What distribution equipment involves

Service work means coordinating with the utility, not just with the customer. The work starts with finding out what is actually there. With distribution equipment, 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

Services, switchgear, transformers and the distribution behind the meter. Most of these calls come from Des Plaines and the surrounding suburbs, but we take them anywhere in our service area.

Commercial spaces change hands and change uses. A storefront becomes an auto shop, an office becomes a gym, and the wiring stays what the first tenant needed. When the new equipment shows up, the old circuits are usually the first thing that has to change.

How we do it

Licensed and insured on every call. No job is too small to do properly, and no shortcut is worth an inspector’s red tag. We would rather do it once.

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.

The inspection is the point

An inspection is an independent check that what went behind the drywall matches what was supposed to. Work that passes has been verified by somebody with no stake in the invoice.

That is also why we would rather you hire a licensed contractor than the cheapest number you can find. Unpermitted electrical work is a problem you inherit, and it usually surfaces at the worst moment.

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.

When to stop and call

Call right away if lights flicker across the whole house at once, if some lights glow brighter while others dim, or if you get a shock from anything plugged in. Those point to trouble on the service or the neutral, and they need an electrician now.

If you get even a mild shock from a faucet, an appliance or a light switch, stop using it and call. A tingle means current is going somewhere it should not, and the ground path that was supposed to carry it is not doing its job.

Service size is a ceiling on everything

The service is the limit every other circuit lives under. A 100-amp service was generous when houses had one air conditioner and a gas range. Add electric cooking, a heat pump, a car charger and a finished basement and it stops being enough.

Upgrading means coordinating with ComEd, replacing the meter socket and mast, and sizing the new panel for what the building will need in ten years rather than exactly what it needs today.