Home Electrical Wiring – How to Find the Best Residential Electrician in Your Area
If you are in need of some electrical wiring done in your home, you will likely need the help of an electrician or a residential electrical contractor.
Electrical Contractors Manage Electricians – If you hire an electrician, it is likely through an electric contractor. Electricians are required to work through a contractor who manages the insurance and licensing of their electricians.
Look Online For Reviews of Electrical Wiring Experts – Before you decide on who to work with, look on the internet for ratings and reviews of different electrical services companies. If you are looking for wiring or electrical work to be done indoors, or inside your house, look for a residential electric business or an electrician who is experienced in home wiring.
Call Local Electricians For Quotes – In order to find a cheap price and the best electrician in your area, once you have made a list of electricians or electrical contractors with good reviews online, call for quotes or bids to make sure you are getting a discount or low price for the service being done.
Make Sure The Electrician is Licensed and Approved By The State – States manage the licensing of electricians and residential electrical contractors individually. So, an electrician who is licensed in California cannot do work in Texas until he/she has fulfilled the requirements for electricians through the state of Texas.
Check The State Government Website – Each state maintains their list of licensed electricians and contractors either on their state website or the information is accessible through the internet. You should be able to find these with a simple search online.
Evaluating a Home Electrical System
Residential electrical systems may not contain some of the complexities of commercial or industrial control systems, but the risk associated with failures may be even higher and recognizing faults and potential dangers can be a daunting task for the average homeowner. Knowing how to recognize a possible hazard before it occurs can be as easy as following a few key steps if you know what where how and when to look.
A visual inspection should be performed annually, and followed by a licensed electrician if anything seems questionable. One of the first things to look for would be dimming lights. This could be a sign of a loose or weak neutral, often occurring the same time a refrigerator , ac system, or other large load comes on. A visual electrical evaluation should also include removing the cover from the service panel and looking for traces of arcs or burn marks, without putting your hands or other tools inside and always turning the power off first. Testing individual outlets and gfci receptacles requires a plug tester, available at any hardware store for about $5. Typically a plug tester will have three small lights on it and a legend as to which pattern of lights is correct and which is not. I also recommend gently shaking the plug tester while it is plugged in to check for loose connections. Loose connections on a receptacle can result in unnecessary heat build up and fire. Do not plug more appliances into an outlet then it can handle, put your hand near it, if its warm to the touch, its too hot, use a surge strip. Devices and appliances that have large transformers on the plug should not be plugged in near curtains. If you have the type of air freshener that plugs in and releases a timed fragrance throw it away (please). I have personally seen them cause more then 1 fire. Don’t plug in more then one transformer to a single electrical outlet. Put the curling iron away, even turned off sitting next to the sink there are risk. Use the appropriate sized cords, generally speaking extension cords are for temporary 1 time usage, and not designed for prolonged use. Finally have your home checked out every few year by a trained technician.
Electrical safety in the home is as easy as being aware and conscience, if your not sure, ask, and change those batteries in your smoke detector.
Always Hire a Professional to Prepare Your Plans (Blueprints)
It is always recommended that the construction work you plan on doing in your house is drawn by a professional such as a residential designer or an architect. There are no licenses required to prepare drawings for a home design project or any kind of project for that matter, specially if they are considered standard construction and the details for construction follow the general guidelines from the city or county. But sometimes depending on the job, even when the job seems simple, the city and county officials ask for the stamp and signature of a structural engineer. That is the only license anybody needs to officially submit plans at the city or county offices and to get them approved. If the designer follows the city standard details and notes, the project can be approved easily and sometimes even without a structural engineer’s stamp. It depends on the project.
Hiring someone who is not a residential designer or architect to prepare your plans is not advisable. There are construction companies called “design build” that offer design services along with their construction services and guess what? They do not emphasize on the design but the construction because that is where they make their money. So they really do not care about the look or the feel of the projects in terms of design. Do not hire contractors to prepare your home design layouts because contractors build and their specialty is not ‘design’. Get a residential design professional to design your addition or remodel and to prepare your home design plans and then hire a contractor to build the project.
In the state of California, as well as in many other states, there is no license required to prepare plans, to submit them at the city/county or to even get them approved for construction. But not everybody can do it either because it is not that easy. Home or residential design is a very specialized kind of field. When you hire someone who does this kind of work for a living, not only they should know about home design and everything related to it but they usually also know how to work with the city and county officials, which is a job in itself and not very easy for regular people. Residential designers should know what is required for the different types of home or residential design jobs (remodels, additions, new construction, etc.) and they can usually expedite the process which is usually a tedious and boring ordeal.
