and by the size of the breaker protecting it. You should never connect a wire to a breaker that is too large to protect it, as an overloaded wire can easily catch fire.

Winter is slowly taking over here in Maryland. And after the summer we had, no one’s complaining (just yet)! But while the holidays offer up lots of fun, and the cool of winter is currently quite welcome, the season has its fair share of electrical worries unique to itself. Want to be prepared for anything winter might toss your way? We can arm you with some common winter electrical problems in Baltimore. Read on with the electricians at Kolb Electric!

Need the services of a dependable Baltimore electrician? Contact Kolb today for any electrical repair, installation, or service you need!

Keep wary of these concerns, and you’ll find yourself comfortably enjoying the finer points of the season this year:

Is your home prepared and equipped for all of your burgeoning winter electrical needs? If not, contact a Baltimore electrician from Kolb Electric today to get the dependable services you need!

Veterans go through a lot.  For us that have never served it may be difficult to fully understand what a veteran has to go through.  For some veterans the challenges they face do not stop once they arrive back home. Some may have physical limitations while others may have mental.  The fact is that veterans have put there lives on line and many have gave their lives for our freedom.  Over 42 million Americans have served during war time with over 1.2 million American deaths during war time.

Custom Electrical Services would like to personally thank all the men and women who proudly serve in the U.S. military.  It is fair to say we can never thank you enough for our freedom.  On this day we renew our continued appreciation for you and our freedom!

Veteran Who Attend A Chicago Cubs Game With Us.

Please take the time to personally thank a veteran.  May it be simple words and a hand shake, anonymously buy the uniformed military person in line behind you lunch, or if you have an extra ticket to a game or an event find a veteran to give it to.

Once someone has discovered retrofitting as a read that by clicking here.

Let’s get started with the first question on the list, and that is what exactly is a retrofit kit?

What is a retrofit kit anyways? Well, we’ve actually reducing your energy consumption even more. Just make sure you are buying a LED retrofit kit that has the option to be dimmable, otherwise you will NOT be able to dim them.

Retrofit vs full replacement, why should you consider retrofitting with LED?

While a full replacement of an entire is fixture is very valid to do especially when they are outdated or literally falling apart; often times you can avoid that by retrofitting your fixtures. With retrofitting you get to keep your old fixture but just replace the light source in it with a new one. This will allow you to reduce the costs associated with the lighting upgrade tremendously, which will allow you to realize a much larger ROI.

Although there are benefits of both, you need to think about your facility or buildings own situation, and go from there. To recap; retrofitting is great if you can keep your old fixtures but if you can’t (due to reasons like outdated or near falling apart), then a full replacement is probably the better option.

For more info, check out this infographic (

Why should I even switch to LED in the first place?

Very good question, and this not only applies to those retrofitting but for any facility that plans to make a lighting system update. LED technology has vast benefits in almost every area of the definition “quality” for commercial lighting purposes. Here are just a few of the major benefits that more often than not win over businesses to commit to the conversion over to LED technology:

As you can see these are all some pretty big benefits, and that’s only the start. These reasons are why many companies are making the conversion over to LED products from other outdated technologies such as metal halide, HPS, and even fluorescent. Why not convert to LED with a retrofit LED kit and realize all of these benefits and more? It just makes sense!

Is it difficult to retrofit an existing light fixture?

Well, that can depend. To someone who has no knowledge about lighting fixtures and electrical wiring, then yes this will seem like an extremely difficult task. On the other hand for someone who is a professional, this isn’t a difficult task at all.

The process, in theory, is simple because all it consists of (for the most part) is a replacement of all the existing lamps, ballasts, sockets, and brackets with new ones to fit your retrofit kits. If you have no experience doing this, and even if you do, it is always recommended to bring in a licensed electrician if you can to ensure it is done right and to safety standards.

Are LED retrofits that are compatible with existing ballasts a good idea?

You need to consider the age of the ballast that is currently installed. In most cases, it will be nearing the end of it’s life and thus it won’t be the most up-to-date ballast that you could have. This adds for an additional point of failure, which could cost you more down the line in maintenance fees to replace them when they die out.

You have to consider that since you are considering the switch over to LEDs through retrofitting, you most likely haven’t recently upgraded you lighting system or replaced much. This means that the ballasts currently installed are most likely, at best, as old as the lights in your fixtures currently. But more often or not, they are even older than that which can definitely mean they are nearing the end of their lifespan.

Taking this all into account, it’s impossible to tell you if using existing ballasts is a contact us. We will gladly answer any question you may have!