What transformers involves

A service that was right in 1968 is undersized now. The work starts with finding out what is actually there. With transformers, that means looking at the existing wiring, the panel capacity and whatever the last person left behind.

The first step is finding out what is actually wrong. Sometimes it is one loose connection at a device, and the fix is an hour. We will tell you that plainly instead of selling a bigger job.

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.

Insulation is the quiet problem. Cloth-wrapped conductors from decades ago go brittle inside the box, and they crack the moment somebody moves them to swap a switch. A small job becomes a careful one, so we check before we promise a time.

How we do it

Quik Wire Electric has 3 years in business and 10 years of electrical experience behind it. The work goes in to code, gets tested and comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

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

We clean up the work area and leave the place the way we found it, minus the problem. Where a permit was pulled, the inspection closes the job and you get the paperwork for your records.

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

Leave the panel cover on. Flipping a breaker is fine. Taking the dead front off to look inside is not, because the service conductors at the top stay live even with the main off. We will open it when we get there.

Do not try to open the panel or take a device apart. Just tell us what you noticed and when, and we will take it from there.

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.