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ELECTRIC NOTES
HAVE A JOLLY AND SAFE HOLIDAY SEASON
Decorating the home for the holiday season is a great tradition, but an essential part of stringing the lights and putting up the tree is keeping an eye on electrical safety. Here are simple steps that everyone can take to enjoy a safe and happy holiday season.
Don’t overload your electric circuits. Check fuses or circuit-breaker panels to see what your home can handle and stay well within the limits.
Avoid putting too many strings of lights together and plugging them into a single outlet.
Watch for flickering lights, sparks from appliances or wall outlets, warm plates, plugs or outlets, and dimming lights or television screens. These signal potential danger spots that could cause an electrical fire.
Make sure there’s a bulb in each socket. If a bulb is burned out, leave it in until you have a replacement. Immediately replace any broken bulbs that have exposed filaments.
Use only UL-listed equipment. Check for frayed cords, cracked insulation and damaged plugs.
Surge protector strips are a safe option if you need more outlets.
Match plugs with outlets. Never force a three-pronged plug into a two-hole outlet or extension cord.
Don’t run extension cords under rugs, around furniture legs or across doorways.
Use safety caps to cover outlets. If you have children in the house or are expecting young visitors, inspect your home for cracked or missing outlet covers.
Keep your natural tree well watered to prevent bulbs from igniting dry branches. Check to make sure an artificial tree is inflammable.
Fasten outdoor lights securely to trees, house walls or other firm supports using insulated staples, or run them through hooks to protect lights from wind damage. Do not nail, tack, pinch, nick or stress wiring.
Outdoor lighting should have insulated electrical cords and be plugged into a ground-fault circuit interrupter-protected receptacle only. Keep all plugs and connectors off the ground, away from puddles and snow.
Never use electric lights on a metallic tree. The tree can become charged with electricity from faulty lights, and a person touching a branch could be electrocuted. Instead, place colored spotlights beside or above the tree.
Never use lighted candles on a tree or near other evergreens. Always use nonflammable holders and place candles where there is no risk of them being knocked down.
IS YOUR HOME BUNDLED UP FOR WINTER?
Proper Insulation Is Key to Efficiency
One of the simplest ways to reduce your home’s heating and cooling costs—and improve comfort—involves installing proper insulation. Doing so provides resistance to heat flow. The more heat-flow resistance your insulation provides, the lower your heating and cooling costs.
Heat flows naturally from a warmer to a cooler space. In winter, heat moves directly from heated living spaces to adjacent unheated areas and even outdoors. It can also travel indirectly through interior ceilings, walls and floors—wherever there is a difference in temperature.
To maintain comfort, heat lost in the winter must be replaced by your heating system. Proper insulation decreases heat loss.
Heat flow resistance is measured or rated in terms of its R-value. The higher the R-value, the greater the insulation’s effectiveness.
When calculating the R-value of a multilayered insulation, add R-values of individual layers. Installing more insulation in your home increases the R-value.
The effectiveness of insulation also depends on how and where it’s installed. For example, insulation that gets compressed will not provide its full rated R-value. The overall R-value of a wall or ceiling will be somewhat different from the R-value of the insulation because some heat flows around the insulation through studs and joists. Therefore, it’s important to properly install your insulation to achieve the maximum R-value.
FINDING SHELTER FROM THE STORM
As many people living along the Gulf Coast and in East Texas who were in the path of Hurricane Ike can attest firsthand, life without electricity is difficult at best. Electricity, once considered a luxury for wealthy urbanites, is an integral part of modern society.
These days, we are so dependent on electricity in almost every aspect of life that an outage leaves businesses hobbled, traffic snarled and families not only in the dark, but also at the mercy of the elements.
Electric cooperatives like yours know how much communities depend on their power lifeline. That’s why co-op crews, with the help of workers from across Texas and other states, leapt into action in September to help restore electricity to members left powerless by Hurricane Ike, which left one co-op completely without power and nine others with outages over parts of their systems.
Hard work and smart planning by those co-ops paid off, and less than two weeks later, the lights were back on for all but a few individual members. Some customers of investor-owned utilities, on the other hand, endured blackouts that stretched into October.
The co-ops’ quick turnaround not only is a credit to hard-working linemen and others, but it also demonstrates one of the advantages of electric cooperatives, which follow the principle of Cooperation Among Cooperatives. If disaster strikes, co-ops are there for one another just like a good neighbor would be.
GOING GREEN THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
While the holiday season brings great joy, it can also be expensive. Shopping, entertaining, big meals and decorating can take a toll on our pocketbooks and the environment. Here are some tips to help make this holiday season a little bit greener for you and your family.
• Remember to turn holiday lights off before you go to bed or put them on a timer.
• Make your own wrapping paper and gift bags. Give new life to brown paper bags by decorating them with last year’s Christmas cards. Or use the cards to make “to” and “from” tags.
• Use strings of LED lights, which look the same as conventional incandescent bulbs but last longer and use 80 to 90 percent less energy.
• Use shredded paper for packing material for fragile gifts.
• It’s hard to let go of the tradition of mailing holiday cards, but a personalized e-card lets you stay in touch while saving trees, gas and money.
• Use your microwave oven whenever possible; it cuts cooking time and saves energy.
• Instead of buying something new, think about recycling things that have value to the recipient. Compile a book of favorite recipes to share or create a box of dress-up clothes (from thrift stores and garage sales) for young kids on your list.
• Use metal flatware and real glasses and dishes rather than disposable options. They look better, your guests will appreciate it, and you’re not creating any waste in the landfill.
• And, when the holidays are done, recycle your Christmas tree. Instead of tossing it out for the garbage ser-vice to take, find out where you can have it chipped up for mulch or compost. Or, you can purchase a living tree that can be planted outside after the holidays are over.
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