DIY Life

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Progress Lighting, has announced a voluntary recall of about 7,500 indoor ceiling light fixtures, due to a fall and injury hazard posed to consumers if the cable that supports the light fixture fails. Progress Lighting has receive five reports of the fixtures falling, including an incident where two consumers suffered bruises.

The International Series indoor light fixtures were manufactured in China and sold by electrical and lighting distributors and at The Home Depot stores from January 2005 through March 2008 for between $290 and $1,150. The fixtures were sold under the Progress Lighting and Thomasville Lighting brand names. Please see the CPSC press release for model numbers involved in the recall.

Consumers are advised to remove the glass from the recalled Thomasville or Progress Lighting ceiling lights and contact Progress Lighting at (877) 369-4548 or www.progresslighting.com to schedule a free inspection and replacement of the ceiling fixture.

Have you ever had an electrical problem with your appliances, car, boat, or motorcycle and thought, "Hey, I'm handy; I do mechanical work on my ride all the time. I can handle this." So you grab your book of wiring diagrams and unfold the page.

And then it sinks in. It's a totally foreign language and looks suspiciously like the spaghetti you had for dinner last night. Wiring diagrams can be tricky to trace through when troubleshooting an electrical circuit.

Don't despair; it takes a process and a bit of knowledge about electrical symbols. This Temperature Control Division site will guide you through the process of tracking down the problem. It makes the "overwhelm factor" a bit more manageable and gets you started on the road to electrical recovery.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Progress Lighting, has announced a voluntary recall of about 1,000 Progress Lighting outdoor ceiling light fixtures. The fixtures can fall and injure nearby persons, due to the fact that a weld that affixes a mounting bracket to the ceiling pan can fail. Although no injuries have been reported, the firm has received six reports of fixtures falling.

Manufactured in China, and sold at electrical and lighting distributors nationwide from January 2007 through November 2007 for about $200, this recall involves only Progress Lighting ceiling mounted outdoor light fixtures with model numbers P5526-20 and P5526-44. You can find the model number written on the product packaging.

To schedule a free repair of the lighting fixture, consumers can contact Progress Lighting at (866) 418-5543 or visit their website at www.progresslighting.com.

Oh, sure, we've had a bewildering array of amazingly helpful home improvement articles here on DIY Life recently, particularly in the last few days. But whose head can be turned by sheet rock and plumbing when so much love is in the air?

That's right: Valentine's Day is coming up, so this past week, we spent a lot of time thinking about handmade gifts for all of our sweethearts -- and yours. If you're looking for ideas, you will enjoy the following posts:

• DIY Valentine's gifts -- homemade romance by Francesca Clarke: Thoughtfulness goes a long way, but there's more to it than that.
• Lovebird votive holders: perfect DIY Valentine's gift by Diane Rixon: Cut pretty bird silhouettes out of metal to instantly increase your romance quotient by an extra 79%.
• Homopolar motor for your Valentine by Alan Parekh: Use simple electrical principles to show your Valentine how they make your heart spin.

More ways to express your love this week (or any other time) await you after the break, along with several other recommendations which have absolutely nothing to do with either hearts or flowers. We'll also reveal this week's top three posts.

Your family is coming over for Thanksgiving. Your brother is bringing his girlfriend and the neighbors that first declined your invitation are now going to make it. The more the merrier, right? You're happy to have the extra people, but visions of grandma balancing a plate of turkey on her lap while sitting on the couch, or sending your 15 year -old cousin to the kid's table are not your idea of a relaxed holiday meal.

If you have 1 hour and $40, Tim Carter will show you how to build a big dining room table. If you have no table at all, you'll need two empty cable reels and a large piece of plywood. You'll find the cable reels at an electrical part distribution center. They should have a bunch of them out behind the warehouse.

I was going to write a blog post for you about how to replace a light switch. As I did my research in an attempt to present the information in a complete and concise manner, it occurred to me that all I was doing was trying to reinvent the wheel. So, rather than writing something which would simply qualify as another layer on top of a multitude of existing quality information, I present you the highlights from: "Gary's favorite electrical switch replacement tutorials:"

How to replace a light switch from About.com

Better Homes and Gardens, replace a switch.

Michigan State University explanation of how to replace a wall switch.

I invite you to review these three step-by-step tutorials. You will find that they each provide a good basic guide to getting the job done. I've also included a nice list of electrical safety tips from the Natural Handyman that you can review and share with your friends and loved ones.

Always remember that when electricity is not treated with the appropriate respect, it can become an effective killer in the blink of an eye. When it comes to electrical repair, there can be no guess work involved.

Air infiltration into your house is the number one enemy of your home heating and cooling efficiency. Wall switches and electrical outlets which are located on the exterior walls of your home can serve as ports of entry for outside air. Insulating these potential thermal leaks is simple and cheap to do.

You can get inexpensive foam outlet seals at any home or hardware store. They are simple die cut foam shields which go between your outlet plate and the wire box in the wall. These foam insulators can potentially shut off air leakage entering your home from behind switches and outlets.

The process is simple and goes like this:

Have you ever faced a brownout (or even a total blackout)? It's no fun, and all those gotta' have 'em appliances like computers, refrigerators, and televisions can go silent when the power outage demon comes to visit.

