Category Archives: Commercial Electricians

Steps to Take if Your Circuit Breaker Trips

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Tripped Circuit Breaker If a circuit breaker in your electrical panel trips, it’s actually not the worst thing in the world. Your circuit breakers are designed to protect the electric circuits in your electrical panel from getting damaged. Nevertheless, there are some steps you should take if a circuit breaker in your home trips.

Check them out below:

Find the Electrical Panel

The first thing you’ll need to do after a circuit breaker trips is locate your home’s electrical panel, if you don’t know where it is. These panels can be located in a variety of places, but more often than not, they’ll be in your garage or basement.

Reset the Tripped Circuit Breaker

Resetting a circuit breaker that has tripped is easy to do. All you need to do is open up your electrical panel, find the electrical circuit that is facing a different direction than all the others, and flip it back on. This should restore power to the area of your home where it went out when the circuit breaker tripped.

Make Sure the Power Stays On

In some cases, a circuit breaker might trip again after you have flipped a circuit back on. This is the sign of a problem. You may have an overloaded circuit somewhere in your home. You may also have a short circuit. A ground fault could also be to blame. Whatever the case, it’s important to find the cause of the tripped circuit breaker.

Contact a Residential Electrician for Help

If you can’t find what’s causing your circuit breaker to trip, you should avoid flipping your electrical circuit back on and contact an electrician for help. Otherwise, you could do some real damage to your electrical circuits and potentially even start a fire in your home.

Always on Electric can help you with tripped circuit breakers and any other electrical issues you face in your home. Call us at 970-309-2616 today to schedule an appointment with an electrician.

When is it Time to Upgrade Your Electrical Wiring?

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Electrical Wiring Most people don’t think much about the electrical wiring in their home, unless or until something goes wrong. For instance, the big football game is coming up on TV and people are gathered at your house to see it. A couple minutes before the game starts the TV inexplicably turns off. Nothing seems to work to get it back on. Maybe it was a blown fuse? Maybe it was something else? Whatever it was, it’s frustratingly irritating!

Signs You Need to Upgrade Your Electrical Wiring

When is it time to upgrade your electrical wiring? For most people, if their house is over 40 years old, then it’s time. Things have changed a lot since the original electrical work was installed. Think about how much different our world is today– back then, they didn’t have the kind of devices and appliances we have now, like microwaves, desktop computers, and tablets. Furthermore, if you have several people living in a house trying to plug all their stuff in at once, you might have run out of outlets– so it’s time to expand the number of outlets in your home to properly accommodate the power needs of all the people who live there.

One thing that might scare you– and it should– is that faulty wiring is a leading cause of house fires. The older your house is, the more likely the wiring is outdated and/or unsafe… which could very well lead to a fire. You don’t want that. You want wiring that’s “up to code,” or, more importantly, up to the current code.

Hire a Professional Electrician

When’s the last time your wiring was professionally inspected? Most of you would say, “I have no idea.” Others might say, “When we first bought the house.” If it has been “some time” since it was checked, make it a priority this year to have a company like Always On Electric come take a look at what’s going on in your house with your electrical wires.

You’ll especially want to have your wiring checked if you’ve noticed fuses are blowing repeatedly, lights are flickering or dimming, you smell burning coming from a certain room or appliance, or– don’t laugh– you get a tingling sensation when you touch a certain appliance.

Your wiring should also be inspected if you’ve noticed particularly warm outlets or ones that have become discolored or spark when you plug things into them.

Call 970-309-2616 to connect with Always On Electric.

Prepare for Cooler Weather with New Electrical Equipment

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Fall is here, which makes this a good time to start thinking about winter electrical installations. Each season has its own electrical demands, like air conditioning in summer. As fall continues, it is a good time to consider any upcoming electrical projects or needs before the weather turns cold.

Frozen PipeCommercial

Heat tape systems can be used for several applications, including freeze protection for pipes and tanks, maintaining hot water temperature, de-icing and snow melting. Our experienced electricians can install a new heat tape system for your commercial property that will meet your needs and keep plumbing fixtures free of freezing problems.

Residential

Is it time for a new boiler or hot tub at your home? The skilled electricians at Always On Electric can safely complete the power installation for your new hot tub, boiler or steamer.

Tired of the power going out during winter storms? Always On Electric has you covered here, too, with professional back-up generator solutions. Don’t take a chance on your safety and comfort this winter!

