Recessed lighting has a nice clean look and can be very effective at making small rooms feel bigger. Rather than installing chunky light fixtures, that take up room and clutter spaces, Stafford Home Service can install recessed lighting in your home for a simple, sleek look.

Recessed lighting can be installed in any room and is a great way to highlight works of art, mantels, photographs, or an interesting painted wall or Italian plaster feature.  Another useful way to use recessed lighting is for task lighting: Reading areas, desks, and various work spaces can all benefit from recessed lighting.  Imagine your desk free of hot, inconvenient lamps –with a flick of a switch your desk can be washed with focused light from recessed fixtures strategically placed for maximum effect.

There are four bulb options available for recessed lighting:

• Incandescent
• Halogen
• Low-emitting diode (LED)
• Compact fluorescent light (CFL).

Incandescent bulbs:
Incandescent lights are the standard lights with which we are all familiar. They have the least expensive up-front costs of the four options, are the least efficient, create more garbage and run very hot. They will also be phased out, according to federal law by 2012-2014 [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00006:].

Halogen bulbs:
Halogen lights are also incandescent, but they last longer and provide a greater quantity of light, per watt. They are a step up from standard incandescent but have all the same fundamental problems and will also be phased out along with standard incandescents.

LED bulbs:
If your looking for a Green lighting option, LED lights are the way to go.  According to energystar.gov, an ENERGY STAR qualified LED uses, at the bare minimum, 75% less energy than incandescent lighting and also reduces maintenance costs, by lasting 35 to 50 times longer (and more) than incandescent lighting and about 2 to 5 times longer than fluorescent lighting. LED bulbs also contain no mercury (which CFL’s do.) By using LED lighting you won’t have to replace bulbs more then once every several years (or more), which, in the long-term, is good for your pocketbook and the environment. (not to mention if you have limited mobility and have difficulty replacing bulbs)

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFL):
CFL bulbs are another green solution. An ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb.” (www.energystar.gov) Stafford home Services uses Energy Star qualified products. The toxic mercury contained in CFL’s is an issue, but is offset by the infrequency of replacement and proper waste disposal programs that are currently in effect across the US.

While LED or CFL recessed lighting fixtures are far more efficient than a standard incandescent fixture, they are a significantly higher up-front investment.  Keep in mind, If every American home replaced just one light with an ENERGY STAR light, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, about $700 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the emissions of about 800,000 cars.  (www.energystar.gov).

In conclusion, recessed lighting is a great option for any room in any home. With options for every price range the possibilities are endless. For your next renovation project, let Stafford Home Service install Energy Star qualified products in your home.

Three quick advantages with using dimmer switches:

• Reduced Energy Consumption, Dim your lights by quarter & save up to 20 percent Dim by half and save up to 40 percent.
• Increased Bulb Life, If you are dimming the light by just 10 percent it more than doubles the life of the bulb.
• Mood, A softer light is more comforting and sets a relaxing atmosphere.

We can install many different kinds of dimmer light switches. 3-way dimmable light switches are also available.

Call Stafford for more information on going green in your home.

Kris Thompson
Stafford Home Service
Office:   952.927.7194
Fax:      952.927.7192
Direct:   612.328.3989

One thing he explained is how he was going to mount the basement ducts a couple inches lower then I had first assumed. He said these critical few inches would make the ducts that much more quiet, as they would better isolate the vibrations of ducts and movement of floor. Brilliant! He was also very concerned with the placement of vents for cosmetic and functional reasons. He explained many situations where ducts would be a problem. If it were up to me I would have ended up choosing locations that would have essentially heated the outside and the furniture. Nothing like a great HVAC contractor to save the day!

Next was the Stafford Electric team. Kris came in on Thursday and walked through the entire space with me and Jason from Stinson Builders. Even though we had blueprints (do they still call them that?) and had previously discussed many of the options, Kris insisted on walking through every detail again and making sure we were all on the same page and that we were moving forward in the best possible way. As we walked through, Kris proposed new options that were better then the old, like recessed lighting in the basement guest bedroom and workout/craft area. Jason and Kris pointed out that those spaces would benefit by having finished ceilings. I am so happy that I began this process with Stinson Builders; Jason’s subcontractors are friendly, committed to the job and my satisfaction, and unbelievably helpful.

