Across the U.S. approximately 4,400 people are injured and an additional 400 die each year resulting from electrical hazards annually. Add in electrical fire, and you have what results in an estimated $1.6 billion in property damage each year. Could these accidents have been prevented? When it comes to electrical safety, what you don’t know can hurt you.

GFCI stands for ground fault circuit interrupter. A GFCI is required in any areas with an increased risk of shock due to electrical hazards, such as water. In order to protect you from electrical hazards, a GFCI monitors electrical current, turning off an electrical circuit when it detects an imbalance - current flowing along an unintended path. Think of a GFCI as a small, extra-sensitive circuit breaker built right into an outlet to protect you against electrocution – even in outlets that are not grounded. GFCIs are currently required for use in:

Note: Never use GFCI outlets with refrigerators, freezers, or other appliances, as they could trip without your knowledge.

AFCIs stand for arc-fault circuit interrupters, and they protect you from electrical dangers, but of a different variety – those that create heat via arcing. Examples include a rodent chewing on a wire, driving a nail through a wire, or a device overheating where it is plugged into the wall. AFCIs detect this arcing, shutting down outlets before damage can occur. They are not found in wall receptacles like GFCIs, but instead are easily incorporated into your home or business’ main service panel in the form of specialized circuit breakers. AFCIs are required in:

Though you may have an older home or business where building codes do not require these outlets, proper home safety does. Regular outlets and circuit breakers are designed to protect the house's electrical system, not people. With these devices being so easy and inexpensive to install, why wouldn’t you want to protect yourself and others from the unnecessary electrical hazards overlooking them presents?

As of 2014, the National Electric Code (NEC), the nation’s singular code for safe electrical installation, has added the following standards for the safety of your home or business:

All 125-volt, single-phase, 15- and 20-ampere receptacles installed in a laundry room now require GFCI protection, whether or not a sink is present.

As dishwashers age, the risk of electrical shock increases, thus the latest requirement for GFCI protection on all dishwashers, whether they use a receptacle outlet or are hardwired in.

As of 2014, the NEC has recently added kitchen and laundry areas to the list of areas requiring AFCI protection. This includes all 120-volt, single-phase, 15- and 20-ampere branch circuits supplying not just outlets but also devices found in these rooms.

Shocked by how inadequately prepared for electrical hazards your home or business is? Don’t get burned by ignoring the need for these inexpensive, potentially life-saving devices. Contact Mr. Electric® today.

The jargon in the lighting world can often get mixed up. Color rending index (CRI) and color temperature are one of the most to be confused with each other. This post is going to clarify what the different between CRI and Color Temperature is so we can end this confusion.

Here is a short explanation why the CRI is more important to focus on before deciding for a color temperature. The color rendering index is the most important feature in certain applications as it determines the appearance of objects, faces and spaces. If this aspect is not relevant, the CRI can be as low as 60 or even 40.

The color rendering index (CRI) is a numeric evaluation of the light color accuracy with the reference of daylight (numbered 100). Sunlight and its broad spectrum will enable a person with normal vision to see 68 different colors in a color chart, but if the chart is illuminated by a light source of one wavelength only, each color from the color chart will appear as a different brightness of that one color. Some activities, such as walking or operating a vehicle, do not require the accurate perception of surface colors while others such as product selections in shops benefit from better color rendering features. Look at the application of the lighting installation. If the visual tasks are easy to perform the CRI doesn’t need to be high. In areas like offices, handcraft manufacturing and surgery, the requirements for visibility, contrast, visual guidance as well as face recognition need to be provided by a lighting system with a good CRI of >80 or even >90.

