Christmas, Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, Independence Day and even Halloween … No holiday is immune to the spell of twinkling of lights. Since July 2009, we’ve written over 600 blog posts. It comes as no surprise that a large majority of them have centered around a holiday. If you are one of the many folks hauling out holiday lights this weekend, you’ll appreciate this round-up of 6 Popular Holiday Lighting How-To Blog Posts that we’ve accumulated throughout the years.

1.

energy-efficient LEDs. If that’s not enough to convince you, this blog post from 2011 gives even more statistics on the benefits of upgrading your holiday string lights. (Update 2015: This blog post is now part of Winning the Battle on Christmas Lights: Artificial Trees

4. Lights for a Holiday-Ready Home

6. Follow Pegasus Lighting’s board Inspiration | Holiday Lighting on Pinterest.

Every summer, more and more homes experience outages in their electric systems. As a top Dallas Electrician, my electricians and I see the effects of these outages every day. They can be devastating, and cause a lot of damage.  In fact, the insurance industry pays out over $1 billion in damages annually in claims caused by outages and power surge damage. Most outages are caused by the weather, but there are different kinds of weather can cause an outage. This even includes weather that doesn’t produce lighting damage like the massive ice storms we saw during Super Bowl week this year that left hundreds of thousands without power (and, more importantly, without heat!) during one of the worst winter storms in years. Summer storms can produce devastating tornadoes that can knock out power for miles around the area they touch down in, and many hurricanes begin to build in the summer and early fall, causing catastrophic results even outside of the disaster zone. Hurricane Ike left over two million people without power when it hit southeast Texas in 2008, and not all of them were in the impact zone.

Not every outage comes from something as dramatic as a hurricane or tornado.  A lightning strike, even as far as half a mile away, can potentially cause damage to your delicate electrical equipment and appliances. Often, large-scale outages can occur when lightning strikes a transformer.

Outages don’t just occur because of bad weather:  many outages are caused by power equipment switching to accommodate the heavy load people put on the power grid.  Our power grid is already having trouble with its current load, and the problem only grows as more and more people use more and more electricity.  Summer in Dallas and Fort Worth is the perfect examples.  It’s when people are running their air conditioners constantly. This puts an incredible load on local and state power grids.  This leads to government agencies putting out warnings almost every summer about potential power outages, threatening brownouts and blackouts unless people conserve energy.

These outages aren’t damaging in themselves, but they leave open the possibility for electrical power surge damage.  You’ve probably noticed that when the power comes back on after an outage, it often flickers on and off quickly as the power grid attempts to get the electricity flowing back into your lines.  This stop-and-start action creates surges that can easily damage unprotected electronics or appliances.  Having a nice TV damaged like this is a very expensive hassle, and you can imagine how much more expensive and uncomfortable it could be if the surge takes out your air conditioner and refrigerator!

So, what can you do to keep power outages and power surges from affecting you?

Some of these options can even help you save money on your electric bill without the hassle of gas, fumes, or noise pollution.

As you go through your home and do some spring cleaning, you are probably doing some needed updates to your home. While you are taking care of jobs that have been stacking up for months, you should also consider evaluating the safety of your home. Things like smoke detectors are often overlooked. We are so used to seeing them in the corner of the room, you rarely give them much thought, that is until you need them. An electrician in Pasadena can install hard-wired smoke detectors that really can be forgotten about, but will still work. That is important. You can rely on The Electric Connection to send out an experienced electrician to complete the installation for you.

Smoke detectors are typically out of sight, out of mind, until they start chirping to remind you the battery is low. If the chirping is ignored, the battery will die and the smoke detector will become nothing more than a fixture on the ceiling. With hard-wired smoke detectors, you don’t have to worry about the batteries going dead and your home left vulnerable. The smoke detectors are wired directly into your home’s main power. As long as your home has power, your smoke detectors will work. There is also a spot for backup batteries in case of a power outage.

When the Pasadena electrician installs the smoke detectors, you will get the added safety feature of all the smoke detectors being interlinked. When one detector goes off, every detector that is hard-wired will sound. This can add several seconds to your alert time. If you have ever seen a house fire or been involved in one, you know how fast it can go. Every second counts. If you are ready to add an additional layer of safety to your home, give The Electric Connection a call today and schedule your installation.

There are several more reasons why you want to hire skilled electricians in West Chester PA. Some of these include:

1. Expert Installation: Purchase of sophisticated electronic or alarm systems. If you’ve recently spent a pretty penny on such items, you don’t want to risk them being ruined by allowing an untrained handyman to install them.

2. Electrical Troubleshooting: Perhaps the alarm system you’ve had for a while is starting to act up. Or, maybe you are having trouble with your hot water heater. From home theaters to electric stoves, and everything in-between, you need the services of trained electricians West Chester PA.

3. Ensure safety: Hiring a person who isn’t qualified just isn’t a safe decision. Such an individual can cause damage to wiring and electronic devices, both of which can cause overheating or even fire. Home owner’s insurance might not cover damage caused because you hired an unqualified electrician who is not certified.

4. Save Time & Money: A skilled and certified electrician has a wide range of experience in many different kinds of electrical work. They are able to decide quickly what a job needs and can complete the work in a timely manner. If they do need extra parts or equipment, they have contacts with professional vendors who can deliver what’s needed much quicker than a regular big box or department store thus saving you time and money with your specific electrical repair or installation needs.