What building automation involves

A school building has to be safe on the first day back. There is no second window. The work starts with finding out what is actually there. With building automation, that means looking at the existing wiring, the panel capacity and whatever the last person left behind.

Where repair makes more sense than replacement, we repair. Swapping out equipment that still has years left in it is good business for a contractor and a bad deal for you.

Where this comes up

Summer-window work in classrooms, gyms, kitchens and athletic facilities. Most of these calls come from Des Plaines and the surrounding suburbs, but we take them anywhere in our service area.

Ungrounded two-wire circuits are still common, along with three-prong outlets installed on top of them with no ground behind the plate. The outlet looks right. The tester says otherwise, and that changes how the job is planned.

How we do it

One crew handles residential, commercial and municipal work, so the person in your basement has seen harder jobs than yours. Everything goes in to code and passes inspection where one is required.

Why it usually cannot wait

Electrical problems do not stay the same size. A loose connection heats up, the heat oxidizes the metal, the oxidized metal raises the resistance, and the resistance makes more heat. That loop runs in one direction only and it ends at a scorched box.

If something is tripping, buzzing, warm to the touch or smells like hot plastic, that is the system telling you where the problem is while it is still cheap to fix.

How we quote it

Phone quotes in this trade usually come in low and climb once someone opens the wall. We would rather spend the time up front, find what is behind the drywall and give you one number that holds.

Every quote lists the work line by line, so you can see what you are paying for, and it describes the scope in plain terms. If the job turns out bigger than that scope, we stop and talk to you first.

Code, permits and inspection

Generators and transfer switches draw extra attention from inspectors, because a bad install can push power back into the utility lines. Expect a permit and an inspection on those even in places that are relaxed about smaller work, and expect us to handle both.

We deal with whichever jurisdiction the job sits in. We pull the permit, we schedule the inspection, and we are there when the inspector walks it. You get the paperwork at the end, which matters when you sell the building or when an insurer asks.

Grounding and bonding

Grounding is the part nobody sees and the part that decides whether a fault clears safely. The ground path has to be continuous and low-impedance from every device back to the service, and the neutral and ground can only be bonded together in one place.

A neutral bonded to ground in a subpanel is one of the most common defects we find. It works right up until it does not, and then it puts current on metal that people touch.

When to stop and call

Any time a device or the panel runs warm, buzzes or leaves a scorch mark, stop using that circuit. Leave it off and call us. We answer 24/7 for exactly this.

Lights that brighten in one room while they dim in another point to a loose neutral, often at the service or the panel. That one can push high voltage into anything plugged in. Turn off sensitive equipment and call the same day.