It can be fun to fix the little things around the house. It gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. However, there are times when you need the services of a qualified professional. It should never be taken as an insult or make you feel silly that you need to call a professional, especially when you are dealing with something that is extremely dangerous or deadly in fact. Electricity is never something anybody should mess around with no matter how handy they may be. Only skilled, trained professionals like the ones at The Electric Connection should handle those jobs around the house that involve electricity.

Your electrician in Santa Monica has a few guidelines for you to follow when you are trying to determine whether or not you actually need to call a professional.

1-If you have an electrical outlet that is hot to the touch, is smoking, has black marks around the outlet or you can hear a crackling noise, you need the services of an electrician. Santa Monica residents should never let something like this go unchecked. It can be a serious problem and should be evaluated immediately. If you smell burning wires, which is rather distinctive, call an electrician immediately.

2-Wiring that is exposed is another serious problem that needs to be taken care of before a fire happens. This is something you probably know is a problem, but assume it will hold until you get an electrician out there. Please don’t put it off.

3-Breakers that regularly trip are an indicator of a bigger problem. If you cannot find an obvious reason for the tripping breaker, like too many appliances in use at the same time, then you need a professional to troubleshoot the problem. There could be a problem with the wiring and it needs to be taken care of quickly.

You can call The Electric Connection to handle any of these jobs for you.

The world of lighting, LED specifically, can get overwhelming for those that are not directly in the space. From lumens, to watts, efficacy, and more; jargon and terms aren’t doing you any good if you don’t know what they mean.

Not only is it just about LED terms, but also general concepts, facts, and methods of LED lighting technology and the fundamentals that are important to understand to use LED to it’s fullest potential.

In this post, we’ve gather the 7+ “must read” LED lighting articles you should read if you want to understand LED lighting a bit more and be much better off when you dive into the industry and technology. Whether you are a facility manager, electrical contractor, or building owner; all of these articles we’ve gathered will certainly give some value and we hope you enjoy them all

The costs of lighting changes from year to year. As technology gets better and demand increases, prices drop, effcicieny increases, and everyone is in a win-win situation. With this ever changing landscape comes misinformation, which is why we have put together this post.

This post is going to lay out the true tennis court lighting costs for 2017. On top of that, we are going to go over some tips and things to be on the look out for in regards to choosing the best light fixture for your tennis court that will save you money and produce the best illumination possible.

This post will be broken into two parts; the average costs that are associated with the actual light fixtures themselves and the costs associated with them. Then, the average costs of powering your lights and how to achieve a higher return on investment by being a smart buyer.

Let’s start off with defining what exactly tennis court lighting is, and why it matters.

For starters, tennis court lighting is the application term for high mast lighting. High masts are the other technical terms, there are many that go far beyond the scope of this post. But, we think you should know the definition of lumens as we use it quite often. Technically, a lumen is the SI unit of luminous flux. Although that doesn’t say much, just know that lumens, in simple terms, is the amount of light being emitted by a given fixture. The more lumens, the more light you will have being output.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what tennis court lights actually are, we can get into the real costs of tennis court lights. Hopefully, these costs allow you to be aware of all the options and give you a better understanding on how to go about selecting the proper lighting technology for your court.

The costs associated with your tennis court / retrofit kits are typically much cheaper)

4. Quantity of fixtures needed

5. Your tennis court lux requirements or desires

As with any industry, what brand you buy from and what technology you buy is going to be the biggest cost variable. The most important thing to keep in mind is not only the initial costs of a fixture, but also the costs of running such fixtures over the span of it’s lifetime.

If, for example, you have one light that consumes 1000 watts of light and another that consumes 400 watts but the first one was only $500 and the second one was $1,000, which would you buy all else equal? Well, assuming they both output the same amount of light it actually makese sense to go with the second light, even though it costs twice as much.

Why you ask?

Because the cost to operate the 1000 watt light is more than double that of the 400 watt light, which over the lights lifespan can actually end up costing you much more to run the 1000w light.

