Are you dealing with frequently flickering lights? Do your circuit breakers trip often when you turn on large appliances? Does your home have several two-pronged outlets that do not accommodate today’s three-pronged plugs for most electrical appliances? If you answered yes to any of these questions, your home more than likely needs a heavy up, which is an increase in the power of your main electrical service. For example, we can transition your home from lower amperage to either 200 or 400 amps.

Homes without Ground Fault Interrupter (GFI) outlets in the bathrooms, kitchens, or garages also need to be upgraded. This is a type of outlet that protects against electrical shocks. GFI outlets are required in most states, and homeowners in MD, VA, and DC should change all older version outlets to GFI outlets. A GFI outlet has two buttons, including a test button and a reset button, and the outlets turns the power off before a shock can occur. It is especially important that GFI outlets are installed in any area of your home where water flows—bathrooms, kitchens, outdoor areas. The outlet will sense when there is a potentially dangerous imbalance in the flow of electricity from the outlet to whatever is plugged and will shut off to prevent shocks or electrocution.

Many older homes in the area were constructed with aluminum wiring. When these homes were built, aluminum wiring was considered safe to use and viewed as a cost-saving measure. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) now believes aluminum wiring poses a safety hazard in homes that still have this type of wiring.

The biggest danger associated with aluminum wiring is that unanticipated fire hazards arise from the rusting and deterioration caused at the points where aluminum wiring is connected at outlets, light fixtures, and splices. Call us so an expert electrician can evaluate whether or not this is a problem in your home and take steps to transition your home from aluminum to copper wiring.

If you live in an older MD, VA, or DC home, contact Kolb Electric today. We strongly recommend that you avoid attempting any electrical upgrades or repairs on your own as this can be very dangerous. Electrical upgrades are best left to a professional, licensed electrician.

What is a spotlight? What is a floodlight? Knowing the difference between the two is important for properly lighting any application. Before you can understand the difference, you must know what a beam pattern is. Beam angle or pattern is a measurement of the angles that are formed between a cone of light’s brightest point (the center) and the points on both sides of the center where the light’s intensity is 50 percent as bright.

PAR30 bulb that is available with a spot or flood beam pattern.

Fixtures, such as retrofit LED can lights may also look similar to one another while functioning as either spotlights or floodlights. Some light bars are even capable of emitting flood, spot, or combination beams. There are, however, certain fixtures that we imagine when we think of floodlights and spotlights.

Summer heat is upon us, so what better time to kick off our annual ceiling fan give away with a free professional licensed electrician to install it!  What is the catch?  You must like our page on Facebook and share our post.  Our electricians want to reward you with a ceiling fan for being our fan!  We will come out and install the fan in the lucky winners house.  We wont try to sell you anything and you wont owe us a dime!

To qualify you must like and be a fan of our Facebook page, share our post and live within 25 miles of one of our electricians in Des Moines or within 25 miles of our Clive office.  For free installation there must be wiring already in place where you want the fan installed.  If there is no wiring already there no problem the fan is still yours!  Or we can install in another room for you free of charge.  We will pick one lucky winner on August 28th, 2015.  Our winner will be announced via our Facebook page.

One of our friendly electricians will come out to install the ceiling fan for you.  We will remove your current fan or replace your light with your new free fan!

Well lets not forget to mention the obvious.  It’s free!  A ceiling fan can help reduce your heating and cooling cost.  In the summer your fan needs to rotate in a counter clockwise direction.  This will blow the air straight down and produce that cool summer breeze you have been looking for.  In the winter you want to turn your fan on so that it rotates in a clockwise direction.  This will help push the warm air trapped on the ceiling down.

Our electrical system runs behind the walls and in our ceilings and floors. It is invisible, except for outlets and fixtures. Electricity is intrinsically counter-intuitive to think about. In fact, despite recent technological developments, we’ve only known how electricity works since the turn of the 20th century. So, you can be forgiven if even common residential electrics seem somewhat mysterious. Moreover, repairing these electrical systems requires the professional knowledge of a Kirkland electrician, who knows how to properly handle and harness electrical energy and run it safely through your home. In this post, we’d like to examine a few of the most common electrical repairs, so that you might be able to identify any problems and call for assistance.