If the residential designers or architects do not hire outside help to take care of the submittal process, they are the ones who have to spend hours at the city and county offices waiting to meet with the different officials from each and every one of the disciplines to make sure they all approve and stamp the plans, so you can get a construction permit. Believe me, you do not want to do this yourself. If an inexperienced person meets with the officials and he or she does not provide the answers to the questions the officials have at the time of the submittal or on their correction sheets, they would have to get them and come back as many times as necessary until the officials are satisfied with the answers, which would unnecessarily delay the process. If the officials notice this person has no clue, you can rest assured, they will not make it easy for you.
Another reason why you should hire a residential designer or architect to prepare your plans is the fact that they can also refer you to consultants they work with like soils engineers (if the city requires a soils report), land surveyors (if the city requires a property line survey or topography map), energy consultants who prepare the energy calculations showing how much energy your project would save or waste which is required no matter how small the project is, etc. Residential designers and architects usually have a team of consultants they work with which is always a plus. You never know what is going to come out when you submit the plans to the city or county, so having a team of professionals handy is a plus.
A residential designer’s job is to prepare your home design layouts first and later on the construction documents required to get approval from the city or county officials, whichever has jurisdiction. Never let anybody prepare plans for you and just give them to you without the approval stamps. Their job is done only when all the disciplines at the city or county have reviewed and stamped your plans as approved.
What Is Structured Cabling For Computer LAN Networks?
:: What is structured cabling?
Modern computer LAN (local area network) wiring has the concept of structured cabling.
With today’s high speed networks, people realize that the networking system must be broken up into shorter chunks that allow workstation wiring to be concentrated, with each cable length short enough to support the high data rate.
Based on aforementioned reasons, structured wiring standard has been developed to help define a computer wiring system that stays within the maximum wiring distance for various LAN topologies. For example, the horizontal cable wiring length is 100 meters for 100BaseT networks.
:: What do we do to observe the 100 meters wiring standard?
In order to achieve the wiring concentration standard, telecommunication rooms (wiring centers) are placed at planned locations in a building. These telecom rooms are then interconnected to provide the total network connectivity for the building.
This can be explained in a three stories building. At one same corner of each floor, a telecom rooms is constructed; these telecom rooms are then connected by backbone wiring (cables run vertically through the floors and link all telecom rooms together).
On each floor, a telecom room concentrates all workstation cables for that floor. Each workstation has a wall mounted jack. The network cable is terminated at that jack and runs directly to the telecom room. The cable may run in wire trays or conduit, or be draped over supports such as a drop ceiling. For larger floors, more than one telecom room may be needed.
:: Horizontal Cabling
The horizontal wires, which run from workstations on the same floor to the telecom room, are then terminated on punchdown termination, or directly onto a patch panel. The punchdown terminations or patch panels could be rack mounted (19″ or 23″ racks), cabinet mounted or wall mounted.
In the telecom room, network equipment such as a hub or switch is connected to each station cable, which electrically terminates the cable run. The hub or switch then passes the computer signal on to other work stations or servers, or even to other telecom rooms for ultimate connectivity with the entire network.
:: Vertical Cabling (Backbone Cabling)
Telecom rooms on each floor are then connected together by backbone cabling (also called vertical cabling for floor to floor connections). These backbone cablings typically are done from floor to floor to floor.
Usually telecom rooms should be located directly above one another in order to minimize the cable runs length, but this also varies from building to building.
With the emerge of Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, fiber optic cable is the most appropriate choice for backbone cabling since they provide much higher bandwidth than traditional Cat5, Cat6 or even Cat7 twisted pair copper cables. Another advantage of fiber is that fibers can run much longer distance than copper cable, which makes them especially attractive for backbone cabling.
:: The difference between backbone cabling and horizontal cabling
Since backbone cabling typically passes through from floor to floor, the cables used for backbone cabling have very different requirement than the horizontal cablings.
1. Fire ratings. Backbone cables must have standard imposed fire rating specifications. Typically this is OFNR (Optical Fiber Non-Conductive Riser) rated. If the backbone cable passes through plenum area (spaces in the building used for air return in air conditioning), the cable must be OFNP (Optical Fiber Non-conductive Plenum) rated.
2. Physical securing. Physical securing for vertical riser cables is also different than horizontal cables. So is the cable strength, since vertical riser cables need to have enough strength to support its own weight.
How to Save Electricity at Home – 4 Tips to Save Money For Your Family
In this economic crisis,
everybody thinks about how to save money. Wouldn’t it be good if you can save some amount of your money from your electricity bills? What do you think is the best way to save electricity at home? We are going to discuss some tips which may help your family and you save some money on your bills.
