The Electric Guys work across the City of Pittsburgh — Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Highland Park, Point Breeze, the South Side, Mount Washington, Brookline and Beechview, through 15201, 15203, 15206, 15211, 15213, 15216, 15217 and 15232. Panels, rewiring, repairs, lighting, generators and EV chargers, with a $99 service call on repairs and free estimates Monday through Saturday.
What makes Pittsburgh houses different
Age, mostly. Pittsburgh has one of the oldest housing stocks in the country, and a large share of what we work in went up in the decades either side of 1900 — before grounding, before GFCI protection, and before anyone imagined a household running a dishwasher, a microwave, an induction hob and a car charger.
That produces a specific and recognisable set of finds. Original knob-and-tube still live behind plaster, particularly in Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, the South Side, Highland Park, Brookline and Beechview. Ungrounded two-wire circuits with three-prong faces fitted over them. Sixty-amp fuse boxes in the occasional untouched house, and early 100-amp panels in most of the rest. Layer on top of that a century of kitchens, bathrooms, attic conversions and finished basements, each spliced into whatever circuit was nearest, and you have the reason faults here rarely sit where the symptom appears.
The construction itself shapes the work. Lath and plaster does not cut or patch like drywall, so the number that matters in a quote is how many openings the cable route requires rather than how much wire it takes. Balloon framing cuts both ways — those long uninterrupted stud bays make fishing new cable considerably easier and keep plaster damage down, while also being the reason old wiring inside them matters.
Then there is the topography. Steep lots mean detached garages halfway down a slope, retaining walls between the panel and where a car parks, and basements that are half below grade on one side and fully exposed on the other. A great many Pittsburgh basements have taken water at some point, which is exactly where the panel, the freezer, the laundry and the sump pump all live.
Permits go through the city's Permits, Licenses and Inspections department, which is a different route from the third-party inspection agencies most of the surrounding boroughs and townships use — worth knowing if you are comparing quotes from contractors working on both sides of the line.
One more local reality: in the dense row-house neighbourhoods, many homes have no driveway at all. That changes the EV charger conversation entirely, and it is better to have it before the car arrives.
Services we offer in Pittsburgh
- Panel and service upgrades, including recalled Federal Pacific and Zinsco replacements
- Knob-and-tube assessment and rewiring, room by room or whole-house
- Whole-home rewiring planned around plaster and balloon framing
- Aluminium branch wiring remediation
- Service mast, weatherhead and meter enclosure repair
- Electrical diagnostics on intermittent and hard-to-find faults, $99
- Outlet and switch repair, grounding and two-prong replacement
- GFCI and AFCI protection for kitchens, baths, basements and exteriors
- Whole-house surge protection at the panel
- Recessed and LED lighting through plaster ceilings
- Ceiling fans, braced and fan-rated
- Garage, basement and workshop circuits
- EV charger installation with the load calculation first
- Standby generators and transfer switches
- Hot tub, spa and pool circuits
Local, reliable and nearby
We are based in the city and most of our work is in it, which means short drives and no charge for them. It also means we have opened a great many panels in these neighbourhoods and know what tends to be behind them street by street — that a 1920s Beechview bungalow and a 1907 Lawrenceville rowhouse are entirely different problems, and that the same address on the same block can be untouched original or badly modified, depending entirely on who owned it in the eighties.
We will tell you which one you have. If your house genuinely needs a full rewire, you will hear that. If it needs a panel, three circuits and a plan for the rest over a couple of years, you will hear that instead.
Free estimates, Monday through Saturday, 9am to 5pm. Call or text (412) 501-7391 — a photo of the panel with the cover off answers most questions before we arrive.