Agricultural

The agricultural industry works year-round, with no break for bad weather. Winter brings unique challenges for farmers and ranchers because of water troughs or buckets icing over whenever temperatures fall below freezing. Trough heaters are the solution to the common wintertime chore of breaking up ice so that animals can drink.

Industrial

Severe winter cold can shut down an entire truck fleet, but using engine block heaters can help ensure your trucks will start in the morning after a long, cold night. Of course, each heater requires a fair amount of electrical power, and powering multiple truck heaters will probably require some new wiring. Our electricians can help you safely add the connections you need to power your truck heaters this winter.

Always On Electric provides a full range of electrical services for clients throughout western Colorado. Contact us today at 970-309-2616 to prepare for fall with new electrical equipment and wiring installations.

Ways to Save on Your Commercial Electric Bills

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Businesses looking to save on their electric bills can make several simple changes that add up to big savings throughout the year. No matter if you operate a small office with a few employees or have a bigger business that requires a larger number of electrical devices, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the amount of money you can save with minimal effort.

Saving money on electricl bills with LED lighting

Get an energy efficiency audit

A great way to get started with lowering your business’ electric costs is by hiring a professional electrical company to come and look at your site. The electrician will spot a few ways in which you can be saving on your energy usage and will give advice on what you can do to fix the issues.

Common things that can be found in an energy-efficiency audit include air leaks, insulation issues and inefficient lighting.

It is suggested to also do an after-hours audit on your own once you have gotten an energy audit from an electrician. It’s best to do the audit a few hours after workers have gone home, or even on the weekend, to see what devices and lights stay on when people are out of the office.

Switch to LED lighting

Another way to save big on your commercial electric bills is by making the switch to LED lighting. This lighting not only emits less heat that incandescent and halogen lights, it uses roughly 75 to 80% less energy overall.

After you’ve made the switch to a LED system, you can save further by installing motion sensor lighting or by simply reminding people to turn lights off once they leave a meeting area or lunchroom. Creating more natural light can also create big savings by encouraging workers to leave lights off during the day.

Choose laptops over desktops

Replacing older desktop computers with laptops is a great way to save money. When you need new computers at your commercial site, be forward thinking and choose this energy-efficient option.

Laptops use less power than their clunky counterparts and many workers will even take the laptops home at the end of the day, avoiding overnight energy costs for your business. Even better, laptops allow employees to work from home with ease, which can create greater savings.

When you want to save on your business’ electric bills, we are the licensed and certified commercial electrical team to choose in Western Colorado at Always On Electric. Our electricians will be happy to come to your commercial site and offer our opinion on ways to save on your energy bills. We can also assist with any LED lighting installation, service upgrades, building lighting and more. Call our experienced electrical team at 970.309.2616 to get started!

Warning Signs It’s Time to Re-wire Your Home

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Re-Wiring Home Does it feel like you blow a fuse at least once or twice every week? There’s a chance that you could have too many appliances plugged into one circuit. There’s also a chance that your home’s electrical system might be outdated and that you could benefit from rewiring your entire home in the near future. Take a look at some of the other warning signs you’ll likely notice when it’s time to rewire your house.

Your home is more than 40 years old.

Electrical systems have advanced a lot over the course of the last few decades. So if you have a home that was built 40 years ago or more and you’re still using the original electrical system, it’s probably just about time to think about updating your system. By rewiring your home, you can make it a lot safer and avoid many of the potential problems that come along with using an older system.

Your home has aluminum wiring in it.

Speaking of outdated electrical systems, there was a time when many systems relied on aluminum wiring. That is, until electricians started to figure out that many aluminum wires ended up causing fires once they got old. Today’s electrical systems rely on copper wiring as opposed to aluminum and are noticeably safer. You should consider going with copper if you still have aluminum in your home.

Your home has certain outlets that have stopped working altogether.

Are you running extension cords all over your house to power up certain rooms? This might seem like a reasonable solution, but extension cords should not be used for this purpose. You should have an electrician come take a look at your nonfunctional outlets. They might be repairable, or they might be a sign of a larger problem within your home’s electrical system.

Is it time for you to update your home’s electrical system? Always on Electric can help you with it. Call us at 970-309-2616 today to set up an appointment with one of our reliable and experienced electricians.

