The Electric Guys cover Mt. Lebanon — Virginia Manor, Mission Hills, Beverly Heights, Sunset Hills, Hoodridge and the streets around uptown — through 15228 and 15243. Panels, rewiring, lighting and generators, with free estimates Monday through Saturday and a $99 service call on repairs.
What makes Mt. Lebanon homes different
Mt. Lebanon is not simply old housing; it is a particular kind of old housing. Most of it went up in the twenties and thirties, during the streetcar expansion that turned this into one of the first real commuter suburbs south of the city, and it was built to a standard well above the norm for the period. Brick and stone Tudors, centre-hall colonials, slate roofs, deep plaster, oak trim, and in Virginia Manor and Mission Hills some genuinely large houses.
That quality is exactly what complicates the electrical work. These are houses people restore rather than gut, which means the route a cable takes matters enormously. Nobody wants a new circuit that costs them a plaster cornice or a run of original trim. Planning the route through attic voids, closets and chases before anything is opened is most of the skill here, and it is the difference between a clean job and a plastering bill.
Ceiling height is the second Mt. Lebanon-specific issue, and it shows up constantly in lighting work. Rooms here are frequently nine feet and sometimes more. A ceiling fan on a stock downrod in a room like that sits too high to move any air, and a recessed lighting layout designed for an eight-foot ceiling produces pools of light and dark rather than an evenly lit room. Both need setting out for the actual room.
Then there is the gap between the house and its service. A large Virginia Manor house with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, central air and a finished third floor is frequently still running on 100 amps, because nobody has needed to change it and the original work was good enough to keep going. Add a car charger or a hot tub and the arithmetic stops working. The load calculation on these houses is rarely a formality.
Finally, the trees. Mt. Lebanon's mature street canopy is one of the things people move here for, and those same trees stand over overhead service drops on most of the older streets. Storm damage to masts and weatherheads is a recurring call, and the mast is the homeowner's responsibility rather than the utility's.
Permits and inspection run through the municipality rather than the city, which is a different process from a Pittsburgh job a mile away.
Services we offer in Mt. Lebanon
- Panel and service upgrades sized for large older houses
- Knob-and-tube assessment and staged rewiring
- Whole-home rewiring routed to protect original plaster and trim
- Aluminium branch wiring remediation in the post-war streets
- Service mast and weatherhead repair after storm damage
- $99 electrical diagnostics on intermittent faults
- Outlet, switch and grounding repair
- GFCI and AFCI protection
- Whole-house surge protection
- Recessed lighting set out for nine-foot-plus ceilings
- Ceiling fans with the correct downrod length
- Garage, basement and third-floor circuits
- EV charger installation, load calculation first
- Standby generators and transfer switches
- Hot tub and spa circuits
Local, reliable and nearby
Mt. Lebanon is a straightforward run from the city and one of the communities we work most, which matters because this is not the sort of housing you learn on. Knowing before you arrive that the attic is likely to be accessible, that the plaster is likely to be good, and that the service is likely to be smaller than the house suggests changes how a job gets quoted.
We would rather tell you a 100-amp service needs upgrading before you buy the charger than find out with you afterwards. And where a house genuinely only needs part of its wiring done, we will say so rather than quoting the whole thing because it is a big house on a good street.
Free estimates Monday through Saturday, 9am to 5pm. Call or text (412) 501-7391.