D'Spain Sales and Service Blog : Archive for the ‘Electrical’ Category

Benefits of LED Lights for Your Outdoor Lighting

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

Increasing the outdoor lighting for your home is an excellent way to make your home safer and more attractive, as well as to increase the hours you can enjoy outdoor recreational areas, such as pools and patios.

However, those outdoor lights will add up to an immense amount of wattage, making them potentially expensive to run. That’s why we recommend you have LED lights installed for your outdoor lighting in Boerne, TX. Our professionals at D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. can help create a new energy-friendly lighting scheme for the outside of your home using LED light bulbs. You will notice the difference when you hire skilled electricians like those on our team.

The Advantages of Using LED Lights

Light emitting diodes (LED) provide light as powerful as that from incandescent and florescent lights, but they require significantly less energy to run. Here are some of the benefits that LED light bulbs provide:

  • Energy saving: Imagine using 80% less energy to power the lights outside your house. That’s a huge difference, and that is what LED lights do. They only lose 20% of the energy they use to heat, where standard bulbs lose 80%.
  • Longevity: The savings grow even larger when you consider the average lifespan of an LED light bulb is 10 times greater than a traditional bulb. The average LED bulb will burn for 100,000 hours, which means it could burn steadily for 11 straight years. You’ll receive 4 times the savings over 10 times the lifespan.
  • Less heat: Because of their high energy-efficiency, LED lights emit a small amount of heat. You won’t have to worry about the lights making summer nights too uncomfortable.
  • Good for the environment: LED lights do not contain harmful elements like mercury that could end up in landfills. And you will send far fewer bulbs to the landfills because of their long lifespans: you can expect to throw away 25 incandescent light bulbs for every one LED light bulb.

LED lights do cost more to purchase upfront than standard bulbs; however, this is a small price to pay when you consider their energy savings and immense lifespan. LED lights start to pay for themselves the moment they first come on. The LED lights now available for outdoor use have expanded from the older narrow-beam models, and they can now fill a variety of functions. Ask your electrical installer about ways to make the most out of your new outdoor lighting set-up with LED light bulbs.

At D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. we offer many different options for outdoor lighting in Boerne, TX and the rest of Texas Hill Country. Contact us today to learn more about our different lighting and electrical services, and the ways that we can help you conserve energy.

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Why You Need a Whole House Surge Protector

Wednesday, October 1st, 2014

When people think of power surges (also known as voltage spikes), they usually imagine a lightning bolt striking an electrical cable, causing all the lights in a home to suddenly glow bright white and then go to black. This is a realistic scenario…but it is also not one of the more common causes for power surges in a home.

The voltage spikes that are more likely to affect your house on a routine basis are the smaller ones that happen because of power fluctuations along the electrical lines that occur when a large appliance (a refrigerator, air conditioner, heating system, etc.) make an increased demand on the power supply. The voltage imbalance causes a sudden increase in power flow to one or more of the outlets. This may not cause a light to burn out or a circuit breaker to trip, but it can damage precision appliances over time.

The best way to defend against both small and catastrophic power surges is with a whole-house surge protector installed into the electrical panel. You can contact D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. in Bandera, TX for electrical services that will hook up your home for comprehensive surge protection.

What Whole-House Surge Protection Does

You might wonder why you need a whole-house surge protector at all when you already have power strips on the outlets. Power strip are an effective level of defense against surges: they serve as a fuse that cuts off the power from an outlet when it rises above 120 volts, and this helps protect high-end devices like computer hard drives and entertainment systems that contain microprocessors susceptible to high voltage.

However, point-of-use power strips are rarely enough. To protect all of the appliances in your home, you would need power strips for every single outlet, and it would still not be enough since many appliances are hard-wired directly into the electrical system. Power strips are also insufficient defense against massive surges that can come from lightning strikes or utility company errors; these simply overwhelm the power strip and reach the appliance anyway. A whole-house surge protector can defend against these massive voltage spikes because it redirects the energy from the surge down into the grounding of the home.

