New Construction

Jim Eberle the president and owner of Current Electrical Contractors, Inc. has been doing new construction since 1976. He started as an apprentice doing new homes in Longmont Colorado and then gravitated to commercial and industrial projects.

Our Experience

Sometime around 1991 our electricians near Winnetka did our first condo remodel at 1040 N. Lake Shore Drive. This connected Current Electrical Contractors with a whole new network of architects, general contractors and designers. Ever since then we have specialized in high-end custom homes and condominiums on the north shore and the north side of the Chicago area.

Almost every aspect of the high-end custom homes that we work on has been designed by architects or designers. There is a drawing (elevation) that shows the placement of each switch or outlet on each wall in every room. There must be a careful layout of every element to achieve the look the architects and designers are looking for. On today’s job site, the snap line has been replaced with electronic lasers to achieve pinpoint placement. All of this takes much more time than wiring a speculative home that a developer wants to build as quickly as possible and sell as quickly as possible.

New Construction Projects Today

Today’s homes can have many complicated systems that need to interact with each other such as:

• Heating and ventilation systems that can be monitored and settings can be changed from a smartphone or computer.
• Audiovisual systems that usually have a central AV rack located in the basement or a closet from which the signals for TV, sound, data and computer networking emanate. These also can be controlled from keypads or touch screens installed throughout the house, smartphone or computer.
• Lighting control systems that have keypads throughout the house for control. The wires are run from the electrical panel to a lighting control panel. At the lighting control panel, the dimming modules receive a signal from the keypads that tell the dimming module what lights to turn on or off and at what intensity.
• Backup generator systems that control some or all of the home if there is a power outage. These come with coordination with the homeowner’s smartphone. Generators run themselves once a week to ensure that all systems and the battery are running well. If the generator misses its weekly exercise the homeowner and the electrical contractor can be notified via email or text message that the generator did not run and needs attention.

All of the above systems can be integrated to work with each other and for control from mobile devices.

Aspects Of Each Project

Our electrician’s near Winnetka pride ourselves on working with some of the finest architects, designers and general contractors in the Chicagoland area. There are many different aspects of each project.

• Temporary power set up and lighting.
• Layout after framing and after the HVAC and Plumbing contractors have begun their installation. The layout is traditionally approved by the architect and owner before the rough work is begun.
• Rough-in which consists of running the correct size conduits from all of the panels to all of the devices in the home and pulling wire to those locations and splicing and landing all of the wires that will control the electrical system and low voltage systems.
• Trimming the home which consists of installing all the light fixtures, LED strip lighting (very popular today) and all the electrical devices.

Each aspect of the above listed 4 phases of the project needs to be coordinated with the general contractor and the other trades. This is no easy feat and we are proud to be considered a “go-to” subcontractor for architects and general contractors in the area.