Leading Causes of Electrical Fires

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Although they may only account for a fraction of residential fires, electrical fires can be devastating and even fatal. To prevent your having any issues at your home, be sure to check the following areas of your house that are the most common places where electrical fires start.

Failed Electrical OutletOutlets

If you go to plug in an appliance and nothing happens, it could be a sign that the wiring leading to the outlet might be loose. In this compromised state, the wiring could be exposed behind the call, potentially leading to contact with wall insulation or causing sparking behind the outlet. To fix this situation, have an electrician come out and look for the cause of the outlet failure and make any necessary repairs to the connection or the outlet itself.

Appliances

Speaking of appliances, whenever a power cord becomes frayed or starts to fall apart, you should have the connection repaired or replace the cable, if possible. Exposed wires can be dangerous for anyone using the appliance and can allow heat transfer from the connection to combustible surfaces that the cord may be set on. In fact, faulty appliance connections and outlets are the leading causes of home fires. Also, if you feel a mild shock or tingle when touching an appliance, it often is a sign of a ground fault or incorrect wiring. Don’t simply ignore it – call an appliance repair professional or electrician to come take a look.

Circuit Breakers

Although circuit breakers are meant to prevent a circuit from overloading, sometimes they can do their job a little too much and that’s a problem. Modern equipment and technology often requires more power than devices even a few years ago, which can put extra strain on an outdated circuit breaker. If your breaker continues to trip, it is time to contact an electrician. An older breaker box can have wear that prevents the circuit from being thrown properly or allow an overload to start a fire. Be safe, not sorry, and call an electrician to investigate and replace your breaker box, if needed.

Light Fixtures

Make sure that all of your light fixtures have bulbs that meet the proper wattage capability of the fixture. If the bulb’s wattage is too high, it could lead to an electrical fire. If you aren’t sure about the proper wattage, a simple way to test is to check the area around the fixture once you put a new light bulb in. If you feel heat, switch to a lower wattage bulb as the current one’s wattage is too high for that fixture.

If you think your home might have faulty wiring or the wiring is in need of repair, let Always on Electric help. We offer residential and commercial electrical services to keep your home or business protected from electrical fires. For more information, call us today at 970-309-2616!

Reasons to Replace Outlet Receptacles

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Outlet Receptacles

Over the past few months, we’ve all had extra time to look around our homes or businesses and think about which improvement jobs need to be prioritized. Now, more than before, it’s essential for homeowners and business owners to have an ample amount of outlet receptacles, since we’re so reliant on the technology that requires outlets for charging or working purposes. As such, if you can’t remember the last time you’ve replaced the outlet receptacles in  your home or business, here are some telltale signs that it’s time.

The Outlets Feel Warm When You Use Them

Have you ever taken a phone charger out off the outlet and it felt hot? If so, it’s a scary feeling, and if it is happening often, it’s also a warning sign to replace your outlet receptacle. More often than not, the heat stems from outlets being worn out, though sometimes it might be caused by poor electrical wiring. Either, it’s best to further instigate if it becomes a common problem, especially if the screws holding the sockets in place are hot.

There are Breaches in the Outlets

If you see gaps, cracks and other openings in the outlet receptacle, it could lead to an accumulation of dust and possibly make the outlet a fire hazard. A build up of dust and other debris is bad news, and if your outlet is hot and has cracks or other crevices, then you know it’s time to do something about them.

You See Sparks

If you see sparks emanating from the outlet receptacle, it could indicate that the electrical wiring behind them has become outdated or is not able to withstand modern technical demands. A sparking outlet could lead to a fire breaking out, making it essential to have a professional look at your outlet receptacle.

If you’re in Rifle, CO area and are unsure about the outlet receptacles in your home or business, the electricians at Always on Electric are here to help. For more information, give us a call at 970.309.2616

Electrical Troubleshooting Tips for Industrial Businesses

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Industrial ElectricianWhen you own an industrial business, you’re going to need to get used to dealing with electrical issues from time to time. Many of these issues will be minor in nature. However, if you get into the habit of ignoring them and don’t determine what’s causing them, they can eventually lead to much larger problems down the line. Let’s take a look at some electrical troubleshooting tips that you can use to keep your industrial business’ electrical system up and running the way it’s supposed to at all times.

Work to gather information on an electrical issue as quickly as you can.

