Many types of lighting are available for outdoors. These lights serve different illumination purposes in the yard and garden. Experts in electricity and lighting can install simple lights or elaborate lighting systems for illuminating different features and in different ways around the outside of the house. Throughout the yard and garden, lights may illuminate the way for safety and aesthetics. Because of the quality of the lighting and the benefits of having them installed, these lights add to the value of the home.

The Importance of Adding Value

Adding value to the home is mainly significant to homeowners who plan to sell their place in the next few months or years. Projects like adding outdoor lighting are not difficult to accomplish or very time consuming. These types of improvements add much without disrupting the household indoors, but they make a huge difference in the appearance and function of the space. Even those not planning to sell the home can enjoy the benefits of upgrades that add value to the property such as the outdoor lighting.

Types of Outdoor Lighting

Here are some of the types of lighting for the outdoors as well as their functions:

- Decorative lighting from string lights to lights in shapes of flowers and other objects are great for any season and occasion.
- Mood lights in different shapes and colors are perfect for entertaining.
- Motion lights are excellent to provide light where needed and to discourage intruders of the animal and human kinds. Meanwhile, these lights save electricity because they only come on when triggered.
- Security lights will not prevent crime, but they do discourage intruders.
- Spotlights and floodlights highlight features like flags and the front of the home.

Benefits of Lighting Home Exteriors

The benefits of lighting the exterior of the home as well as parts of the yard and garden are numerous. Adding beauty to the outside of the house in the evenings makes the outdoors more appealing to family and guests. Guests can linger outdoors longer when the entertainment area is properly and pleasantly lit. Of course, lights on walkways and driveways make it so much easier to walk safely outside at night. Then, motion sensor and other lighting placed for security discourages crime. These are just some of the functional advantages that outdoor lighting provides.

Outdoor Lighting for Value

Whatever the benefits of outdoor lights and the amazing styles, quality lighting around the house and property will increase the value of the home. The lights showcase the home from the road, making it look beautiful and inviting. Buyers are attracted, and the aesthetic value also escalates for homeowners and their guests.

How to Install An Electric Car Charging Station

Electric car charging stations for homes come in two types. A Level 1 charger is able to use a traditional 120V three-prong outlet. This type of charger often takes over 20 hours to obtain a full charge. This is a slow process and the reason most people choose to install a Level 2 charger. Level 2 chargers will use a 240V outlet and will require installation by a professional electrician. Installing an electric car charging station will require homeowners to complete a six-step process.

Ask Questions

Talk to the dealer where you purchased your electric car. You can learn from the dealer the process of a typical electric car charging station installation. This includes the charging station that is recommended for your vehicle. The dealer may also be able to sell you the proper equipment.

Review Your Needs

The range of an electric car varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and is based on the type of battery that is installed in the vehicle. Electric car owners will typically have a range that is up to 300 miles or more on one charge. Review the specifications for your vehicle to determine the rate or charge for the type of electric charging stations that are available. Rate of charge is based on kilowatts per hour.

Get an Assessment

Contact Mr. Electric for an assessment of your home’s electrical supply. Assessments include the power requirements or capacity of the electric car charger and to see if any changes are necessary. A review of your electrical capacity may show that a dedicated circuit is needed for your electrical panel. The panel may need to be upgraded if there is no more space to add another circuit.

Compare Car Charging Stations

Electric car charging stations are available for a variety electric vehicle equipment manufacturers. Your choice of car charging stations will include a J1772 standard car connector. The total cost of installation will rage between $1000 and $2000 for a Level 2 charger. Mr. Electric will give you a detailed estimate of the total installation costs.

Obtain Electrical Permit

Installing an electric car charging station at your home will require an electrical permit. A permit can be obtained for your area from your local municipality or county. Contact Mr. Electric to determine if there are other requirements that are necessary when obtaining an electrical permit.

Schedule an Appointment

The installation of an electric car charging station will typically take between three to four hours. If you need any electrical upgrades to your home, then the installation may take longer. Electrical power to the home is turned off until the installation is complete.

Additional Information

Ask Mr. Electric about combining your electric car charging station with solar power.