How much is the light color affecting the space? The term color temperature describes the temperature of objects by which they emit light, modeled through the “blackbody radiator”. When increasing the temperature of a “blackbody”, it starts to emit visible light in a continuous spectrum. The filament of a 60W incandescent lamp heats up to about 3000°F, as a result the lamp emits light with a color temperature of 3000K. Many of our artificial light sources do not create light by heating up a material until it glows like an incandescent lamps. Instead of creating a continuous spectrum, they generate an assortment of color emission lines. A blackbody color temperature cannot be directly given to this non-blackbody type of emission, generated by high intensity discharge and fluorescent lamps for example. For those light sources, a correlated color temperature (CCT) is indicated, based on the blackbody color temperature. A cool white fluorescent lamp has a CCT of about 5000K. The lamps light spectrum is different from a blackbody one but has the same temperature.

The light color influences the atmosphere in a space. The more cozy the ambiance the warmer the light color (lower color temperature) should be and the more dynamic the scene the cooler the light source (higher color temperature). The CRI is the most important factor to watch when choosing light sources. How good is the light source representing faces, colors and contrasts? The easier the visual task and perception the lower the CRI can be. The color temperature needs to be watched second, it is supporting the space’s atmosphere.

Conclusion

There you have it; an explanation of both the Color Rending Index and Color Temperature.

Have anymore questions or thoughts? Comment them down below!

When choosing lighting installation in Columbia for your home, office, or business, you may not realize how important your choice of lighting is. Lighting impacts every aspect of your environment – and no one knows this better than the electrical and lighting experts at Kolb Electric! Let’s go over some of our top picks for gorgeous, effective lighting.

Looking for lighting installation in Columbia? Contact Kolb online today!

Lighting – proper lighting – will only add to everything a room has to offer. You want ambient lighting to brighten a general area, without causing any headaches with overbearing, blaring lights. You want to draw visitors’ eyes to furniture, decorations, or other items of interest using accent lighting. And, last but not least, you want to utilize task lighting to keep any potential work areas bright enough to see what you’re doing.

First off, let’s take a look at the different types of lightbulbs, and the types of light they give off:

Now that we’ve touched on the types of bulbs, let’s delve into some types of lighting, what they are, and how they can add to your home, office, or business décor.

Ready to beautify your home and find the ideal lighting solutions to fit and add to your decor? Trust the professionals at Kolb to help you get the job done and done right! Contact us today to strike up a conversation, or to set a date for your consultation!

A new thing we will be doing every here every month on the MyLEDLightingGuide’s official blog is curating things from all around the web relating to the LED lighting industry. Here are the types of articles and pieces of content that will often be featured on our monthly link roundup:

This post will be covering all of the happenings from the past month, September of 2016. We also plan to give a brief summary of each piece we include, just to get a better idea of what it’s about, who it’s for, and why it might be valuable for you to take a look at.

Without further ado, here is the first addition of A Month in The LED Lighting Industry Link Roundup…

High Bay Luminare and Lamp Market Expected to Reach $20.4 Billion by 2024

For anyone involved in the lighting industry, even remotely, this is great news to hear. As LED products become cheaper and cheaper overall, the resistance from facility managers to make the investment in LED fixtures is reducing. This trend seems to be growing, and there is seemingly only a positive future in LED; especially in the commercial lighting world.

As LED Streetlights Spread, Some Critics Look for Dimmer Switch

While some concerns relating to the light that LEDs give off is bad for street lighting scenarios, cities are still picking up the technology for obvious reasons (from cost reduction to higher quality lighting). On the contrary, critics are looking for these LED street fixtures to be dimmed down a bit, all for some fairly valid reasons that you will discover in this piece of content.

How LED Lights Influence the Bats Activity

To finish off this seemingly street light themed roundup, this post discusses the influence LED lights are having on bat activity. Is this a way for those with bat issues to deal with it or not? In short; they will reduce some issues you may have with bats and related night time animals. But check this one out to get a better understanding on how it may help.

Interesting Reads:

Here are some not-so-relevant but still relevant articles that we think are highly interesting and definitely worth the read.

First Pro Basketball Game Held on LED Court in Japan