Electrical Upgrades

Electrical upgrades are needed for a variety of reasons and often necessary to maintain safety in your home. Contact Current Electrical Contractors for all your electrical upgrade needs.

When Do You Need an Electrical Upgrade?

• If you are putting an addition on an older house the additional space will need lighting, general use outlets and power for heat and air conditioning.
• If you have an older home you may have fuses and knob and tube wiring which a new owner might want to upgrade.
• Some older homes have a Service Entrance cable feeding the service on the outside of the house and those cables can become frayed and dangerous.

House Additions

In the case of the addition there is a load calculation that needs to be done based on the square footage of the home, all the fixed in place appliances and the larger of the heating or cooling loads. A common upgrade on a house is from 200 to 400 amps. Years ago, there were very few homes with 400 amp services. The norm on the north shore was 100 amps. As homes got more complex with more electrical loads and air conditioning 200 amps became the norm. These days most larger homes get a 400 amp or larger service.

Factors to Consider Before Planning

• Where will the new meter be installed?
• Where will the two panels be installed?
• Can you reuse the existing 200 amp panel if it is in good enough shape?
• Will the electrician near Wilmette install feeder wires underground or overhead?
• How can we keep power to the existing electrical service temporarily while we do the work on the new service?

Working With Electrical Providers to Install

Once those decisions are made there are a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Commonwealth Edison will not bring power to any upgrade situation without a permit and an inspection from the local inspecting authority. This process can take several weeks to a month and the permit will cost money.

Once the bureaucratic hurdles have been taken care of the hard work begins. If we are going to go from overhead to underground we will need to contact a Directional Boring contractor to install an underground conduit from Commonwealth Edison’s pole or transformer location to the house. Then our electrician near Wilmette will install the meter in the new location with two 200 amp breakers built into the meter cabinet. The best situation is a back to back installation where the two 40 circuit load centers (panels) are installed directly on the other side of the wall from the meter. A common thing to do is install two new load centers and run conduits to the old electrical panel and turn it into a junction box where all the old wires will be refed from new circuit breakers.

After the conduits are run the feeder wires need to be pulled to Commonwealth Edison’s source of power. Our electrician near Wilmette may need to use a power tugger to pull the wires through the conduit. Then we wire the panels from the meter and terminate all the wires. After this process we run the existing service with a temporary cable to the new service and energize it.

After the work is done the installation needs to be inspected. After the inspection Commonwealth Edison needs to be contacted and come out and do the final permanent terminations. This can take 2 to 3 weeks depending on their workload.