How To Prevent Breaker Panel Fires

We may all know that breaker boxes are the vehicle in which electricity flows into our homes. A large cable acts as a conduit, separating the current by sending it through the breakers. Breaker boxes are very safe, especially when utilized and installed properly. Unfortunately, shoddy maintenance jobs or lack of maintenance leads to breaker fires each year. You may be wondering how to prevent breaker panel fires. In order to properly educate you on prevention, it is necessary to state the main causes for breaker panel fires, so you can address them.

Old, Outdated FPE Panels — FPEs, also known as Federal Pacific Electric breakers, are a recognized fire risk. Between the 1950s-1980s, these were the most popular breaker panels installed in homes. FPE eventually went out of business shortly after losing their “stamp of approval” from Underwriters Laboratories, a safety watchdog for electric companies. Check to see if you have a FPE breaker panel in your home. If you do, get rid of it. Adjusters and electrical surveyors will give your house a red flag if there are any FPE products in it. Contact your electrician to have your box replaced.

Faulty Components — The electrical circuits which make up the breaker panel box are not designed to last forever. If installed incorrectly, or mounted in the wrong place, rust and deterioration can make a breaker panel fail faster than normal. Deteriorating or rusty circuitry can spark, which can cause a fire that can spread rapidly. Call your electrician to inspect each breaker for any degradation or rust issues, and make sure he/she replaces them. It’s a fairly simple, quick procedure.

Incorrect Wiring — This is the most important issue when learning how to prevent breaker panel fires. Wires distribute electricity in the home. If there are problems, there is a serious risk for a fire. While most breaker panels are grounded, it is not a complete safeguard because of their metal composition — metal conducts electricity. Have your electrician inspect the thicker wires that are connected to the source of electricity to see if there is any deterioration of the coating. If your cables are older, they may be covered in cloth, which is even more dangerous. Also, have the electrician look for excess or loose wiring in the box — another spark starter. Shoddy wiring jobs can happen sometimes, where the wrong size of wire was used to do a repair. Copper wiring and aluminum wiring should never be interchanged. Copper should replace copper, and aluminum should replace aluminum.

For any other information on how to prevent breaker panel fires, check with your city building codes, and/or call your electrician for a precautionary inspection.

4 Helpful Home Automation Gadgets

Home automation is one of those topics that sounds more future-esque than it actually is. In fact, home automation has been around for decades. Automatic shades for keeping out sun have been around since the 80’s.

Today’s home automation tools, though, are a bit more tech-savvy and can handle a lot more than keeping out the sun and opening your garage door. They can keep your family safe and protected, save your home on heating and cooling bills, and make life at home a lot easier.

1. Nest Home Thermometer – The Nest is a design savvy smart thermometer that studies your temperature preferences for a week and then begins to automatically set them for specific times of the day, taking into account the weather outside, which is great for saving energy and dollars on your electricity bill.

2. Haptic Weather Forecaster – This home gadget is great because it allows you to not only know what the weather will be like tomorrow, but feel it too. Designed to let people more accurately plan for tomorrow’s weather forecast, the cryoscope is made from a heat sink, a cooling fan, and a Peltier element.

3. Sous Vide - Never worry about cooking again with this handy steak cooker that allows you to throw a couple of cuts into a box, close the lid, and press start. Once the steak reaches a perfect 130% temperature, the machine kicks off, and you’re done. Home cooking has never been easier.

4. Samsung Smart Fridge – You may not have thought that a refrigerator could become more tech savvy, but Samsung’s RF4289 has flipped traditional kitchen appliances on their head. With an LCD screen and customized apps for managing food inventory and grocery lists, the RF4289 is a great addition to

USB Wall Chargers

How many times have you gotten into a fight with a roommate, spouse, significant other, or child about who gets to plug their phone into the last remaining USB port on the computer first? If you’re like most households, you probably have at least six or seven devices that draw their life from a USB cord. So what do you do when everyone’s iPhone needs to be plugged up at once, and the computer is out of the room? Or when you’re in the kitchen, several rooms away from the desktop, and you need your phone nearby?

