By Clarissa Allison | March 18th, 2016

Using the right mixture of outdoor lighting in your front yard will enhance your home’s safety, security and beauty!

While it may seem like we can simply duplicate our backyard lighting scheme in the front of our homes, there are actually differing objectives to lighting your front yard. Lights in your front yard add security by deterring unwanted visitors while also adding ambient lighting to our landscape, and highlighting the architecture of our homes.

If you have any questions about our summer electrical safety tips, contact us online. Also, even simple jobs like installing light fixtures or ceiling fans may be dangerous—give us a call instead! We’re a family owned and operated business that has been serving the Baltimore, Bethesda, Alexandria, and Washington, DC metropolitan area since 1925. The valuable advantages we can offer you are great service, high quality products, and experienced workers at a competitive price.

Millions of dollars can be saved every year in every major or little city in this country and those around the world. This sounds like a newspaper headline but it is the actual hard truth. The amount of energy necessary for street lighting is massive. For example, Britain needs about 1900 gigawatt hours for street lighting alone, which yields 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions which could all be avoided and greatly reduced. Imagine cutting that down to 20%. Can it be done? Of course it can, LED street lights have been proved to have that effect.

With the economic crises, cities have started to switch off lights to save up on the electricity bill. This is one of the many solution proposed. Unfortunately, LED street lights were not proposed and that is a major mistake.  There are installation costs you might say. Well, sometimes there are, but these are equal to zero based on savings achieved over time. It means not seeing the whole picture because the lighting systems now used on the streets needs extensive costly maintenance while LED street lights will need almost none.

This is not a small fact. Maintenance means dozens of monthly salaries and costs with equipment and cars. This is only for one city but imagine the positive effect of this at a country scale or even a global scale. It will actually make a difference. In addition, these LED lamps are retrofit so there are not additional costs on that. Simply when one light burns out it should be replaced with an LED which reduces your costs by not having to fully replace your lights entirely.

There have been cases when the LED obvious benefits are:

The list can surely go on. Most people get stuck on the price but at such a big number of Street Light LEDs needed any dealer will be more than happy to negotiate a solution for the whole city so the costs will be lower than normal. In addition, the provider will stick around with advice and consultation.

In the end, it is just a matter of putting ideas into practice. Only this way we will manage to create a better world.

In a crowded home where every family member has a cell phone and a tablet, electrical outlet space can be in high demand. And even if there’s plenty of outlet space to go around, the clunky chargers for these devices can clutter countertops and disrupt what could otherwise be streamlined workspaces.

If the glut of USB chargers has got you down, worry not -- you can simply upgrade a few of the outlets around your home to USB combo outlets and put away those chargers for good.

A New Kind of Outlet

USB combo outlets are a lot like the ones you already have around your home, but instead of just two electrical outlets, there are one or two USB outlets squeezed in between. By upgrading, you’ll be able to plug your phones, tablets and other devices directly into the wall with only a USB cable.

With the chargers out of the picture, there’s no worrying about whether a bulky charger will cover up both outlets. And as an added bonus, these outlets may charge devices faster than other USB connections, depending on the amperage in your home.

Take Your Pick

USB combo outlets were difficult to come by just a few years ago, but they’ve become ubiquitous enough that there are now numerous manufacturers, designs and features to choose from. Some models have no electrical outlets at all and four USB outlets instead. If you have a home office or another area of the house where you’re always charging multiple devices, this design will allow you to get lots of charging power in one small space.

The increasing popularity of combo outlets is bringing down the price, too. Most models are available for less than $25 per outlet, and some can be found for as little as $10.

Combo outlets are also winning favor with home builders, who are increasingly making them standard in strategically placed areas of the homes they build.

Make It Fit

Before you get too excited, there may be a catch, especially if you live in an older home. While it’s true that these outlets save space by removing the need for an adapter, combo outlets take up a bit more space behind the wall. Most models are more than twice as deep as a standard electrical outlet. As a result, the existing junction boxes for your outlets might not be big enough to accommodate the upgrade.

All is not lost if this is the case -- junction boxes can be replaced, but this may require some cutting and patching of the wall around the outlet. An electrician should be able to quickly determine whether this kind of work will be necessary to make USB combo outlets fit.

You may also need to factor your home’s amperage into your expectations of charging speeds. The electrical systems in most modern homes will charge devices quickly, but older systems may not quite have the juice to save you charging time. It’s also possible for combo outlets to charge devices more slowly if multiple USB ports are in use simultaneously.

If you’re thinking about upgrading the outlets in your home, reach out to your trusted local electricians today for a no-obligation consultation.