Tired of a spotty wireless network impeding your home Internet use? Walls, ceilings and distance all conspire to degrade the strength of wireless signals, which can make it difficult to stream movies or even just browse the Web in certain parts of your home. Fortunately, there's a piece of technology that can bypass the downsides of wireless and bring high-speed Internet to every room in your home. You can buy adapters that piggyback on your existing electrical wiring to transfer data – and they’re easy for homeowners to install without the assistance of an electrician. Read on to learn more about how to use your electrical system to harness the power of the Internet.

The Internet in Your Walls

With Netflix, Spotify, email and Facebook, the Internet has become an integral part of our home activities. Wireless networks are a decent solution for broadcasting your signal through the home, but when they don't get the job done, you need a more hard-wired way to go. In the past, that might mean paying an electrician to run ethernet cords through the walls. Today, you have access to products like powerline adapters, which use your existing wiring as a data connector.

The adapters are simple to use. All you have to do is connect the device to your modem or router and plug it into a wall socket. Then, anywhere you want to use the Internet, just plug another adapter into the wall and connect it to the device in question. In lieu of plugging in every computer or Internet device in the house, you can also use powerline adapters to set up mini wi-fi networks in various rooms so you can still take advantage of the flexibility of wi-fi without the disadvantages of weak signals from far away routers.

Some Flies in the High-Speed Ointment

Of course, powerline adapters aren't perfect, and for a variety of factors, they don't always reach the blazing-fast speeds that they advertise. Various models claim to clock in at 200, 500 and 1,200 Mbps, but they never really came close to those speeds during testing by PC Advisor. For one thing, your electrical system can slow down the signal with old wires, power fluctuations, noise in the wires and interference from the circuit breaker. Charging up devices like cell phones and tablets can also interfere with the signal.

What's more, the data speed can be limited by the capabilities of the ethernet cord you use or the device itself, not to mention the speed of the internet coming into your modem. Nevertheless, the adapters are still almost always a better bet than wireless when it comes to speed.

If you have any questions about the suitability of your home for powerline adapters, call your local electrician today.

My wife and I are the happy parents of a sixteen-month-old boy. Having a kid has turned out to be every bit as wonderful and exhausting as our family and friends told us it would be. We can see why everyone we knew with children, including our own parents, told us with that knowing smile, “Your life will never be the same.” They were right. There’s never a dull moment, is there? Every day presents new challenges and responsibilities.

For example, a couple hours ago, my son was screaming at his grandma for taking a bite of his banana. Nap time soon? Sheesh.

3. Use an In-Wall Night Light

Instead of that old incandescent night light just begging to be pulled out of the wall by your young one’s inquisitive hands, consider a safer and greener alternative. LED night lights will safen and cozy-up baby’s room in elegant and energy-smart fashion.

Today, Americans use more electricity than ever before. The average American consumed roughly 2,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year in 1950. This has skyrocketed to approximately 14,000 kilowatt-hours for the average American today. The consistent increase of consumer electronic use and energy consumption means that electrical systems could easily become overloaded and, as a result, malfunction. While the appliances of today are significantly more efficient than the appliances of the past, homes and businesses may be operating with insufficient electrical support for their modern appliances, which could be a signal that it’s time for an electrical panel upgrade.

Since 1925, Kolb Electric has provided excellent services on electrical panel installations in Maryland, DC and Northern Virginia.

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it may be a warning sign that it’s time for an electrical panel upgrade. Please contact Kolb Electric so that one of our qualified electricians in MD, DC or VA can take a look at your electrical panel. If you are unsure about the status or functionality of your panel, it is best that you do not take any chances.

In 2007, approximately 170 people in the United States died in the workplace as a result of fire or explosions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Experts agree that an outdated or inadequate electrical panel is a fire waiting to happen. The dangers associated with an outdated electrical system can be drastically reduced simply through an electrical panel upgrade.

Electrical panels are the heart of any electric system. You can help protect your family or your employees by upgrading your electrical panel. Kolb Electric is one of the top installers of electrical panels. Our expert electricians in MD, DC or VA can complete an electrical panel upgrade and enhance the safety of your home or business.

Electric cars are becoming very common. If you have visited a car lot lately, you will see the selection has increased dramatically and Prius is no longer the only game in town. It is the future of cars and there is no time like the present to start learning the ropes of using an electric car for your transportation needs. A Santa Monica electrician is here to help you make the most of your new electric car or make your old one a little better with the installation of a Level II charger at your home. The team at The Electric Connection can assist you in getting the most out of your gas-saving car.

One of the problems with electric cars is their inability to drive long stretches on the battery alone. They are great for commuters with short distances to travel. Most electric cars can go anywhere between 40 to 100 miles on a single charge. Unfortunately, it can take a full day for a car to get a full charge when using a Level I battery charger. An electrician in Santa Monica can install the 240-volt outlet you need to run the Level II or fast charger in your own garage. This means, every day you get home from work, you plug in the car and it is fully charged and ready to go the following morning.

