The electrical system of a home is often a greatly underrated, underappreciated, and under cared for part of any home. As long as it’s working, why worry? However, your electrical system can very easily cause big problems if it hasn’t been cared for. Buying a home is a big investment, and you shouldn’t leave anything to chance. Depending on what your home inspection says when you get it back, it’s never a bad idea to ask for a licensed electrician to come out and do an electrical system inspection prior to committing to the purchase so that you know exactly what you’re getting. Consider the following reasons you definitely want to ask for an electrical system inspection before committing to a home purchase in Longview.

It’s important to have a circuit breaker panel inspected regularly, including when you’re looking to buy a home. The circuit breaker panel is a critical safety feature for any home electrical system. Your electrician will check to make sure it’s in working order, that there are no recalls on it, and that there is plenty of power in order to power all the appliances and more. Making sure this critical element of the home is working properly is the most important part of an electrical system inspection.

When you have an electrical inspection completed on a prospective home to buy, you’ll get a good sense of what the current state of the electrical system looks like. This will give you a good idea if you will have to invest in the electrical system in the future and when that may need to happen.

Your electrician can help you figure out if you’re making a good investment from that side of the home buying experience. Electrical problems can quickly add up to large sums of money if you end up having to replace much of the wiring, outlets, and lighting fixtures in order to improve the house and reduce any chance of an electrical fire. Understanding what the electrical risks are will help you know if the house will be worth the money or not.

Often times, when you buy an older home, you may be considering adding a dishwasher, upgrading the washer and dryer, or opting to either add or upgrade the air conditioning system. These are all great ideas to add value to your home, however, an upgrade can quickly turn into a much larger project when you need to install a new electric panel or upgrade the wiring because it can’t currently support your home improvement projects.

The choice of a LED product is guided by watching specifications tables. Here is one table accompanied by the explanation of the features. The result should be a good lighting solution that is leaving a green ecological footprint. A good lighting solution is emitting enough light that the tasks in space can be conducted properly. First the lumens of the fixture (responsible for brightness in the room), the CRI (how good is the lighting concept representing colors), color temperature (how is the ambience in the room) and lumen per watt (efficiency of the system) are recommended to be watched. These criteria are responsible for a good lighting quality and energy efficient solution.

The other features are necessary information too. They serve further details about the fixture, the setup and maintenance of the lighting system.

(1) Type: The products name is a detail for purchasing the fixture

(2) Wattage: Defines the energy consumption of the fixture, which is important for the electrician and the ecological footprint of the system (referring to Lumens per Watts)

(3) CRI: Important character in areas where colors should be truly represented. For applications where people are involved, a CRI lower than 70 is not recommended. In shopping areas a CRI of 90 and higher is applicable.

(4) Lumens: responsible for the brightness in a room. The more lumens, the brighter the fixture is illuminating the space.

(5) Lumen per Watt: Efficiency of the lighting system. The higher the lm/W the better the ecological footprint of the product.

(6) Lumen Maintenance: how fast LEDs lose their brightness compared to new products (most manufacturers refer to the time when most of the LEDs reach 70% and less of the initial lumen output)

(7) Color Temperature: defines the mood or ambience in a room. Low quality lighting fixtures mostly have a very cool color temperature as these LEDs are more efficient than warm white LED products. A color temperature higher than 6000K is not recommended for a lot of areas.

(8) Beam Angle: the light is radiated into the indicated beam angle. LEDs are direct light sources with typical beam angles of 120° till 180°.

(9) Life Hours: defines the lifetime of a LED product. LEDs last 50,000h up to 100,000h.

(10) Replaces: a helpful information for replacing conventional light sources

(11) Working Voltage: high quality LED products have an integrated driver, Retrofit Solutions are delivered with the suitable ballast already.

(12) Frequency: detail about the admitted voltage frequency

(13) Power Factor: Efficiency of the ballast

(14) THD: Total harmonic distortion is describing the distortion caused by ballasts and other inductive loads of the input current on alternating current (AC) power systems

(15) Operating Temperature: The light source is operating under the mentioned conditions according to the manufacturer datasheet, other temperatures will cause the light source to fail or work not properly (e.g. light loss, different color temperature)

(16) IP Rating: the protection of the light source, ballast and wiring against liquids and solid objects

(17) Dimmable: dimming is the change in light source brightness, mostly undertaken by smart controls

(18) Dimensions: the fixture’s size, important for the definition of the mounting position and space

(19) Net Weight: the fixture’s weight, important for the mounting construction, e.g.ceiling strongness needs to be considered

(20) Housing: the housing is the surrounding of the light source and ballast, the higher the IP rating, the better the protection against liquids and solid objects which is important in car washes for example, the coating is important in swimming halls where the luminaires are exposed to chloride and humid conditions

(21) Mounting: possible mounting ways like pendant, surface or hock mount

(22) Warranty: how long after purchasing, the products are ensured working properly

In this series, we’re helping you save energy at your homes and businesses, room by room.

We’re pulling out all the stops to give you the best tips to use in the bedroom – for energy-efficient lighting, that is!

1. Take a survey of all your light fixtures – table lamps, floor lamps, track lights, and any ceiling fans, chandeliers, or pendant lights. How many of these use incandescent light bulbs? If the answer is greater than zero, we’ve identified the first way you can cut down your energy consumption in the bedroom: Swap out all your incandescent household, chandelier, and reflector light bulbs for

Using only 0.3 watts of power, it won’t cost you more than $0.20 to operate each year. That’s 90% less than the traditional incandescent. Not to mention it has a 100,000-hour rated life!

4. What other light fixtures do you use? Wall-mounted reading lights? Shelf lights? Display lights? You can save even more energy by upgrading these fixtures to LED or fluorescent.