The holidays are upon us and though you’re probably more concerned with making holiday plans, you should also take aluminum wiring replacement in Manassas into consideration this year. Though it may seem your current electrical system is working well with aluminum wiring, it is highly dangerous to have in your home. Though it was popular many years ago to install aluminum wiring in homes, they have proven to be hazardous, leading to higher risks of residential fires!

Though you’ll have plenty of good times this holiday season, many Manassas homeowners aren’t fully aware of the dangers of having aluminum wiring in their home. Here are the dangers you should know:

Los Angeles is undertaking a quiet revolution, a switchover to electric cars. This is a revolution that promises bluer skies and greater freedom from foreign oil. At this writing, the Middle East is involved with its own, noisier revolutions, and the stock market is tumbling thanks to perennial shakes over skyrocketing oil prices. Everybody who wants to be independent of foreign oil right now, raise your hands!

Getting back to the other revolution, the quiet one, going on in Los Angeles… car makers and dealers, drivers, and electrical contractors are all involved in a switchover to electric vehicles (EVs). The government is backing it with tax credits and rebates. More on that in later posts.

In December 2010, Nissan started selling an electric car in L.A., the Nissan Leaf. Early this year, G.M. will start selling the electric Chevy Volt. This revolution isn’t confined to L.A. – all along the West Coast and some of the East Coast, deliveries of EVs to new owners are starting. But L.A. is out ahead of a lot of the rest of the country. The Leaf and Volt won’t go on sale, for example, in South Carolina until next December. Pike Research, a transportation analysis firm, has projected that only New York City will beat us out in electric vehicle sales. Pike Research projects 96,000 EVs will be sold in L.A. by 2017. Of course, EV sales could move faster if the price of gas shoots past projected levels.

Both the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt will be priced for middle income families. As electrical contractors in Los Angeles, we’ve already started installing chargers, including in home garages, apartment buildings, and commercial venues.

The Leaf is all-electric with an average range of 100 miles before its battery needs to be recharged. The Volt is a hybrid. With a fully charged battery, it can drive about 35 miles and then, it starts burning gas. Drivers can recharge their Leaf or Volt batteries by pulling out their special cord called a “Level 1 Charger” and plugging it into an outlet that carries regular house current.

The advantage of Level 1 charging is that it’s simple and inexpensive to set up. Hire an electrician to install a circuit in your garage or carport. It will need to be a dedicated circuit, meaning that no other appliances, like a washer, for example, will use it. The outlet will need to be the safety version usual in garages and outdoors (a GFI outlet). Also, your electrician will need to check whether your electrical panel should be upgraded in size to handle the increased power demand. Once the outlet is installed, the EV driver pulls out the Level 1 charging cord that comes with the car, starts charging, and lets the car sit … for a long time.

Level 1 charging is… well, slow. A Chevy Volt battery takes 10 hours from empty to full; a Nissan Leaf takes 20 hours. But help is on the way – Level 2 charging. More on that in my next post or click here for our article which talks about Level 2 Charging.

And did I mention that The Electric Connection website offers $25 off your first electrical job? Plus coupons for Whole House Surge Protectors and other services? Check it out.

Depending on the size of your warehouse, as a manager (or owner) of that facility; you probably know that your building consumes a considerable amount of energy.

From your lighting system to your heating and cooling, to make such large buildings meet “workable” conditions can be tough and expensive. Although, this post is here to gather 5 critical ways on how you can meet green initiatives for your companies warehouse operations, all while maintaining those workable conditions your employees require.

By implementing the following ways, you will be able to realize a great reduction in not only energy waste, but also overhead costs associated with powering that wasted energy month to month. So there are two major benefits from all of this; one being you will create a more sustainable warehouse all while secondly reducing month to month expenses associated with operating your warehouse.

Without further ado, here is the first of many on this list of ways to save energy in your warehouse facility…

Imagine how great it would be to have the same amount of light that is outside, inside. Best part? It won’t be coming from artificial lights which cost money to run, but rather a natural light source that costs nothing other than installing skylights for that light to come in. This will easily and greatly reduce the amount of time that you need any type of light on in your warehouse.

Allow sun to illuminate your facility by installing skylights throughout your building!

These days HVAC is nearly installed in every building, including warehouses. Multiple things could be messing up your efficiency when it comes to heating, ventilating, and cooling your warehouse, and they all go back to that HVAC system.

For starters, ensuring that your professional building commissioning company to run a full audit of your warehouse, and they will tell you exactly what you need to work on for your building to be running exactly how it was built to run.

Conclusion

The process of addressing (let alone fixing) these issues and areas of concern may seem overwhelming, but keeping the end goal in mind will make the efforts to make these changes in your warehouse much easier. Taking it one at a time will make all the difference, but ensuring you are working on them overtime will be all that is needed. Just remember, all of these critical ways to reduce energy are going to not only make your company more sustainable, but it will also save you tons in overhead.

Have any other ways to save energy specifically in warehouses? Comment them down below to help out other warehouse managers / owners alike!