These numbers aren’t entirely fictionary either, in fact; they are very close to real life examples we have seen when other tennis courts convert to LED technology from metal halide or HPS. What we haven’t described in the above example though is other cost saving benefits that LED has besides just being more efficient; but we will get to that later.

As for actual costs, they can vary far too greatly for us to list here. It all depends on what lighting technology you choose (think LED, metal halide, etc), which company you buy from, the quantity you need, if you are retrofitting or fully replacing your fixture, and what your lumen output requirements are.

A quick note on retrofitting or replacing in simple terms; retrofitting is typically cheaper for a couple of reasons. Retrofitting in short, is the process of replacing only the luminaire source from your fixture, instead of the entire fixture itself. LED vs metal halide cost to run in our example, the cost analysis can be run between any technologies in the same way. As you will see though after comparing metal halide’s  cost to run vs LED, that LED is far more efficient and costs significantly less to run.

Let’s get into the example:

Let us assume you have 10 lights. Currently, your high masts are metal halide and use 1,000 watts per fixture. Now, let’s assume you are looking for a more efficient technology and you come across LED high mast lights. You find a comparable light which will output the same amount of light (or lumens), but only consumes 400 watts per fixture.

In total, the metal halide lights are consuming 10,000 watts (assuming you have 10 lights) and the LEDs would be using only 4,000 watts if installed. That is 2.5 times less energy being consumed, which can visibility lead to huge savings.

This reduction from 1,000 watts to 400 watts per fixture in the metal halide to LED conversion in exactly why sports field, including tennis courts, are converting to LED.

Extra Tips for Reducing Costs

Conclusion

Hopefully the explainations of where the cost of tennis court lights are in 2017 have been thorough. While it’s impossible to give exact prices for every scenario, we hope this has been a starting point to your tennis courts lighting system.

Whole-home surge protectors are designed to protect your home from dangerous lightning strikes that could knock out power or fry your electronics, potentially resulting in thousands of dollars in damages.  Recently, however, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding whole-home surge protectors, claiming they’re a waste of money and don’t do what they claim to be able to do. So what’s the real story here? Are whole home surge protectors worth it?

We’ll start by talking about what surge protectors are not designed for: protecting your home from all sources of increased voltage. Power surges most commonly originate inside your home as a result of different appliances turning on and off. Depending on your home’s electrical service (100amp vs 200amp or whatever you may have), you’ve probably seen this in the form of flickering lights when your air conditioner cycles on.

Whole-home surge protectors do protect your home from power surges that originate outside, commonly caused by lightning strikes but also resulting from any interruptions to the power: downed wires or utility poles, wind damage, utility repairs, etc.

There are a few different ways power surges can occur. Lightning strikes, which people tend to be most worried about, are actually pretty uncommon—conditions need to be perfect, and the strike needs to occur less than one mile away from your home. Despite their rarity, lightning strikes can send a 200,000-amp jolt through your home and are definitely not to be taken lightly.

The majority of external power surges occur when the magnetic field created by wires conducting electricity collapses, which sends large voltages down the wires and eventually, into homes and buildings.

Effectively defending your home from power surges requires a two-step approach: first, outfitting it with a whole-home surge protector, then using surge-protected outlets and power strips indoors. Both types of surge protectors act essentially like pressure relief valves, diverting excess energy away and restoring normal operation once levels regulate.

Whole-home surge protectors are usually wired to a service panel and are designed to stop surges of at least 40,000 amps, though larger ones can be installed. Pairing them with individual plug-in surge protectors should do a good job of catching any potentially damaging energy that may get into your home.

Like many safety-related things, whole-home surge protectors are appliances you buy and hope to never actually use. But all it takes is a single downed line or big lightning strike to cause thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to your home—not worth the risk!

If you want to protect your home from dangerous jolts of electricity by installing a whole-home surge protector, call Kolb Electric today!