One exciting idea Kris cooked up, for the rest of the basement was to put in conduit and cage lights, in between the floor rafters Something like this (but cheaper, more industrial, and steel instead of brass):

This is perfect for the industrial look I am going for. I had the ceiling spray painted with BIN paint which has shellac in it (the only thing sure to lock out the lingering dog and cigarette smoke odors.) which I tinted a light blue-grey. I think it’s going to look great. Thanks Kris!

As we walked around the space I got a glimpse at the complexity of a good electrician‘s job. The melding of practicality, ease of use, efficiency, code compliancy, cosmetics and the like creates for a difficult terrain. Make sure you have a great firm like Stafford Home Services’ electric department to navigate the landscape or you may find yourself pulling things out later (at much higher expense), and being disappointed with the results.

One simple, electrical Green Renovation solution that Stafford is installing is dimmer switches at all locations. (there are even 3-way, adjustable light switches!) Did you know light dimmer switches were Green? Well they are. Kris and Dan told me about a Green Home workshop they attended that trained electricians and home services on going Green. Evidently the human eye only needs about 80% of a room’s full lighting. They were shown a demo and said they could not tell the difference, once their eyes adjusted. I assume that’s a 20% savings in lighting bills! Nice!

As we walked through the space, Kris stopped one of his electricians and had him move a flush, floor-mounted electrical outlet. It was just a rotation of a outlet that already had been installed. The electrician did not look happy but Kris insisted. I went back later and saw why: to rotate the box, there had to be new framing to support each unit. To think, here they are making more work for themselves, work that I would not have thought of until another contractor was done and gone, and they doing it just to make sure the aesthetics are just right. That’s the kind of electrician I want!

All said and done, this has been a good week. Stay tuned next week for updates on the Green electrical and Green HVAC installations.

-M

Since they are in an uninsulated space, Stafford Electrical will be installing insulation boots around the “cans” before we blow in new insulation.

Once the installation is done, I will upload new images. You’ll be amazed yourself.

Kris and Dan, partners at Stafford and Jesse, head of low-voltage, came in and created a whole slew of new opportunities for the house. It’s amazing what you learn and what opportunities can be opened up by people who really know their stuff and work together well. It’s also very helpful to have all of these people under one roof, as their work is so interdependent. Not only did they come up with better ideas (IMHO), they also save us time by communicating more fluidly then disparate subcontractors. And, like all of Jason’s subcontractors, they are perfectionists, care deeply about their work and are easy-going and fun to be around. Seriously, I can’t imagine working with a better team.

For our little project they will be doing the following:

• Redoing most of the electrical in the home while bringing up the old wiring to code
  • Moving the electrical mast to the garage.
  • Installing a 150AMP service (50 to the garage, 100 to the house.)
  • Installing 220V in the garage (for welding, air compressor, etc…)
  • Running the electrical from the garage, through a trench (which we dug) to the house.
  • Moving the panel to a better location (allowing us to move the stair and consolidate utility space.)
• New electrical for the kitchen
  • Kitchen lighting.
  • Wall oven.
  • Cook top.
  • Bar refrigerator.
  • Under-counter lighting.
  • Counter-top power.
  • Exhaust hood.
• Cleaning up the gas line in the basement
• New lighting
  • Dimmer switches for better efficiency.
  • Recessed lighting for higher ceiling clearance.
  • Under-counter lighting.
  • New entrance lighting
• Installing a new furnace.
• Installing a new AC unit.
• Installing an Ecobee HVAC controller for greener heating and cooling.
• Installing recessed speakers in the kitchen.
• Installing a media room in the basement.
• Installing HDMI cables, USB and speaker cables so we can centralize the media source (PS3, Wii and Blu-ray on every screen!)
• Installing a security system in the entire house, including basement and garage.
• And a whole slew of other things (will be updated)

Stay tuned for updates from the Stafford team!

Stafford Home Services