What Is a Kilowatt-Hour?
One thousand watts for one hour. The unit on your bill, and the one that turns wattage into money.
Read Article→Learning Center
Plain-language explanations of the measurements, sensors and numbers behind environmental monitoring.
Gas Detector Placement Near a Furnace or Water Heater
Put a combustible gas alarm in the same room as the furnace or water heater, high for natural gas or low for propane, and out of the heat and exhaust path.
Read Article→Watts vs Volts vs Amps: A Practical Explanation
Pressure, flow and power. Volts push, amps flow, watts is the work getting done.
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What Does LEL Mean on a Gas Detector?
LEL is the lowest gas concentration in air that can ignite. A 10 percent LEL reading means one tenth of that amount. Fixed alarms trip at 10 to 25 percent LEL.
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What Does Natural Gas Smell Like?
Natural gas smells like rotten eggs or sulfur, but only because utilities add a mercaptan odorant. Raw methane has no smell at all.
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What Is Continuity and Why Do Meters Beep?
An unbroken path for current. The beeper is a resistance test with a threshold, so you can keep your eyes on the probes.
Read Article→Do You Need a Natural Gas Detector?
If gas is piped into your home and you sleep there, yes. A natural gas alarm covers the hours your nose cannot: while you sleep, when you are congested or away.
Read Article→Why Multimeter Readings Jump Around
Unstable readings come from the circuit, the leads, the range or the meter. Each has a signature.
Read Article→How Do Gas Leak Detectors Work?
A heated sensing element changes electrically when flammable gas touches it. Fixed alarms compare that to a threshold; sniffers show it as a rising scale.
Read Article→How Many Gas Detectors Do You Need at Home?
Count rooms with gas appliances, not square feet: one combustible gas alarm per room that has one, CO alarms on every level, and one sniffer per household.
Read Article→What Is Non-Contact Voltage Detection?
A tester that senses the electric field around a live conductor through the insulation. First check, never the last.
Read Article→Why Ghost Voltage Appears on a Multimeter
A dead wire that reads 60 volts. It is capacitive coupling, and a low-impedance mode makes it vanish.
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