If you own or manage apartments or offices, how can you tell whether your Beverly Hills electrician is treating you right? I’ve been providing electrical services to property managers and owners for over 30 years in the Beverly Hills and surrounding areas and have learned a lot about what they really need and want and how to treat them right. There are eight benefits that your electrician should provide you if are a property manager.

1) The electrical contractor should be easy to reach. A live person should always answer the phone during business hours. After hours, there should be an emergency number that you can call.

2) If you have an urgent electrical situation, your electrical company should handle it right away. Let’s say that one of your office buildings loses its exterior lights at 8 p.m. on Sunday night. You want an electrician who can fix it, whether it’s as simple as flipping on a circuit breaker or whether troubleshooting is needed to find where bare wires are touching. The electrical company should be large enough that it can send you experienced and knowledgeable electricians right away to get the lights back on.

3) Your electrician should quote you prices in advance of doing work. If you want something new installed, the electrician should be able to give you a price up front in writing once he’s seen the job. New installations include, for example, a new light fixture, a rewire of an apartment, an electrical panel upgrade, or installing any other new electrical equipment.

If there’s something broken, for example, an electrical outlet that no longer works, he’ll want to charge you per hour for troubleshooting. However, within about an hour, he should either have fixed it or have figured out the problem and be ready to give you a written estimate for fixing it.

4) You should be able to trust that the electrician has the judgment to give you accurate estimates. For example, the doorbell for one of your apartment units has broken. Even though door bells look small and simple, in this case, looks can be deceptive. Hunting for an electrical short or loose wire somewhere in the walls could turn into a larger project. Your electrician should have the judgment to realize this and give you an accurate estimate early on so that you can decide if you want to go ahead.

5) The electrician should act professionally with your tenants. Electricians should have a friendly, professional manner with tenants. They should also have the training to give information to tenants on a need-to-know basis, knowing what to say and what not to. For example, an electrician should start by saying something like, “The management company asked us to come out to get your power back on for you.” The electrician should know not to say, “The wiring in your apartment is scary. I’m going to recommend a rewire to the management before it burns down!”

6) The electrician should make sure that you know when the job is done. When the electrician finishes, he should check that everything works, clean up after himself, and if the tenants are home, let them know that the job is done. He should also tell you.

7) The electrician in Beverly Hills should keep you posted on the condition of the electrical in your units. Let’s say that you asked the electrician to add a circuit for a computer. He adds the circuit, but also notices that a bedroom has no smoke detector. Or the tenants might tell him that at night, when a hair dryer is turned on in the lit bathroom, the circuit breaker trips off. Without saying anything to the tenant that would obligate you to do electrical work, the electrician should give you a heads up.

8 ) The electrical office should provide you with accurate bills. Bills should arrive when expected with the detail needed to provide you with a clear accounting for the property owners. Paperwork should be smooth and simple, just as the electrical work should be smooth and complete. During business hours, an office manager should be available to answer any questions about billing.

If your electrician gets the job done, charges honest and reasonable rates, and offers you these eight benefits, you’ve found a keeper. Keep his contact information at hand and you’ll know who to call the next time you have an electrical problem.

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With all of the information circulating around about renewable energy sources, it can be hard to keep everything straight. One of the most common sources of renewable energy actually comes from the sun, and is harvested with solar panels. The most common solar panel converts raw sunlight into electricity through the use of photovoltaic cells. These solar panels can be found in fields dedicated to their use. One of the most attractive things about solar panels, however, is that they can be installed directly onto your home by an electrician in Pasadena CA. This is becoming more and more common, as people are looking for ways to be more environmentally friendly, self-sustainable and reduce their monthly electric bills.

Installing and Using Solar Panels

There are two different ways to connect solar panels to your home. You can either connect them to a battery array that will store the power for you, or hook them directly into the existing electrical grid. Both methods have their pros and cons, which you can discuss with an electrician Pasadena, such as The Electric Connection.

One of the great things about having your own energy storage array is that you have reserve power if there is an outage. An electrician Pasadena CA who specializes in solar panel upgrades will place a panel in the optimal position on their home. They will then connect the panel to a voltage controller, which helps to control the flow of electricity into the batteries. The battery array is then plugged into a power inverter that converts the electricity from DC current to AC current, so that it can be used in your home. This type of installation is typically used to power just a handful of essential appliances, lights etc. In the case of a power outage, you will have a few hours of electricity by smartly using the battery array to power your home lighting, and essential electrical circuits.

The method of installation that is the easiest for the end user to understand and use is by hooking the solar panel directly into the main power grid. The Electric Connection, or the electrician in Pasadena that you have assisting you with your installation can actually connect your solar panel up so that it will feed the electricity back to the utilities company, rather than just to your home. This can work in one of two ways. Either you send everything you generate back to the electrical company, or you send anything in excess of what your battery array can handle back to the electric company. In either case, you receive credit for the energy you send, which can in turn lower your electric bills dramatically. This installation is slightly more involved, but only requires a minimal amount of home rewiring and/or electrical panel upgrade.

Regardless of the type of installation that you choose, adding a solar panel to your home is a great investment. Not only will you benefit from the peace of mind that you are using fewer fossil fuels to power your home, but you can even receive credit back for any excess energy that you create. To sweeten the deal, there are many state and national grants and tax credits that have been designed to assist people investing in renewable energy sources. Because of these tax credits, much of the cost of installation will come back to you on your tax returns. In just a few years, the majority of all solar panel installations will pay for themselves. If you are truly looking to increase your energy independence, and are interested in renewable energy sources, contact your Pasadena electrician today to talk about solar power.

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