Wouldn’t it be nice to really step up your game this holiday season? This is the time of year when friends and family are sure to visit your home. Maybe it will be for an evening of fun and entertainment or maybe it will be for a lovely dinner. No matter what your plans are for the holidays, wouldn’t it be nice to have a little something extra to help set the scene in your home? A new chandelier is the perfect, functional idea. An electrician in Burbank, like those at The Electric Connection can get your new chandelier installed just in time for holiday entertaining.

Gathering in the sitting room for cocktails, games or good conversation is a great way to reconnect with old friends and family you haven’t been able to spend quite as much time as you would like with. Having the right lighting can help set the mood. Bright and festive or dim and intimate can all be achieved with a new chandelier complete with a dimmer switch installed by an electrician. Burbank homeowners who want to be able to set the mood with the flick of the switch will love the beauty and flexibility a new chandelier gives them.

Many of the new chandeliers available on the market today are equipped to use energy-saving lightbulbs, which can ultimately save you money in the long run. LEDs are the perfect way to brighten up a room by using just a few bulbs. The look and feel of a room can be completely transformed with the installation of a new chandelier by a Burbank electrician. Chandeliers offer unique lighting options for a foyer, dining room or a den. Have fun and shop around for the perfect fixture. Give The Electric Connection a call today and get your appointment scheduled before your next big gathering.

LED lighting is truly an upgrade.  Home owners and businesses alike can keep more of there hard earned money by simply changing from incandescent bulbs to energy efficient LED bulbs.  While the upfront cost of the LED lamps is substantially higher, the long term cost savings from the energy efficient LED lamps is more than worth the upgrade.

If you don’t have the budget to replace all your old incandescent lamps try replacing just the most heavily used ones.  Or lamps in hard to reach areas such as eves or above stairs.  Kitchens tend to be one of the areas in a home that have the lights on the longest.  And with most kitchens having recessed can lighting in them, kitchens are one of the easiest locations to upgrade to LED lighting.  There is a lot of quality LED lamps available on the market today.  With major companies such as Sylvania and Feit offering dimmable long lasting LED lamps.

Choosing the right LED lamps can be a complicated task if you don’t know what your looking for.  With LED lamp packaging displaying words like, lumens, wattage, and color spectrum, choosing the right lamps is overwhelming for some.

Wattage is how most people judge the amount of light they want for the particular fixture.  However, lumens is the true measurement of the amount of visible light LED lamp will give off.  A typical 60 watt incandescent lamps will give off around 520 lumens and last on average 2800 hours.  While a quality LED 12 watt lamp can give off around 800 lumens and last around 25,000 hours.  Some LED lamp manufactures have put on there packaging what wattage of incandescent lamp there LED lamp is designed to replace.  This helps to take some of the confusion out of choosing the right bulb.

The right color spectrum can make a huge difference in the way a room looks.  Color spectrum or as some people call it lamp temperature, is the color of the light the lamp gives off.  When LED lamps were first released they gave off a very cool or bluish color versus the more yellow or warm color of traditional incandescent lamps.  Now days LED lamp manufactures have a more perfected color that the lamps give off.  Often you will not be able to tell a difference between the color of an incandescent lamp and a quality warm white LED lamp.

You must also choose if you want to be able to dim your new LED lamp.  Dimmable LED lamps often cost more than non dimmable lamps, some as much as 40% more.  Dimmable led lamps give you the ability to choose how much lumens the lamp gives off via your wall mounted dimmer switch.  Dimming your LED lamps helps to reduce energy usage which saves you money on your power bill.  Using an approved dimmer for the LED lamp is a critical factor.  LED lamp manufactures and a list of approved dimmers for there product that can often be found in the directions or the manufactures website.

By now we all should know that switching from incandescent lamps to LED lamps can be a substantial savings.  But how much can you really save?  If you figured an average of 25 LED lamps per household and factored in average usage over 50,000 hours you would save around $6,700.00 in energy cost per home.  Add in the cost of time and maintenance to change the old incandescent lamps and the saving grows even bigger from there.

With businesses typically having more lights and increased hour usage switching to LED makes perfect sense.  With many power companies such as Mid American Energy offering rebates to help offset the cost of upgrading the LED.  A recent LED upgrade project we completed is Hoodz of Central Iowa.  The LED lighting helps reduce energy consumption, heat, and

maintenance cost. While they choose an ultra modern high efficient LED fixture for this project, often changing the existing lighting from commercial fluorescents to LED linear lamps can be an option as well.

Mid American Energy is even upgrading street lighting with LED.  They are starting to replace more than 100,000 Des Moines area street lights with new LED street lighting.  The project is excepted to take 10 years and save 35 to 50 percent in energy and reproduce carbon monoxide emissions by as much as 22,000 tons per year.   More on the LED street lighting upgrade can be found on KCCI’s post here.

Installing LED lighting from the initial construction phase of a business is now becoming more and more common.  A recent project Custom Electrical Services completed in West Des Moines Iowa for R2 Financial Strategies 2nd floor build out used all LED lighting throughout there new space. 

Do you have enough smoke alarms in your home? The odds are probably not if we’re going by statistical averages, and if you’re here reading along then you also are probably thinking about installing more. Which is good! But you might also be thinking about wiring them yourself, and that might not be the best option you have. Why? Today the certified professionals at Hoffman Electrical are here to help you understand.