What electrical troubleshooting involves

Maintenance is the cheapest electrical work anyone buys. The work starts with finding out what is actually there. With electrical troubleshooting, that means looking at the existing wiring, the panel capacity and whatever the last person left behind.

We tell you what we find before we tell you what it costs. If the scope is smaller than you expected, it gets smaller. That happens more often than people assume.

Where this comes up

Inspections, preventive maintenance and emergency repairs around the clock. Most of these calls come from Des Plaines and the surrounding suburbs, but we take them anywhere in our service area.

A home sale is often when this surfaces. An inspector flags aluminum branch wiring, a fuse box or a panel with doubled-up breakers, and suddenly there is a deadline. We can tell you which items are urgent and which are only noted.

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.

Why this is worth doing properly

Homeowners who do their own electrical work are often careful and still miss things, because the code covers details nobody would guess: box fill, conductor sizing, which circuits need arc-fault or ground-fault protection. That knowledge is why the license exists. When a licensed electrician does the work and an inspector checks it, those details are covered.

The cost of doing it right the first time is almost always lower than the cost of doing it twice. We would rather tell you the job is bigger than you hoped than come back in two years.

Scheduling and how long it takes

Same-day for emergencies, any day of the week. For scheduled work, plan on a few days of lead time, longer only when a permit has to be issued or ComEd has to cut and restore power.

The quote comes with the honest version of the timeline: how long the work itself takes, plus how long we expect to wait on a permit or an inspection. Those are two separate numbers and we give you both.

Code, permits and inspection

An inspector is checking the things you cannot easily see later: box fill, conductor size, grounding and bonding, clearances at the panel, and whether each circuit has the protection it needs. Passing means a second trained set of eyes agrees the work is safe.

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.

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

Outdoor problem, like a damaged service mast or a line down near the house? Stay well back from it and keep others back too. Do not try to move anything. That one involves ComEd as well as us, and we will coordinate it.

If a breaker tripped, note which one, and leave it off if it trips again on reset. Tell us when you call.