Most electrical work requires the expertise of a professional electrician in order to be completed safely and effectively. Improper repairs or installations are not only frustrating but also potentially dangerous, leaving you vulnerable to shocks or even electrical fire. Unscrupulous electricians may also recommend unnecessary, costly repairs so it’s important to be weary of electrician scams during your search. That’s why we’ve come up with this guide to hiring an electrician for our Northern Virginia clients looking for the best solutions in the region.

We recommend you ask about the following on your search for the best Northern Virginia electricians:

Your neighbors throughout Northern Virginia have relied on us for all their electrical needs, including installations, replacements, repairs, and maintenance, since 1925. What makes us the best electricians for your project?

When you need reliable electricians in Northern Virginia, there’s only one name you need to know—Kolb Electric! Call 877-287-1179 or click here to schedule service online.

‘Tis the season to be jolly with thousands of colorful lights glowing from your trees, gutters, front door wreath, and bushes. Billions of lights will be used to dress up homes and businesses throughout the country during the final months of the year. As festive as the light-up Santa and Rudolph may look on top of your roof, you have to make electrical safety the focus of your holiday lighting festivities.

Following are five tips to help you avoid common holiday lighting problems others will experience this year. Commit them to memory so electrical safety does not pull the plug on your merry-making décor this year:

1. If you are putting up a live Christmas tree, make sure it is well-watered and use LED bulbs for all decorations placed on the tree. Dry trees and heat from non-LED bulbs create home fires every holiday season. Do not place candles where they may be knocked over on a live tree. LED bulbs should be used when decorating trees in your outdoor landscape as well.

2. Thoroughly inspect every string of lights and plug-in points before using them indoors or outdoors. If you notice any of the following at even one point on the string, toss it out or repair the damage before use to ensure electrical safety for your home:

3. Power cords should be used to connect strings of lights, but pay attention to how many strings you are connecting per cord. In general, more than three strings of lights could be too much.

4. Avoid hanging your lights with tacks, screws, or nails. You do not want to crack, tear, or otherwise damage the electric cord. You can use insulated hooks instead.

5. Make sure you are plugging outdoor lighting features into ground fault circuit interrupter outlets. These outlets reduce the risk of electrical shorts or dangerous shocks if water, wet leaves, and other outdoor elements get into the sockets.

6. Do not use indoor-only holiday lights outdoors. There are clear differences in how these types of lights are made, even if they look the same. For instance, outdoor lights are created with more insulation so they are not as easily affected by rain and snow.

Do not allow electrical safety to cut the cord on your holiday lighting festivities. Light up the house and allow the big snowman to wave at the neighbors from your front lawn. Just make sure your snow globes, trains, and twinkling tree lights present no danger to your home, your family, and your neighborhood.

Surge protection is part and parcel of every electrical system and many devices such as HDTV’s and computers are plugged into surge protection devices. However, it’s not necessary to have individual devices to protect the different appliances or equipment in your home. It’s possible to get a centralised surge system installed into your property’s main electrical panel; this turns your home into a single large surge protector.

This kind of a system offers a significant amount of convenience. Most homes nowadays have a large number of appliances and equipment ranging from washing machines, dishwashers, electric stoves, ovens, refrigerators, HVAC systems, home PCs, printers, scanners, pool equipment, hot water systems, outdoor lighting, irrigation system, home entertainment and music system and more.

Based on the number of equipment and appliances you want to protect, a centralised surge protector can be much more affordable than just getting individual surge protectors installed. This also extends protection to all the other larger appliances in your home, that don’t already have any surge protection adapters. The different types of surges that can occur are:

The long and short of it is that surges can occur at any point of time and this is what makes it important to have a centralised system that will provide protection to all the equipment and appliances in your home.

If you notice the lights in your home flickering, that is generally caused by an electrical surge. Typically, these types of surges won’t burn out your appliances and devices, but they do have a negative impact on the longevity of this equipment. When it comes to getting surge protectors installed, the high-cost of the damage caused by electrical surges to our electronic equipment and appliances should be the topmost priority.

Current day home appliances such as ovens, dishwashers, refrigerators etc. are becoming increasingly sophisticated and operate on smart technology. They have a large number of closely intertwined, sensitive components; an imbalance or impact to one of them has the potential to impact the rest of the components too. This holds true for larger systems such as the hot water and HVAC systems too.

Even when these systems aren’t being used, major electrical surges can cause heavy damage to them and will shave years off of their operational lives. Without you realising it, this can result in thousands of dollars of losses in the duration you live in that home. In some cases, a massive power surge can cause irreversible damage to your HVAC or hot water system, and replacement becomes the only option you are left with.

