As energy costs continue to climb, and many people become more concern with their overall impact on the environment, solar power has become a serious consideration for more homeowners than ever before. When choosing to have solar installers install solar panels on your home, one of the first things that you need to do is get a good estimate of your home’s average energy usage. You can then work closely with your installer to determine the size of solar power system that works best for your home.

Gather Your InformationThe easiest way to get an estimate for your home’s average energy consumption is to gather your electric bills for the last year. You can then add all of the kilowatt-hours (kWh) that you used each month and divide this number by 12. This will give you the average number of kWh that you used each month. You can then divide this number by 30 to get a daily usage estimate. Because the average number of peak sun hours in the United States is 5 hours, you can divide this daily estimate by 5 to get an idea of how much electricity your system will need to generate each day during these peak sun hours.

Naturally, the number that you arrive to by this process is only an estimate. The cost of solar panels depends largely on the size of the system that you install. The estimate that you create will give you and your solar installers a good place to start when it comes to determining the size of your solar power system. If you are looking for more information about solar panels, the installation process, purchase and finance options, take a look at the rest of the information that we have available here at Solar Panel Info.

We’ve all heard it before—the incessant “beep beep beeping” of the smoke detector. It’s even more frustrating when you’re not even cooking something! While there are a few easy fixes for this, we often get asked if there’s a way to stop the smoke detector from beeping except for when it’s actually warning you about something. Let the electrical experts at Kolb help.

If you need smoke detector maintenance or assistance, contact Kolb Electric in DC, MD, or VA today.

The first thing you can do is to determine what type of beeps your smoke detector is making. If you’re like most people, you hear the smoke detector beeping and begin to panic, wondering where the smoke is coming from; however, if there is no smoke, and you hear a “chirping” sound, there could be an electrical problem with your detector or if the electricity goes out, a back-up battery may signal its presence.

If you haven’t replaced your battery annually, beeping every few minutes or so means that the battery is dying and needs to be replaced. Remember that rechargeable batteries don’t work nearly as well as traditional ones. A good rule of thumb is to change the battery either during the New Year or Daylight Saving Time, if applicable.

Smoke detectors usually come with a warranty. Some last five years, while others may last longer. There are a few things to look out for as far as smoke detector replacement is concerned. If it works on and off, chirps intermittently, or just plain quits working, it’s time to replace it. Also, if you’re moving into a new home but the home itself isn’t new, replace the unit, since you have no idea how old the detector may be.

Overall, if your smoke detector is beeping, it’s requiring your attention. Just be sure to stick to replacing batteries. If you need to replace your smoke detector, contact Kolb Electric today!

We all know or at least heard that converting from Metal Halide (High Intensity Discharge) to LED will save you money.

But how much? Are there any other reasons or difference you should know about?

In this article, we break down all the factors that you should be aware of before making a decision to convert from Metal Halide to LED. Here are the 9 reasons we think LED wins over Metal Halide.

Let’s take a look at the information on a typical 400 watt metal halide bulb. While specifications may vary, a visit to a popular online website that sells Metal Halide bulbs shows that a brand new bulb has the following specifications:

We have just as many customers wanting to convert to LED because of maintenance savings as they do for energy savings. Think about what we discussed, over the life of the LED retrofit kit, a customer would have to do 5-6 Metal Halide replacements. The higher the installation height, the higher the cost of replacement. And if you have a facility loaded with lights, this becomes a significant budget amount every year that you must take into consideration. Now, we know that reduced maintenance time on lights does not translate into dollars saved because it is highly unlikely that people will lose their jobs over the fact there is much less work to do. However, these people will have time to now work on things that matter, like fixing the machines that make the company money instead on replacing lights that cost the company money.

When you take a measurement of light with a light meter, it reads lumens. And this measurement of all the lights that contribute to the light at that location creates a measurement called foot candles. But let’s think about that light that is being measured. Metal Halide creates all sorts of light, in all spectrum’s, visible or otherwise. This includes UV and IR spectrum’s, visible to the measuring device but not visible to the human eye. LED, on the other hand, does not produce UV and IR. Therefore, its readings using the same light meter is only picking up visible spectrum’s.

So there is a fun little test you can do. Have 2 light sources, LED and Metal Halide. And first ask, which one is brighter? And if the right LED source was selected, they should say LED. And then use a light meter, and the light meter may say the Metal Halide area is producing more foot candles. And so now you know part of the reason, but wait, there’s 2 other pieces of information you need to know.

Click here to see our infographic on Retrofitting vs Replacing.

Conclusion

Boiler operated heating systems vary quite a bit from forced air systems like furnaces. Though there are some common issues that the two systems share, this also created a number of problems that are unique to boiler systems. Let’s take a look at some of the common repairs that call FB Electrical Services. We conduct heating repair throughout the Brighton area.