Very few houses in this region are being fed by the service they actually need. Pittsburgh's housing stock is old enough that 60-amp fuse boxes are still live behind basement stairs, and 100-amp panels installed for a 1960s household are now running a heat pump, an induction hob, a basement office and, increasingly, a car. The Electric Guys replace and upgrade panels and services across the city and out to about thirty-three miles, with free estimates Monday through Saturday.
A panel upgrade is not the same thing as a service upgrade, and the difference decides the price. Replacing the panel means new breakers, new busbar, new enclosure — the same amount of power arriving, distributed properly. Upgrading the service means the wire, meter and mast feeding the house are changed too, the utility disconnects and reconnects, and the house genuinely has more capacity than it did. Plenty of people are quoted the second when they only need the first, and occasionally the reverse.
Why choose The Electric Guys
- We tell you which of the two you need. A load calculation takes us an hour and it is the difference between a straightforward panel swap and a full service upgrade. You get the number before you get the price.
- Recalled panels get named. Federal Pacific Stab-Lok and Zinsco panels turn up constantly in anything built here between the fifties and the early eighties. Both have a documented history of breakers that fail to trip, and insurers ask about them. If you have one, we will say so plainly.
- Saturday scheduling. This job takes the power off for a large part of the day. Being able to do it on a Saturday is often the difference between planning around it and losing a day's work.
- Permit and inspection handled. Panel and service work is inspected in every municipality we cover, and coordinating the utility disconnect and reconnect is part of the job rather than something you chase.
Our panel upgrade process
- Look at what is there. Panel make and model, service size, the condition of the mast and meter, the grounding and bonding, and what is actually on each circuit.
- Run the load calculation. What the house draws now and what you intend to add — a charger, a hot tub, a finished basement, air conditioning.
- Quote it properly. Panel only, or panel and service, with the permit, inspection and utility coordination priced in rather than appearing later.
- Schedule the outage. Usually a full day, and usually a Saturday if that suits you better.
- Do the work and pass the inspection. New panel, correctly labelled circuits, grounding and bonding brought up to current requirements, and the inspection signed off before we are finished.
What makes panel work different around here
Three things, and they come up on nearly every job.
The first is where panels live in Pittsburgh houses. Basements here take water — the hillside lots, the high water table down in the river flats, the century-old foundations — and a great many panels are mounted low on a wall that has been damp at some point. Rust on the enclosure and corrosion on the neutral bar is a finding, not a cosmetic issue, and it changes the recommendation.
The second is the mast. A lot of the older neighbourhoods are fed overhead, down tree-lined streets, and the mast, weatherhead and meter enclosure belong to the homeowner rather than the utility. If the mast is already leaning or the weatherhead is corroded, replacing the panel while leaving that alone is doing half a job — and the utility may not reconnect to it anyway.
The third is what is behind the panel. A new panel on top of original knob-and-tube or mid-sixties aluminium branch wiring is a safer panel feeding the same old circuits. That is sometimes exactly the right first step, spreading a large job over a couple of years. It is not, however, a rewire, and it should not be sold as one.
Serving Pittsburgh, PA and nearby
We work across the city — Squirrel Hill, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Brookline, Mount Washington and the rest — and out through Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Monroeville, Penn Hills, Murrysville, Robinson, Moon Township, McCandless and Cranberry. The housing changes enormously across that radius, and so does the job: a 1925 foursquare in Beechview and a 1998 colonial in Cranberry need very different conversations about the same panel.
A service call on a repair is $99. Estimates on a panel or service upgrade are free. Call or text (412) 501-7391 — a photo of the panel with the cover off tells us most of what we need to know before we arrive.