Having your home’s entire electrical system rewiring is a large task, albeit sometimes a necessary one in order to improve your daily electrical use and increase home safety. A job of this caliber requires a team of professional electricians and should never be attempted by an enthusiastic “do-it-yourselfer” without training or experience. That’s what we’re here for.

If you are concerned that your home does in fact need rewiring, call for one of our professional electricians right away. We take pride the skills and training we have to ensure that a whole-house rewiring job is done correctly. Keep reading to learn more about this service and why you may need it.

The amount of electricity that you use in your home on a daily basis may surprise you—but with the addition of appliances and devices such as computers and smart phones, our electrical use has increased significantly since the 1980s. Think about how many devices you need to have hooked up every day just for recharging, and you’ll understand a bit more how big our electrical demands are today.

All this increased demand for power can easily overwhelm older, outdated wiring systems—even as young as two or three decades. If you think that whole-home rewiring is only necessary in homes that are 50 years old or older, you may be surprised to find out that your newer home needs it.

No matter the age of your home, there are a few signs in particular for you to be aware of which indicate you may need whole home rewiring:

As there are performance standard. All lights that are DLC Qualified have been tested and meet or exceed these requirements. Most recently, DLC has created a higher performance standard, DLC Premium. With DLC Premium, the LED lights are among the most efficient available. For example, our LED Retrofit Kits are DLC Premium Listed, while many of our competitors’ products are only DLC Standard Qualified.

To you, the consumer, this means a DLC Premium retrofit solution will be 20-30% brighter and / or use 20-30% + less energy. Comparing our units at 165 lumens/watt versus a competitive product at 97 lumens per watt, their product requires 135 watts to produce the same amount of light our product needs barely over 75 watts to create. To you, this saves you thousands of dollars month after month. So while both carry the DLC qualification symbol, ours will save you much more every minute the light is turned on.

One of the benefits of retrofitting is you get to recapture the investment in your existing fixtures. Think of a car dealership. Many are beautiful architecturally designed fixtures and the dealership had spent a lot of money to have them installed. The owners would like to convert to LED, but installing a new fixture is not an ideal solution. First, the finished result would not look as aesthetically pleasing as the current appearance. Second, the investment in the existing fixtures would be ‘throw away’. With a LED retrofitting kit, think of the driver as the ballast replacement and the head as a replacement for the metal halide bulb.

Secondly, most of the times a retrofit kit solution is less expensive than a new fixture solution. So not only are you able to recapture your fixture investment, but converting to LED should be cheaper than replacing the fixture with a new LED fixture.

Being DLC Premium Qualified, each kit must be backed with a 5 year warranty. Since our heads are so designed so thermally efficient, the heads have been upgraded to a 10 year warranty. The drivers come with a standard 5 year warranty, but an optional 10 year warranty on the entire unit is available. This means that you should not have to worry about replacing metal halide bulbs and ballasts for 10+ years. For some of our customers, not replacing bulbs and ballasts is almost as if not more important than energy savings provided by converting over to LED.

Our most powerful kit produces close to 51000 lumens while only consuming 350 watts. We believe we have some of the most, if not the most, efficient retrofit kits on the market today. While others are capable of creating 51000 lumens, they need significantly more watts to be able to do so. This is important, because one of the reasons you are probably considering on converting to LED is to save money. But it would be wrong for you to think that all LED solutions are the same in terms of efficiency. Some of our competitor’s kits are rated at 97 and 110 lumens per watt. Our fifth generation of LED retrofit kits are rated up to 165 lumens per watt. This means our competitors are 50% less efficient than our latest models. Over the life of the LEDs, this means you electrical bills are going to be significantly higher than it needs to be. Yes, it will be lower than the current metal halide or high pressure sodium bulbs you may currently be using, but they will cost you significantly more to operate over our latest ultra-efficient retrofit solutions.