Having a whole-house surge protector installed doesn’t mean you should throw away the power strips you use for computers and other equipment with microprocessors. It’s always wise to have added layers of protection for valuable appliances…just don’t depend on the power strips alone.

Only professional electricians should install a whole-house surge protector. The device must be wired into the electrical panel, and it must be the proper size for the electrical system. Call D’Spain Sales & Service, Inc. when you need surge protection that goes beyond power strips: we are a leading provider in Bandera, TX of electrical services, and we offer quality surge protection throughout the Texas Hill Country area.

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Upgrading Your Electrical System

Monday, September 15th, 2014

Unless you’re an electrician, electrical engineer or budding electronics enthusiast, you probably don’t spend too much of your time thinking about what courses through the various wiring and outlets in your home. But it’s important that you don’t take your electrical system for granted. At the very least, it’s important to make any necessary adjustments and upgrades to the system over time so that it remains compliant with the latest codes and that it remains safe to use for your entire family. Faulty or otherwise shoddy electrics should always be fixed immediately. But even if you don’t have an urgent problem, there are some good reasons to consider upgrading your electrical system.

Whether you want to add functionality, extend electricity to an addition on your home or property or improve the safety of your home, we offer a number of different electrical service upgrades. Let’s have a look:

  • Whole house surge protection. Sure, power strips have their place, but they simply cannot compare to whole house surge protection devices that integrate directly with your circuit breaker panel. These devices are excellent because they not only provider a much greater level of protection against the threat that internal and external surges present to your home, but they also provide coverage for your entire electrical system and everything that’s plugged in, including your HVAC system and other major appliances.
  • Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. When was the last time you had your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors tested? It’s important to make sure that they will be there for you when you need them most. It may be time to upgrade these safety devices and to ensure that they are hard-wired with battery back-ups.
  • Generator installation. Whether you opt for a portable or a whole house generator, it’s important to know what you can and cannot use it for. A portable model is good in a pinch, but it lacks the power, comprehensive coverage, and convenience of a whole-house generator. The latter can even run your HVAC system as well as various appliances.

These are just a few ways to upgrade your existing electrical system. Contact a professional on our team to learn more about our professional electrical services in Boerne, TX.

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The Whole-House Difference: Choosing the Right Generator

Monday, September 1st, 2014

Are you tired of going without the basics every time you lose power? Do you worry about adequate ventilation when operating your portable generator? Do you want backup power that you don’t have to lift a finger for? If you’re in the market for a generator, then you may want to consider making the jump to whole house models. There are a number of different systems that run on various fuels and they provide an unparalleled amount of power throughout the various parts of your living space. But all of this depends upon the quality of the generator installation, which is where professionals like us come in.

So, how do you know what type of generator is right for you home. You can begin by asking yourself a few questions.

  • How much power do you require? This is probably the greatest difference between portable generators and those at are permanently installed on your property. Whole house generators offer plenty of power for various parts of your electrical system, including major appliances and your HVAC system.
  • Do you look forward to filling up a portable generator every few hours, despite inclement weather while also making sure that it’s properly ventilated to avoid exposure to carbon monoxide? Portable generators certainly have their use, but if you want a system that involves a lot less effort and preparation, then a whole house system might be exactly what you need. Whether you opt for a diesel or a natural gas generator, it is vented properly outside its weatherproof casing to ensure that any exhaust fumes are dealt with properly.
  • What’s your stance on ease-of-use? For the ultimate in convenience, you may want to opt for an automatic standby generator, which contains a detector that allows it to turn on automatically as soon as it detects a drop in current from your utility line. That means you don’t have to be home to know that your home is fully secure.

Whatever type of generator you may need, we have a solution. We stock a diverse range of portable and whole house generators, and our electricians can make sure that you get the right one for you. Give us a call today to schedule your next generator service in Boerne,TX.

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