What design-build electrical involves

The hard part of this work is often the permit, not the install. The work starts with finding out what is actually there. With design-build electrical, that means looking at the existing wiring, the panel capacity and whatever the last person left behind.

A diagnosis comes before a scope. Once we know what is happening and why, we lay out the work, and you decide how much of it you want done now.

Where this comes up

Code corrections, permits, load calculations, design-build and utility coordination. Most of these calls come from Des Plaines and the surrounding suburbs, but we take them anywhere in our service area.

New load on old wiring is the most common version. A heat pump or a charger for the car goes in, the circuits that were fine until then start complaining, and the real question becomes whether the existing service can carry it at all.

How we do it

Every connection gets tightened properly and every wire is sized for the load it carries. Where the village requires a permit, the inspector signs off on it, so the standard is on paper as well as in the wall.

What we see go wrong

Most of the bad work we find was not done by an electrician. It was a handyman, a previous owner or somebody who watched a video. Backstabbed outlets, undersized conductors, missing grounds, neutrals and grounds bonded in a subpanel, junctions buried inside a wall with no box.

None of that is visible from the living room. It surfaces during a remodel, a home inspection, or the day a breaker stops holding.

What happens when we are done

Most panels we open have labels that stopped being true years ago. Ours come out accurate. Every circuit we work on is tested and named in the panel directory, so the next electrician, or you at midnight with a tripped breaker, knows exactly what is what.

Where a permit was pulled you get the closed inspection. Where documentation exists, you get it.

What the permit actually buys you

A permit puts the work on the public record for the address. When the building changes hands, that record is evidence the electrical was done and checked. Without it, a buyer's inspector treats everything they find as suspect.

It also means the work was sized and installed to the code edition in force, not to whatever was normal when the building went up.

Copper, aluminum and what is in your walls

Aluminum branch wiring went into a lot of houses in the late sixties and early seventies. It is not automatically dangerous, but it expands and contracts more than copper, which loosens terminations over time, and it needs devices and connectors rated for it.

The repair is usually not a full rewire. Proper connectors at every termination, done thoroughly, solves most of it. Anybody quoting you a whole-house rewire on sight has not looked.

What to do before we arrive

Whole house dark? Check whether the neighbors still have lights. If the street is out, that is a ComEd call, not ours. If it is only your building, leave the main off if you already shut it and wait for us.

Keep track of patterns. Does it happen in the morning, in the rain, when the microwave runs? Patterns point us straight at the fault.