The most important thing to do is to match the correct retrofit kit with your existing lighting. We created 11 retrofit kits as part of our family of LED solutions, from 30 watts all the way to 350 watts. Each unit is designed to fit into your existing fixture without the need for taking down the fixture and sending it to use so we can create a custom plate. Some suppliers provide that as their solution. With our 11 retrofit kits, there is no need to take down a fixture and send it to our offices so that we can design you a retrofit plate. Retrofitting Content by MyLEDLightingGuide

Out of all of the challenges winter presents, there’s one small, quiet issue that plagues us all on a routine basis. We’re talking, of course, about static shock! Have you ever noticed that little zap is a lot more common in the colder seasons? Have you ever wondered why? If you answered yes to either or both, read on to learn a bit from the Columbia electricians at Kolb Electric!

Need reliable, top-quality electrical services for your home or business? Contact the team at Kolb online today!

There’s probably no one in the world that hasn’t encountered a static shock. It’s that small, surprisingly little jolt that you can often get when stepping out of your car or touching a door handle in your home. But though it seems like a simple incident, static shock (or more specifically static electricity) is actually a lot of science going on all at once.

Put very simply, since to explain it in detail would be, frankly, a bit involved and boring, a static shock is the product of an imbalance in electrical charge. Everything is constantly exchanging electrons.

Everything. All of the time.

And when you happen to be exposed to an insulator, which naturally holds onto electric charge (like rubber, or wool) you basically start scraping charge off of everything around you. This collects on the surface of your body, and the next time you come into contact with a conductor of any type, typically metals, that built up charge will jump to the conductor, producing that somewhat agitating shock.

So why is it that when winter hits, we see a lot more static electricity? The answer is pretty simple, actually! In seasons like summer, moisture in the air called humidity tends to be far higher, and those water molecules actually act as a great grounding barrier, helping you mitigate building an excessive static charge.

But when winter sets in, we see a lot less moisture in the air. And what is there tends to be frozen, thus a solid and no longer part of the air content. This cold, dry air is a breeding ground for static, allowing your body to pull in massive amounts of electrons which will ultimately result in that startling shock.

And did you know your furnace actually makes it worse by sucking out what little moisture your home retains? That means bad times for those of us with a furnace system and wool carpets!

As a Columbia electrician knows well, our winters can get really dry, and really cold, which means wrestling with a lot of static electricity. Looking for ways to reduce your shock factor? Try these tips out:

It’s all about adding a bit of moisture, and avoiding materials that present the properties of an insulator!

We can’t do a whole lot about the static in your home (save maybe some sage advice), but if you’re looking for a trusted team of top-class Columbia electricians for electrical installation and repair, there’s no team better than Kolb! Contact us online to learn more about our electrical services, or to learn more great tips, tricks, and handy info, keep up with our blog!

If you’re already familiar with rebates from electric utilities and government organizations in your area, you may notice that the dollar amounts for most rebates have decreased over the past year. The average rebate for an LED replacement lamp has gone down by 7% since last January. Rebates amounts also decreased for LED fixtures: recessed down lights decreased by 66%, accent lighting by 12%, and high bay fixtures by 8%.

You needn’t be alarmed by these numbers, though. They’ve only been adjusted to match the lower prices of LEDs in 2013. Less money is necessary to make purchasing an LED financially attractive. Also, since there are over twice the programs this year, money is even more accessible.

If you’re still pondering a switch to LEDs, or have never considered utilizing LED rebates before, starting to look for them is easier than ever. Currently, you can find rebates and incentives for energy efficient commercial lighting in 71% of the U.S. As the year progresses, we should see that number go up.

Most burn injuries are preventable. That’s why in honor of National Burn Awareness Week, February 1-7, 2015, organizations across the U.S. are coming together to kick-off a yearlong campaign aimed at preventing burns in our communities. Do you have the fire safety information you need to protect your family from necessary burns and your home from electrical fire?

Note: Children are at an increased risk for electrical burns due to their ignorance and curiosity. 

Fire safety starts with you! Spread the word and get the information you need to keep your family and your home safe from electrical fire risks with help from Mr. Electric. Ensure safety by scheduling your free electrical home inspection today.