Understand how you use electricity in your house
You will have to treat it the same way you do with all other types of expenses. You will need to understand the structure of your electricity use. Knowing which electrical appliances take big part of your expenses is essential. For example, ironing machine takes a lot of electricity and surely costs you more money than many other appliances. How often do you use it? How about your air conditioner? Do you have it turned on for the whole day? Electrical heater is also another big player. This type of questions will help you go through your analysis. It will give you the picture of how you can save your bills.
Stop or reduce the use of the heavy spenders
The use of the appliances which take more electricity should be limited. This is how you can save electricity at home. For example, if you can reduce the use of the appliances that use electricity to generate heat, you will save quite a bit of money.
Turn off the switches when not in use
This simple step can help you significantly on your bills. If you are not in the room, turn off the light. If you are not using the computer, turn it off. If you are in the other room, turn off your stereos. Everything counts. If you are disciplined enough, you will be able to save your electricity a bit more.
Use alternative sources of energy
If you can find out other energy sources, you should use them. For example, you can use solar panels to generate the electricity for your home. If your house locates in windy area, you can use wind power. Or you can even consider using mortar and pestle instead of using blender. These are some choices that you can use to save electricity at home.
Understanding A Fire Alarm Design
Fire alarms
Installed throughout a building – are meant to be a first line of defense in protecting the lives of those within. Installed professionally, fire alarms work in tandem as a complex network dedicated to detecting danger in the form of smoke and fire. But just as important as the alarms themselves is the manner in which they are installed. In order to ensure the utmost efficiency and safety measures, it is imperative that a professionally licensed engineer complete a comprehensive fire alarm design.
We all know that a fire alarm is used to detect smoke or heat – in the form of fire – and alert us to the danger so that we may vacate the presences in enough time to secure our safety. A fire alarm design takes into account the layout of the building including number of levels, heat sources, and exits; and it also considers the level of complexity required for each particular building. For instance, a single family home will require a far less involved fire alarm design that a multi-tiered sporting arena. In a large public building additional fire safety features will be required – such as ceiling sprinkler systems and elaborate communications devices – that are not required on private properties. An engineer will take all of these needs into consideration when completing a fire alarm design.
An Introduction to Your Home’s Electrical System
Electricity has become an absolutely essential part of modern life.
It is used to power the largest industries down to the smallest household convenience. In your home, electricity is used to power appliances, furnaces, light fixtures, and many other items. Have you ever wondered how exactly your home’s electrical system works?
Components
Your home’s electrical system is comprised of many different parts, including incoming power lines or conduit, an electric meter, service panels and subpanels, household wiring, electrical outlets, switches, and the appliances that use this power. These items can be separated into two distinct categories: rough-in components and finish components. Rough-in components are the electrical elements in your home that are installed during the beginning phases of construction, such as wires, cables, and electrical boxes. On the other hand, finish components are the elements that are added to your home’s structure towards the end of construction, such as outlets, switches, and light fixtures.
How it Works
Electricity is sent to your house from the utility company through overhead power lines and/or underground conduits. This power is delivered most commonly through three main lines, called single-phase service. This is the type of energy delivery system that most households have. There are two “hot” wires, which each deliver 120-volts of electricity (1ooamp to 400amp), 200amp is the most common, and one neutral wire(balances the difference between the 2 hots). Most household lights and appliances use 120-volts, only requiring the use of one hot wire and one nuetral and a ground. However, larger appliances and electrical devices, such as air conditioners, electric ovens, furnaces, etc. require both hot wires, ground and sometimes a nuetral using 240-volts of electricity. Not all electrical circuits require the presence of the neutral line.
An electric meter is located at the point where the electricity arrives at the house. This device tracks the amount of energy delivered and consumed by the household (kw-HOURS). From here, the power is channeled to the main service panel, commonly referred to as a “breaker box”. The main panel is the central distribution point for the entire building’s power supply. To understand how this works, one must understand how an electrical circuit works.
In order for electricity to flow, it must be provided with a stable, continuous closed path from beginning to end, with contact never being broken. Like a circle, the power will travel from the power source to the device, and then return back to the power source.
This is why the main service panel is commonly called the “circuit breaker box”. It provides a way of purposely breaking the circuit, in order to perform service or repair, or to guard against safety hazards. From the main panel, electricity is diverted to individual circuits which provide power to separate areas and aspects of the home. Sometimes, power is sent to sub-panels in other areas of the home and then on to the electrical circuits which run throughout the house. These circuits provide power to the many power outlets, or receptacles, and light fixtures in your home, allowing you to operate all your household electronic appliances and lights.