Luckily, there are small and large UPS (uninterrupted power supply) systems that can keep those power-hungry devices powered on for an hour or two should the power fail. For medical devices in the home that require constant power to operate, a backup generator or UPS is a requirement.

If you don't have a battery on the computer (as in, a desktop system instead of a laptop) and you use it all day long for communicating, working on spreadsheets, composing sales proposals, and so on, a UPS may already be on your short list. In general, a good, small UPS will supply enough juice to allow for at least 10 minutes of backup power for that PC -- enough time to allow you to save important work, notify people that you may be going offline, and then to switch the PC off until that nasty brownout is over.

Instead of that 10-minute off-the-shelf UPS purchase, wouldn't a Super UPS built with off-the-shelf components -- and one that would give you quite a bit more time before battery death -- be nice? With a little ingenuity and patience, you can build your own. Although, try to find the components locally -- shipping heavy lead-acid batteries is bound to be prohibitively expensive.

My wife I chose our last apartment based largely on the fact that the other tenants' complaints that the landlord never stopped by or cared much about the condition of the property. This was a welcome change from the pair of knit-picky, nosy, voyeuristic landladies we endured during our first years of marriage. However, that meant that minor home improvements were up to me if I wanted them done in a timely manor.

Most of the outlets in the apartment were so worn out that lamp cords would fall out the moment my hand let go. At best walking across the floor caused lights to flicker and the radio to shut off. Fortunately, fixing the problem is as easy as homemade sin and dirt cheap (so you don't have to worry about investing much pocket change into someone else's property).

All you need to do the deed is a 39¢ outlet from the hardware store (or Walmart's hardware dept.) and a #2 ("regular" size) flat screwdriver. Most electrical outlets are designed to accept both flat ( | ) and Philips ( + ) screwdrivers so if you have a Philips grab that too (it can be easier to use) but it's not necessary. A novice should expect to spend about 15 minutes from start to finish.

I was hesitant to post this tutorial, seeing as how it could get your utilities turned off if you were caught doing it, but I thought it deserved a little attention if for no other reason than to illustrate an easily fixable vulnerability in the way utility companies currently read meters. To be completely honest with you, I'm not 100% sure how, or even if this project works. Luckily for us, however, we have some fantastic readers who will (and should) quickly jump in and let me know what a dork I am for believing that something like this would even work in the first place.

So, with that out of the way, let's look at how you can "supposedly" cut your electrical bill in half by creating some sort of weak electromagnetic field around your meter.

Materials

1. Copper wire (apparently any gauge will work)
2. Two magnets (one significantly larger than the other)
3. Electrical tape
4. Plastic cup
5. Enough distilled water to fill the plastic cup
6. Saran wrap, or other plastic wrapping
7. Rubber band

Tools

1. Wire cutter / stripper

Time

Less than 15 minutes. This one's definitely a quickie.

Now that we've been in our new house for a month or so, my home theater room is starting to take shape. I'll be writing more on it as I slowly transform our finished basement into a fully functioning battle station, er, home theater. because I'm using a front projection system, normal ceiling lights can't be used at all during shows. Recessed lighting offers the perfect combination of room filling lighting that's directed everywhere but the movie screen. Here's an easy way to to install lighting in a pre-finished room.

I think mood lamps are so cool. All the different changing colors and uses for a mood lamp sure make me want to buy one. I never have though because it just didn't ever seem to fit in my budget. The good ones are really expensive, at least they are for me. I am a penny pincher and always found some other more frugal way to spend my money. If you don't like to spend so much either why not check out how to make your very own mood lamp.

Toon Beerten gives instructions and has a You tube video on how to make a mood lamp from some items he had lying around. Many of the items he has used for his mood lamp were taken out of other electronics items that he no longer used. What a great way to recycle! Using empty plastic containers for the casings of the mood lamp is ingenious.

Check out the comments posted after Toon wrote the article. It seems that some people had some difficulty getting the LED codes to work and also had some issues about the diagram layout. The posters talk it out among themselves, thus getting the lamp to work.

A lot of the technical electrical terms, I must admit, are really difficult for me to understand. I am sure if I pester hard enough my darling husband could easily make me a mood lamp and be done making it before I ever figure out what some of the electrical terminology means. Anyway, I think that this is an excellent project on the cheap for anyone to make and will give you a cool result with an awesome feeling of satisfaction.

Anything done improperly can be dangerous. Walking, breathing, even drinking water can be lethal if you're clueless. Logically, if you ramp up the inherent danger, the net of "improper behavior" gets a lot wider.

Case in point: electrical work. Toying around with house wiring is no joke. Even though our voltages might not kill you instantly, the resulting fires that can ensue from improperly wired connections is a very real threat.

Electrical Construction and Maintenance points out that a rise in DIY support from big-box retailers might be fueling a rise in risk. The proliferation of big box stores catering to the weekend warrior set has something to do with it, but ultimately a person is either going to do a project or not. Hardware stores have always been around. The key is having a good understanding of what you are doing. If any portion of an electrical project is confusing, stop and seek professional help. When it comes to electrical, always err on the safe side!