Keeping all these aspects in view, it becomes extremely important to ensure that you have a high-grade, reliable surge protection system installed in your home. We at Allround Electrical can provide excellent electrical upgrade maintenance solutions to commercial and residential customers.

We will survey the space, make note of all the equipment and appliances on your property and will provide solutions that are best-suited to your needs. For more information, contact our friendly team at this number – 1300 169 263. Alternatively, you can also write to us at this email address.

Thanks for reading,1300 169 263

Picture this scenario: you’re sitting at home with your family watching television and enjoying an otherwise run-of-the-mill evening. Then, all of a sudden, *poof*! Your power goes out, leaving you in the dark.

Here’s a quick question: do you know what to do when this happens?

Have a look at our guide to understand your best course of action after an outage. That way, you can keep you and your family safe no matter the situation.

When the power first goes out, take the following steps:

This is a non-issue if there’s a power interruption. But in cases of extreme weather or other emergencies, guarantee the bodily safety of you and your family first.

If you have telephone or cellular service, a quick call to the power company can give you information on the cause, extent and estimated restoration time for an outage.

Depending on the expected outage time, you may want to put a plan in action for your food/water. If the outage is less than two hours, food in your refrigerator and freezer will be fine. After that, however, temperatures may rise high enough to cause food-borne illness. To minimize the risk, avoid opening and closing the refrigerator as much as possible.

In most power outages, municipal water should remain unaffected. However, extreme weather or extended outages could compromise water safety. In cases like this, it’s recommended to avoid using it for anything that could come in contact with your mouth or body:

If possible, use boiled or bottled water to avoid the risk of getting sick.

If an outage knocks out air conditioning during hot weather, your risk of heat stroke will increase significantly. It’s important to identify the signs of heat stroke and address it as soon as it happens. Symptoms include hot/red skin, dizziness or nausea, headaches, rapid heartbeat and a high body temperature.

To reduce the risk of heat stroke, follow these guidelines:

Just like the heat, a prolonged power outage in the cold can quickly create an emergency situation. This holds especially true with most in-home heating systems that rely on electricity in some capacity.

Remaining warm is especially important in these situations. One of the largest risks with prolonged exposure to cold is hypothermia. Signs of hypothermia risk include cold skin, shivering and a body temperature below 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Without proper steps in place, hypothermia can quickly escalate into a life-threatening situation.

Maintaining a warm environment is the most important step in a cold temperature power outage. Use all the following tips to keep your family safe in the cold:

Electricians are often looked upon as professionals that have to be called in only when something isn’t working. However, the fact is that a great, reliable and experienced electrician would also be able to provide you advice on the type of fittings and fixtures or electrical installations that would look good and add functionality to your home.

Regardless of how beautifully designed your home is, if it doesn’t have the right type of lighting that can only make the rest of the features and elements look dull and drab. But you can add accent lighting to various areas of your home to add to its aesthetics and functionality. It’s important to plan the lighting well as it helps create enjoyable and beautiful spaces on your property.

Some light fixtures are used only in areas where specific tasks are going to be carried out such as kitchens, study and home office spaces etc. But in addition to this task lighting, your home also needs lighting features that help accentuate the look of various installations in your home; this is referred to as accent lighting. This lighting includes fixtures such as subtle spotlights, or miniature pot lights.

Accent lights aren’t meant to throw bright light and fill the entire room with light; they are used instead to highlight features such as artwork, paintings, pieces of décor or some interesting architectural feature in your home etc.

These lights are soft and add a very comfortable and elegant look to the space. In fact you can use accent lighting to enhance the appearance of the outdoor areas of your property as well. They can be switched on to create a party mood or lend a more casual look to the common living spaces or alfresco areas of your home.

There are a number of benefits to getting accent lighting installed, such as:

While you can use these lights by themselves to maintain a very casual look in a room, they can also be used in tandem with other lighting installations such as track lighting, recessed lighting, under counter lights, floor level lights as well as spot lights etc.

Since accent lights aren’t meant to be very bright, they use less energy; in fact, you can add to their efficiency by using LED bulbs in them – this can make them up to 80% more energy-efficient that standard bulbs.

There are always some areas in a home that don’t get sufficient natural light; you can install accent lights in these areas, and these fixtures look great in basement entertainment rooms as well. You can choose outdoor-grade accent lighting fixtures to add to the beauty of your patio, deck or outdoor kitchen as well. The light that these installations throw lends a very luxurious and relaxing look to these spaces.