Of course, you could carry one of those giant wall adapters around with you – the ones that take up an entire switch plate because they’re always just a hair too big for any other plugs to fit next to them. A much better alternative, recently released by Leviton, is the in-wall usb charge plug. No more fighting the kids for outlet space in the kitchen!

It wasn’t that long ago that USB wall outlets were priced out of the range of most people. Because of the way USB cables work, a special microchip has to be built in to the outlet to control how much power is sent to the device being charged. Luckily, as technology has advanced, the price of the chips has gone down tremendously, and now anyone who has one too many devices and not enough USB ports can get a plug installed (by a professional electrician) anywhere they might need to charge their device.

The outlets feature two USB ports, so you can charge two separate devices at once, along with one traditional outlet. According to the manufacturer, they are safe to use with all iDevices, whether they be iPods, iPads, or iPhones, or any other devices that use a USB port to charge, including (but not limited to):

Gameboys, Kindles, Nooks, Android phones, Blackberry Phones, Windows Phones, cameras, other tablets, bluetooth devices, and really anything else you can think of. And for extra convenience, take a look at their mobile device station: a mobile device holder built into a wall plate that makes charging devices clutter, and hassle, free.

Surge Protectors: The What’s and Why’s.

Most homeowners own at least a few of these handy little devices, but if they had to explain what it is that surge protectors actually do, most people would be left scratching their head for answers.

That’s not a problem though, because we’re going to answer the most common questions that people have about their surge protectors and give a bit of a background on these common household devices.

What is a surge protector?

A surge protector is a device that protects your electronic devices from electrical surges. Since that’s pretty self-explanatory, let’s talk about what a surge is. A “surge” is an increase in voltage that’s above the designated flow of electricity. The standard voltage in the U.S. is 120 volts. When an electrical device is plugged into a surge protector, if something happens and a surge of electricity increase the voltage to above 120 volts, a surge protector keeps your electronics from being damaged.

How can a surge damage my electronics?

In a nutshell, a surge can inflict damage on a machine by running too much electrical pressure through a wire. While this can sometimes break a machine or electronic device, sometimes it causes additional wear and tear over time which might not be noticeable until its too late and your electronics are already damaged.

How does a surge protector work?

The electrical current is passed along from the outlet to a number of electrical devices plugged into the strip. If and when the voltage surges above the standard level (120 volts), the surge protector diverts the extra electricity into the grounding wire.

Surge protectors provide security for our electrical appliances and help keep electrical surges from destroying our machines. For more helpful tips on how to protect your home’s appliances and electronics, reach out to us at Mr. Electric in Sarasota / Bradenton.

8 Tips for Improving your Home’s Energy Efficiency

Over the last few years, many homeowners in the Tampa area have realized how energy inefficient their homes actually are. Whether it’s keeping lights on when you leave a room, using home appliances that aren’t energy efficient or wasteful water usage, managing your home’s energy usage is important in keeping both your wallet heavier and your environmental footprint low.

To help you make sure you’re keeping your home’s energy usage at a moderate level, here are 8 quick tips to conserve energy.

1. Set your water heater temperature to 120 degrees. This is the recommended temperature from the U.S. Department of Energy, and it will even save you a few bucks each month off your electricity bill.

2. When using your dishwasher, nix the pre-rinse to save energy and money. Instead, rinse off dishes as you’re loading them into the dishwasher.

3. Keep your AC units in good shape. Regular maintenance of cleaning out or replacing filters to keep your AC running well will keep energy costs low.

4. Keep the lint filter in your clothes dryer clean. This will ensure that your dryer works properly and cleans clothes quicker – reducing overall time and energy for each load of laundry.

5. Adjust your washing machine’s water level with the size of your laundry load. Also, make sure to always use a cold rinse vs. washing in hot water to save on energy.

6. Keep your home cool at 78 degrees with the fan switched to auto. And even though Florida temperatures can reach all time highs in the summer, to cut energy costs, raise your home’s temperature to 82 degrees when you’re away.

7. Make sure that ceiling fans are turned off when leaving a room. Ceiling fans often get overlooked, but can cost up to $7 a month in additional energy costs.

8. Make sure that pool pumps aren’t running non-stop during the day. To limit their time running, shoot for six hours a day in the summer and four hours a day in the winter.