You've done everything you can to conserve energy in your house -- purchased the latest Energy Star appliances, insulated your walls, and turned your thermostat down to 68. But the next thing you know, your kids are leaving lights on in rooms they aren't occupying. Or staring into the refrigerator for minutes on end while all the cold air escapes through the open door. Or nudging the thermostat higher when you aren't looking. How can you convince your kids to help, not hinder, your efforts to cut down on energy usage?

Knowledge is Power

Your children can't make the effort to save energy if they don't know how. Help them start building good habits early, and make sure they’re aware of simple ways they can help lower the utility bills:

To save electricity:

To conserve water:

To keep your heating and cooling bills low:

What if They Don't Wanna?

Of course, every parent knows that telling your kid to do something doesn't mean it's going to happen. The trick is to get them to buy in. While one reason to conserve energy is to save money on your utility bills, children have a habit of taking mom and dad's money for granted, so that might not be your most persuasive argument.

Instead, try teaching them about how human reliance on fossil fuels is harmful to the environment -- but they can help make a difference. If your children have particular interests, like animals, you can tie the themes together -- tell them they can help protect animal habitats by doing their part to conserve energy.

Another trick is to give them a green light to correct you if you make a mistake like leaving the water running. That gives the kid some fun responsibility, and encourages them to be vigilant about your behavior -- which increases the likelihood they will be about their own.

Check out the Energy Star Kids program for more ideas on how to persuade your kids and get them excited about conservation, and for child-tailored activities to increase their knowledge and motivation. And remember, the best way to teach your kids how to conserve is to set a good example by doing it yourself.

Are you sick and tired of putting food in the fridge and forgetting about it, only to find it rotten and moldy weeks later? Not only is it a waste of food, you're left with a disgusting mess to clean up. One day soon, however, your refrigerator could send you a reminder to eat your leftovers before they spoil. Read on to learn about how smart technology in your kitchen can help prevent your food from going bad.

Communicate with Your Appliances Via Text Message

As the Internet of Things becomes more prominent in our household electrical work, more and more devices are offering futuristic functions. Smart refrigerators already exist, with models that can send you a phone message when the door is left open, when the coils need cleaning and when the unit is in need of service.

A new model that Samsung has prototyped promises to take the smart technology even further. The fridge comes equipped with a touchscreen to offer you full control over its features, and a camera inside the unit that actually monitors your food and alerts you when it's been neglected for a little too long. You can use the touchscreen to check on how the food is doing, or even have the fridge send a text message that you need to eat the leftovers ASAP.

A Wealth of Inter-Connected Devices

The connectivity and versatility of our brave new world means that the next generation of refrigerators can be even more proactive about your meals. Not only can the Samsung fridge tell you when your food is bad, it has the capability to automatically order more items to replace whatever you use up or throw out. That's right, your next refrigerator could even handle food shopping for you.

The functionality of this smart refrigerator is just one example of how our electrical work is being transformed to relieve us of many of the mundane tasks of day-to-day life. In the big picture, getting alerts when your food starts to spoil might not sound like such a big deal – but imagine your fridge, stove, clothes washer, bathroom cabinet and other devices all working together make your household run more smoothly. And in the meantime, you can also dream about a world where you'll never have to subject food to the sniff test ever again!

Expert Hands for All Your Electrical Work

If you need advice on purchasing a new refrigerator, or have other electrical work that needs to be performed, get in touch with a qualified electrician today.

More people have been thinking of trying to switch from oil-dependent vehicles to electric cars. However, many of the same individuals are also intimidated by the numbers of gas vs. charging stations available near them. While this might not be a problem in larger cities, more rural locations can run into charging issues. This is why charging your vehicle at home is so important. Around 88% of electric vehicle drivers refuel at home or at work.

Depending on your car, you might need different levels of charge. A level 1 charger uses wall sockets in the average home. However, 1 charge could take about 22 hours to complete. A level 2 charger is a little better. It works with a 240-volt wall outlet and can give you around 70 miles per charging hour. You can use the same outlet as your washer and dryer, but having a dedicated outlet for your car can help you prevent potential problems from alternating electricity flows.

A level 3 charger is the fastest and most efficient option for charging an electric car. Level 3 chargers, also called DC fast chargers, use a special charging port to get power to the battery while bypassing the car’s onboard charger. With this kind of station, you can fully charge your vehicle in a half hour.

Prisons and correctional facilities are full of security threats, it’s just common sense.

That is why it’s a major task and a seemingly forever ongoing one to try everything in the book to reduce threats and increase security for everyone in, near, or even outside the facility.

Today we wanted to address how we can solve 2 major correctional lighting system and things you should look out for when finding fixtures perfect for your building and budget.

Firstly, a LED prison lighting system will reduce indirect stress and irritability in both inmates and staff.

Secondly, LEDs within correctional buildings will improve detection of movement, which we all know is crucial.

How you ask? Well, lets talk about each one individually and break it down a bit more than just one sentence. From there, we will talk about how to go about making the conversion over to LED, like we mentioned at the start.

Have you ever been around a light that was flickering and or buzzing? It can get annoying, and fast. Imagine living under these conditions, everyday all day; no break other than a few hours when you go outside. Sounds like no fun, and it can lead to some serious stress and irritability issues for both inmates and staff.

For obvious reasons, additional stress on inmates will never produce a good outcome for anyone. But, another important point is that this can effect your staff and guards too. It can affect their ability to perform at full capacity, which in combination with highly irritable inmates is not a good mix whatsoever.

With LED technology, they will never be susceptible to flickering nor buzzing. Not even near the end of the lights lifespan will they flicker or buzz, unlike other technologies commonly still used in such facilities. Thus, you can avoid any stress or irritability which may be caused from flickering / buzzing lights.

If you can’t tell where everyone is at every second, you’ve got an issue. This is especially important for outdoors during the time when it is dark out. Sure, some light is better than none; but why jeopardize your operations with a flickering light when you could upgrade to LED and get rid of the issue entirely?

As you may or may not know, flickering lights make it harder to not only detect movement, but also identify humans. Think of a strobe light, it’s a bit harder to actually make out what is going on entirely. This holds true with a flickering light, even if it isn’t as bad as a strobe light is.

Here we are going to list a couple of the other major general benefits that LED technology offers over other technologies such as metal halide, HPS, fluorescent, and similar.

There are really only two routes you can take, LED retrofit lighting kit will work perfectly. On top of that, retrofitting is a much cheaper option (typically) then a full replacement is. So, if you don’t need to fully replace then stick with retrofit kit LEDs and you will save a lot on your lighting system investment.

Conclusion

Flaws can always be picked at, especially in such tedious and unpredictable environments like the one we are discussing in this topic.