What is Radiant Floor Heating and what are the advantages of it?? We get asked that often.

Radiant floor heating is the best heating system a house can have and one that you don’t realize it is there! Just imagine: no radiators clanking in the night and no vents whooshing like a jet preparing for take off!! No dust – collecting ductwork that runs up your allergist”s bills. That’s the advantage of radiant floor heating. It is an even blanket of heat, right where you want it. It’s also a highly efficient way to heat a house, increasing comfort as it reduces energy costs.

This is how radiant heat works – In a radiant setup, the warmth is supplied by hot-water tubes or electric wires buried underneath the floor. As the invisible waves of thermal radiation rise from below, they warm up any objects they strike, which radiate that captured heat in turn. Though the air temperature remains relatively constant, you stay comfortable because the surrounding surfaces aren’t stealing warmth from your body.

Contrast that with what happens in a conventional forced-air heating system, the kind found in most homes. Air blows out of the registers at a well-baked 120 degrees, rises to the top of the room where it quickly sheds heat, then drops back down as it cools. The air in the room becomes uncomfortably stratified: Your head can be bathed in warmth while your toes lie in the frozen zone. Then there’s the problem of cycling. “You turn on the furnace, it quickly takes you to 68 or 70, and then shuts off. The result is a phenomenon he calls “the cold 70,” which is what you feel right after the hot air stops pumping from the registers. Those jarring ups and downs are absent with radiant floors, which may reach 85 degrees, tops, on a frigid day. The warm air still rises, but it does so evenly over the entire floor, so the coolest air stays up at the ceiling.

Most homeowners in Los Angeles who buy an electric car, like a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt, will want to purchase a special charger that allows them to charge their vehicles overnight. This is called a “Level 2 Charger.” It can take a Nissan Leaf, with a range of 100 miles, from empty to fully charged in about eight hours. A Chevy Volt hybrid, with an electric battery range of 40 miles, takes about four hours. Click here for more on Level 2 chargers.

Important Note: A few days ago, on April 27th, L.A. DWP announced a rebate of $2,000 to homeowners who install a Level 2 charger and a special electric meter as part of a DWP research project on charging electric vehicles. This rebate will result in a significant price reduction on charger installation. Call me for more info (800) 990-9490.

Of course, it would be more convenient to be able to recharge your car (electric vehicle or “EV”) with the speed of going to a gas station. Such chargers, “Level 3” are already available, but so far, only in Japan. Level 3 chargers fully charge a Nissan Leaf in 15-30 minutes…and cost about $45,000 installed. When they come to the U.S., they will most likely be installed for electric trucks and for fleets of company cars. But they will also be installed in the U.S. in shopping malls and gas stations. Shoppers and travelers will be able to top off their batteries in a relatively brief stop.

An even faster system is currently being built in Israel. A Palo Alto company called “Better Place” is building a network of “carwashes.” Only, when you drive your EV in, instead of getting a wash job, your spent battery is pulled out and within a few minutes, is replaced with a fully charged battery.

Better Place is also considering construction of car charging networks in Denmark and Hawaii. It’s focusing on small self-contained locations, what it calls “islands.” So, it probably won’t be coming to Los Angeles any time soon.

The good news is that the pressure to be fully charged when leaving home will ease as chargers increasingly are installed in public places. In Los Angeles, Level 2 Chargers are already available for a fee in train stations, LAX, the Burbank Airport, the L.A. Convention Center, and other public places. Some businesses, like Costco in Burbank and in Canoga Park, have also installed Level 2 chargers. Click here for an up-to-date map of public EV chargers near you.

Soon, more businesses and shopping malls will begin installing Level 2 or Level 3 chargers as an inducement for shoppers. Workplaces will be installing them as an employment benefit. We’re only at the beginning of a changeover to electric cars. With the federal government setting the goal of one million EVs on the roads by 2015, and with incentives provided by the State of California as well as L.A. DWP, charging your electric vehicle is going to get easier and faster.

For more about my company, The Electric Connection — all the stuff you wanted to know but were afraid to ask — click here. If you’re interested coupons for electrical work, for example $50 off installation of a Whole House Surge Protector in the L.A. area, click on our coupon page.

Any building, in any industry, in any area of the world, is susceptible to having potentially hazardous and radioactive exit signs installed throughout their building.

This could mean they are in schools, near your office, or anywhere else where a radioactive setting probably isn’t a desired situation to be in.

This is why we thought it was necessary to create this post to help and guide you towards identifying, removing, and finally replacing your radioactive exit signs with new signs that are much safer and even efficient, saving you money over other alternatives.

Firstly before we can remove and replace these seemingly nuclear exit signs, you have to be able to identify if you have them or not. But before that, lets explain what exactly makes these exit signs radioactive.

How are some exit signs radioactive?