The faster chargers are a bit more expensive up front, but when you factor in the gas savings, it is an investment that will pay off over time. It is also more convenient in general. Because the charger requires more electricity to run, you will need an electrician. Santa Monica homeowners can decide where they want to charge their car and have the outlet installed nearby. Give The Electric Connection a call today and schedule your installation.

A school, whether its grade school or a college campus, can use up a lot of energy during the day. From heating the building to inefficient lighting fixtures in the building; a school that is running 8-10 hours a day can prove to be a huge consumer of energy and thus; a high overhead to maintain.

This post is specifically for those whom work for a school or college campus that can either make the decisions, or can recommend new ideas to those who do make these types of decisions. The overall goal of this post is to bring the most actionable energy saving ideas for schools so that you can start looking into them immediately.

We are going to be covering 15 practical tips and ways that you can start saving energy in schools and become a greener, more sustainable facility overall. Here they are…

hallways, classrooms, and really anywhere with lower ceilings that are flat.

This technology is, more often than not, fluorescent. Believe it or not, this actually isn’t the most energy efficient lighting technology out there. So what is you ask?

Well, LED technology is by far the most efficient luminaire on the market today. By switching from fluorescent to LED, you will be able to realize a 30% reduction in energy usage associated with your tube lights.

As for you parking lot and sports fields, you can make the switch away from technologies like metal halide or HPS over to LED and realize every greater energy savings by up to 75%! Talk about a lot of energy being reduced.

And no, screen savers don’t save energy. But, what does save energy more-so than a screen saver is the “sleep” function that every computer has. On top of that, next time you plan on upgrading your computers, make sure you buy Energy Star qualified ones. This means they’ve passed some energy efficiency tests and are much more energy efficient than non-qualified computers are (same with your lighting system, make sure it is Energy Star or building commissioning, you get every single last area of your school inspected to ensure it is running exactly how it was designed to run. A lot of times we overlook things that are unique issues to your school, and no matter how long of a list we read on ways to conserve energy at school; we will never see everything. So our tip for you is to bring in a professional to do a full building commissioning audit, and let them tell you what is up.

Face it, a lot of classes happen during broad daylight and by not using up that free light from outside is a pure waste. By opening blinds to there fullest (when appropriate) you can reduce the amount of lights you need on by nearly half, depending on the day and time of year.

Just make sure to remind everyone to do this otherwise, you’ll never will with this tactic. Remember: you need to get the school on board or else you can only do so much.

Alternatively to just opening the blinds and windows, installing skylights into virtually any area of the building can be an even more effective way of getting the most natural light into your building. This is probably most beneficial for areas that would otherwise have no natural light whatsoever, such as hallways or interior rooms.

We’ve already brought up some points about your heating system, but here is yet another. Think about how often students are in the hallways, not nearly as much as they are in classrooms, right? So, why not make an initiative to heat the classrooms and stop heating those huge hallways that waste tons of heat to the outside from all those doors being opened.

Just make sure that everyone is closing their doors if you do decide to go this route. Likewise, you could install doors that automatically close which will prevent random doors from being forgotten about.

Although this won’t directly save your school energy, it sure does help reduce both waste and energy associated with creating new materials. The most simple way to start the promotion of recycling at school is simple; make it readily available. If you aren’t putting recycle bins next to every trash bin, most people won’t go out of there way to recycle so they will just throw it away and let it go to the landfill.

A step further would even to start investment in solar technology can be hefty, but rebates and grants are out there to make it a more affordable option that ever. On top of that, you are becoming a role model to the community by showcasing what conserving energy can do when used with solar energy technology. Let solar generate your building a positive ROI all while conversing the planets resources.

We think the list could endless of all the possible ways to save energy in school, so we must of forgot some. Be sure to comment down below your energy conservation tips that will help out school facilities become greener!

Conclusion

All of these tips are exactly how energy efficient schools are becoming more sustainable, reducing ongoing costs, and generating a positive atmosphere and educational system for students and generations to come.

Don’t let the upfront costs scare you, instead look at the bigger picture. If you have to invest money now to save 10x later, isn’t it worth it? All of these things will do just that, improve the bottom line. And not only are we doing that, but we help the environment out just a little bit too. Sounds like a win-win to us! Just remember that saving energy at school doesn’t have to be hard, just take it step by step and you will slowly see the results of your efforts build up!

Anyways, to wrap it up we’d like to invite you to share any of your own energy conservation tips for schools that you may have done or even just thought of that may benefit other schools across the globe. Share your tips in the comments below, you never know who it may help. And remember, an energy saving school is a happy school!