The second you notice an electrical issue in your industrial facility, you should formulate a plan of attack. Take a look at how the electrical issue is affecting your industrial equipment and talk to your employees to see if this issue is new or something that’s been a lingering problem. The more info you have on an electrical issue, the better your chances of figuring out what’s causing it so that it can be fixed.

Try to pinpoint the source of an electrical issue whenever possible.

Once you’ve taken the time to gather information on your electrical issue, the next step you should take is trying to pinpoint the source of the issue. This is often easier said than done, but you may be able to narrow the potential sources down by visually inspecting electrical wiring and outlets and checking out which part of your facility seems to be impacted the most by the electrical issue.

Aim to have your electrical issue fixed by a licensed industrial electrician right away.

Unless you have extensive experience and training as an industrial electrician, you should not attempt to correct an electrical issue in your facility. You could end up making the issue much worse than it already is by trying to repair it on your own. You could also put yourself and your employees at risk by tinkering around with electrical components. Call on a licensed industrial electrician to visit your facility right away and make the necessary electrical repairs.

Are you experiencing an electrical issue in your industrial facility right now? Always on Electric can come out to your facility and figure out what’s causing the issue. We can also make the right repairs to get your electrical system working seamlessly again. Call us at 970-309-2616 to schedule an appointment with an industrial electrician.

What Does It Mean to Be a Licensed Electrician in Colorado?

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Licensed electrician Do you need to have electrical work done in your home? If so, you should always make sure you’re working with a licensed electrician. Don’t be afraid to ask an electrician to provide you with proof that shows they’ve taken the proper steps to earn their license. All electricians in Colorado are required to obtain a license from the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, Electrical Board by passing an exam. They also need to meet several other important requirements. Learn more about them below.

Residential Wireman

This is the most basic type of electrician. They specialize in installing electrical wiring inside of homes. To get a license to become a residential wireman, an electrician must prove that they have at least 4,000 hours worth of experience when it comes to installing electrical construction wiring for things like lights, heat, and power over the course of the last two years.

Journeyman Electrician

This type of electrician is a step up from the residential wireman, as they can perform electrical work in both homes and businesses. They need to be able to prove that they have at least 8,000 hours worth of experience over the last four years working on electrical wiring for lights, heat, and power. Additionally, they need to have at least 4,000 hours worth of experience over the last two years working on electrical jobs in commercial and/or industrial settings.

Master Electrician

This type of electrician is the best kind of electrician around. To get licensed, master electricians need to meet all the qualifications of a journeyman electrician. They also need to have at least 2,000 hours worth of experience with regards to electrical planning and supervising electrical installations over the last year.

If you’re searching for a licensed electrician to set you up with electrical services, look no further than the electricians at Always on Electric. We can provide residential, commercial, industrial, and even agricultural electrical services and make sure your next electrical project goes according to plan. Call us at 970-309-2616 to schedule an appointment.

What Makes a Great Industrial Electrician?

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Industrial Electricians Do you need to install new electrical equipment in your industrial facility or have existing electrical equipment repaired? You need more than just an ordinary electrician to come out and get the job done. Instead, hire an industrial electrician to perform electrical work in your facility. Here are some of the things that make up a great industrial electrician.

Extensive experience

When an industrial electrician comes out to your facility to perform an installation or make a repair, they’re going to be asked to work on electrical equipment that is extremely high-powered. As a result, they need to know exactly what they’re doing at all times to avoid injuring themselves or others. A great industrial electrician should have extensive experience in the field. It’ll help them make the necessary installations and repairs without causing any issues in your facility.

Variety of industrial services

Industrial electricians need to be able to provide their clients with a wide range of services when they’re called on. The very best industrial electricians should be able to install, maintain, and repair things like generators, transformers, electric motors, electrical wiring, industrial storage batteries, and more. There shouldn’t be any electrical job too big or too small for these electricians.

Easy access to the right tools and equipment

In order to provide you with all the services that we just mentioned, industrial electricians need to have access to all the right tools and equipment. They should show up prepared to work on your electrical equipment with these tools and equipment. Additionally, industrial electricians should always be equipped with licenses and insurance, just in case something goes wrong when you’re having electrical work done.

If you’ve been searching for a great industrial electrician, look no further than Always on Electric. We can send an industrial electrician to your facility to take care of any electrical work you need to have done. Call us at 970-309-2616 today to schedule an electrical installation or repair.