Just the same way as some exit signs are safe, it is all in the way they are built. For some reason, whether it be technology of the time or something else, people assumed it was a good idea to create exit signs with Tritium, also known as 3H or H-3. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, causing exit signs made with this to be radioactive by default. The only seemingly positive upside to these exit signs is that they are non-electrical, meaning they won’t rack up anything in electricity bills.

But before you become alarmed with what we have shared with you so far, tritium emits only a low-energy beta radiation, which in turn causes the sealed glass tube it is in to glow (causing the exit sign to give off the illumination it requires). Thankfully, it is rather well known that this type of radiation can hardly (if at all) penetrate a piece of paper or clothing. So while yes it is a very low level (energy wise) type of radiation, the fact that there are alternatives that will remove radiation entirely from your building is all the reason to uninstall your tritium exit signs and replace them with something more safe, like LED exit signs.

Now that you understand the technology and how tritium in exit signs work a little bit more, let’s go over how exactly you can identify whether or not you have these types of exit signs in your building.

Identifying a radioactive exit sign should be fairly easy. All of these signs are required to have some sort of “Caution of Radioactive Material” warning on the fixture.

If you do find such a warning label, it is safe to say your light is made of tritium. Another tell-tale sign is whether or not your signs are connected to an electrical source or not as tritium signs do not require any such connection.

Once you’ve identified if you have a tritium exit sign or not, if you do happen to have one, you may continue on to removing and replacing it with the alternative exit sign, LED.

As with any lighting fixture, we recommend to bring in a professional contractor to do the job. But as a general guideline, you can typically recycle your tritium signs by returning them to the manufacturer or place of purchase.

If you purchased the building with them pre-installed and are unsure of where they came from after inspection of the signs for any brand markings, you can try two things:

1: Try contacting the previous building owner or collect records of where they were manufactured

2: Recycle them with a third party. like these), buying them, then installing them yourself or with a professional (we recommend a professional).

Here are a few things you should remember and keep in mind when dealing with a building that has radioactive exit signs:

LED sign lighting provides years of illumination and low energy costs. sign modules that consume 50mA of power each. Required materials differ depending on sign size, module size, length of wire between modules, current draw, and lumen output.

Materials:

1. First, measure your sign. Although we recommend spacing module rows 3 inches apart, it’s ultimately up to you. If you want a brighter sign, place them closer together and vice versa for a dimmer sign. With the recommended 3-inch spacing, a 4-foot square sign would need 150 modules (15 rows of 10). Again, the quantity of modules needed  is based on many factors and can differ.

These LED sign modules are available in custom lengths of up to 20 modules per strand. Order 60 feet (4 feet x 15 rows) of stranded modules, and cut the strand after every 10 modules. Each strand can be cut to make two rows.

2. Next you’ll need to order a power supply that’s rated for the combined wattage of all sign modules. To ensure that you don’t overwork the power supply, confirm that the total wattage of your modules is at least 20 percent less than the power supply’s rated wattage.

An easy way to calculate this is to multiply the total wattage of your combined lighting by 1.2. In the 4-foot sign diagram, there are 150 modules with a current draw of 50 milliamps (mA) each. Since current draw is given in milliamps, multiply that number by voltage and move the decimal 3 places to the left to get wattage. This module consumes 50 mA and has 12 VDC operation, so it consumes 0.6 watts (50 x 12 = 600). Next, multiply 0.6 by 150 to get a combined wattage of 90 and multiply that number by 1.2 (90 x 1.2 = 108) to determine which power supply you’ll need. Since the result was 108, you will need at least a 120-watt power supply.

3. Next on the list is wire to connect all your sign module stands to the power supply. For a 4-foot sign, you’ll need 4 feet of 18-gauge two-conductor wire to serve as your main line plus enough to cover the distance between your power supply and where it will be wired into an electrical system. You’ll also need dual-channel T-tap wire splice connectors for an easy connection to your main line.

Before you begin working on your sign, turn off power to the area.

4. If there isn’t one already, drill a hole in the back of your sign as an exit point for your wire.

5. Use a tape measure or ruler to plot your row spacing. Leave space on one side of the sign for your module-to-main-line connections. Mount the sign modules using their double-sided adhesive and/or screw holes.

6. Insert the end wires of each sign module row into the T-tap splice connector, and clamp the other end of the connector onto the main line. The splice connectors eliminate the need to strip wire insulation.

7. Use double-sided foam tape to secure each T-tap splice connector to the inside of your sign.

8. Reattach your sign’s front cover.

9. Connect the main line to your power supply, wire the supply into your electrical system, and restore power to the area.

For technical questions, don’t hesitate to call us toll free at 866-590-3533. Our customer service and technical support teams are available from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. CDT Monday-Thursday and 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. CDT on Friday.