Have you been calling for help from an electrician in Los Angeles more often than you’d care to admit? If you have old wiring, whenever you’ve had an electrical service call the electrician should have made you aware of the wiring situation. A knowledgeable Los Angeles electrician will tell you when your electrical wiring needs to be replaced.

Cloth insulated wires may not be grounded properly and are definitely unsafe by today’s standards. The cloth actually falls off, leaving exposed wires in vulnerable areas of your home. If a home’s wiring is aluminum, the wiring shrinks and expands at contact points, causing a potential fire hazard. Neither method is safe. If you think your home may contain either of these types of wiring, The Electric Connection specializes in wiring upgrades for older homes.

The knob and tube wiring that electricians in Los Angeles used before the 1940s employs the use of ceramic knobs and tubing, with wires running through the tubes. It is not a grounded system, so plugging in any modern appliances or electronics is an immediate fire hazard. There are a number of insurance companies that will not offer fire insurance to homes with this type of system. An electrician in Los Angeles from The Electric Connection can upgrade knob and tube for you also.

Homeowners hear the words “electrical upgrade” and immediately start to see dollar signs. With the Electric Connection, the prices are affordable and the work that is recommended is an investment, not an expense. Older wiring systems are not only unsafe; they’re raising the cost of your electricity. More modern systems were developed with efficiency in mind. When a home is upgraded from knob and tube wiring or aluminum wiring, the electric bill immediately goes down, as does the insurance bill and the home repair budget – no more calling a Los Angeles electrician once a month for blown fuses or shorts.

The Electric Connection is the electrician Los Angeles CA homeowners contact most often for electrical upgrades. With over thirty years experience and twenty-five full time employees, all residential and commercial electrical services needs are handled quickly, efficiently, and affordably. Whether it’s a rewiring, an installation, or new construction, the professionals at the Electric Connection can handle it in a timely fashion. If you’re an LA homeowner, your family and your wallet will be happy that you did.

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Why is it you can replace some lights with more ‘advertised’ lumens with a LED light with less lumens. Here are 4 reasons:

1. Focused Lumens:

LED light is directional, conventional light sources are omnidirectional and require reflectors to gather the light and focus it to where it is needed. Any reflection that is over 1 bounce effectively loses the effect of the lumen. It has been proven that you can lose up to 30% of the effective lumens in this process.

The science of scotopic lumens is associated with a factor that allows us to adjust the photopic value to give a true representation of how useful the lumens are. The factor, developed by scientists, is an attempt to level the playing field. The factor is used to adjust the effective value of the lumen, either up or down from the advertised photopic lumen advertised on the package. Some lights, like HPS, have a factor that reduces the lumen amount. LED, on the other hand, typically has a factor > 1.7, which means the lumens it is producing is far more effective to us. Therefore, less lumens is required to do the job.

We have been very successful replacing 400W Metal Halide bulbs with our 18W LED tube, producing 1900 lumens, compared to a 32W 4 ft fluorescent tube, producing close to 2900 lumens. The main reason is all our lumens are coming straight down, where as only a small portion of the fluorescent tube is coming down and the majority of the light is requiring  a reflector to gather it and shine it downwards. After many projects, our customers tell us that it is brighter and feels better than working underneath fluorescent lighting

High bay fixtures are a critical part to any high ceiling building. Since these high bays require such large lumen output, the cost to run them can be high. By converting to LED high bays, you are able to reduce your energy consumption in your most energy intensive fixtures by up to 75%.

In this post, we are going to cover (non-comparatively) 5 top types of LED high bay lights for this year, 2017. While not every item on this list will apply to you and your building, there will surely be one or two for your needs if you currently use high bay lights in your facility.

If at any time you come across a question, want more information, or are actually interested in implementing LED into your building;

These traditional commercial high bay lighting fixtures look a lot like what we think a normal high bay should look like. They are reminiscent of traditional style Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium high bays and offer your typical round high bay look.

These high bay LED fixtures can replace both 400W and 1000W Metal Halide. The smallest unit is 80W producing 10,240 lumens. There is a 160W unit producing 19,200 lumens. This would be a good 400W Metal Halide replacement. And the largest unit at 400W produces 51,200 lumens. That’s 128 lumens/watt. And, USA Made backed with a 10 year warranty.

These LED high bay Lighting fixtures look a lot like a troffer style panel. The advantages of this type of fixture are the LEDs are spread over a larger area. This has 2 main advantages – Great light distribution and large heat sink. It is important to realize these lights are particularly good at light distribution, creating an even distribution.

These high bay LEDs can replace both 400W and 1000W Metal Halide. The smallest unit is 120W producing 15,360 lumens. There is a 150W unit producing 19,200 lumens and the largest unit at 300W produces 38,400 lumens. USA Made backed with a 10 year warranty like the traditional style high bay.

A retrofit kit utilizes your existing fixture and replaces the bulb and ballast with the LED head and the LED driver. These retrofits can be significantly more economical than replacing the entire fixture, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. One of which being it’s cheaper to buy. Another being it’s (typically) cheaper to install as well. For this reason, our high bay retrofit kits HAD to make it on the list of the best high bay lighting options.

Recent wildfires across Texas including the enormous Bastrop fire caused lengthy power outages because poles supporting miles of power lines burned in the fires. So, thousands of homes which were untouched by the fires lost their electrical power. In many cases, the power was out for weeks, and others are still waiting to see their power restored. We often take electrical power for granted, but the grid is continually being interrupted for a variety of reasons, including storms, fires, ice buildup, falling tree limbs, and nearby construction projects. And heavy air conditioning use during the hottest parts of the summer can overload the grid, resulting in regional blackouts. Parts of Dallas experienced a four-hour blackout this last summer when temperatures reached 108 in the shade. Needless to say, this was not a good day to go without air conditioning.

A lengthy power outage can ruin the contents of your refrigerator and make your home extremely uncomfortable during a hot summer or a cold winter, but if you live in a rural area and have a well, a loss of power can also leave you without water. Of course, this can be disastrous if the power outage is caused by a nearby wildfire. During a lengthy outage, backup power for your computer will fail and your electronic security systems can also become disabled, leaving your home without sufficient security.

If you’ve considered or experienced some of these conditions, and would like to make your home or business more secure, an automatic backup generator can relieve many of your concerns. The backup emergency generators we install operate on clean-burning natural gas or propane, and start automatically in seconds when a power outage is detected. These generators have the power to keep your home running normally during a lengthy power outage.

If you would like more information and a professional quote, please call Bryant Electric Service at 512-402-8587. We’ve installed many generators in Austin and in Central Texas, and can recommend the right size unit for your needs.