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How we work · Chicago, IL
We price every Chicago job in metal conduit, so the number you sign is the number that passes inspection.
Electric Services Home is an electrician in Chicago, working inside the city limits on houses, two-flats, small apartment buildings and small commercial units. This page is the method, the code we build to, and the jobs we walk away from.
Who runs this site
A small electrical contractor working out of 60618.
This site belongs to Electric Services Home LLC, operated by Electricserviceshomellc and trading at electricserviceshomellc.co. We are an electrical contracting business. Not a lead-selling directory, not a referral network that passes your address to whoever bids lowest. The people who answer the phone are the people who open your panel.
The shop address is 3120 N St Louis Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60618, United States. That is where the van loads in the morning and where the conduit, wire and breakers are stocked. It is not a showroom. Nobody sells anything over a counter there, so call before you drive over.
We work inside the City of Chicago. Most of our days are spent on the north and northwest side, in basements under brick two-flats, in detached garages off the alley and in storefronts with a ceiling full of old BX. If your job is in the suburbs, ask anyway, but the rules out there are different and the quote will be too.
What we actually do
Six kinds of job. All of them in metal raceway.
Each line has its own section on the services page, with materials, what the quote covers and lead time.
- Panel and service upgrades. 100A to 200A service, a new panel with breakers listed for that panel, and the utility meter appointment, which we book. Panel work
- Rewiring in EMT conduit. Knob-and-tube and ungrounded two-wire circuits pulled out and replaced in steel raceway, floor by floor. Rewiring
- Level 2 EV charger circuits. A dedicated 240V circuit, usually on a 40A or 50A breaker, after a load calculation on the service you already have. EV circuits
- Lighting and devices. Recessed LED, fixtures, GFCI and AFCI protection, and dedicated 20A kitchen circuits run in 12 AWG. Lighting
- Troubleshooting and repair. Breakers that trip, circuits that died, outlets that run warm, lights that flicker when the fridge kicks on. Repair
- Small commercial build-outs. Storefronts and offices: lighting, receptacle layouts, equipment circuits, exit and emergency lighting tie-ins. Commercial
Chicago electrical code, conduit edition
What Chicago code wants, without the section numbers.
Most of the country wires houses in plastic-sheathed cable. Chicago does not, and that one difference explains half the bad quotes we see.
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Rule 01 · Raceway
The wire lives inside metal.
For nearly all building wiring the city wants a metal raceway around the conductors. On our jobs that means EMT, thin-wall steel tube, bent by hand on site, or armored cable where a run has to fish through a finished wall. The plastic-jacketed cable sold in every big-box store is the wrong product here for almost everything we do.
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Rule 02 · Grounding path
The pipe is part of the ground.
Properly made-up EMT with tight set-screw or compression fittings is a fault path back to the panel. A loose coupling behind drywall is not. We tighten every fitting and pull a green conductor as well on circuits that feed anything with a motor or a metal case.
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Rule 03 · Permits
Panel and new circuit work gets permitted and inspected.
A service upgrade, a rewire, a new 240V circuit for a charger. Those go through the city and someone from the city looks at them. We pull the permit as part of the job and we are there when the inspector is.
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Rule 04 · Wire size
A 20 amp breaker means 12 gauge copper, every foot.
Kitchen counters, bathrooms, laundry. Those are 20A circuits and they get 12 AWG all the way to the last device. One 14 AWG jumper in a box is enough to fail the whole circuit, and it is the kind of thing that hides until something melts.
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Rule 05 · Listed parts
Breakers belong to their panel.
A panel is tested with its own brand of breaker. A different brand that “fits the bus” may sit loose on the stab, arc and heat. Inspectors look at the label inside the door and then at the breakers. So do we.
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Rule 06 · Protection
New circuits need the right breaker type.
GFCI where there is water. AFCI on the living-space circuits that need it. The cost difference over a plain breaker is real and it goes on the itemised quote as its own line so you can see it.
This is a working summary for homeowners, not legal text. The city’s inspectors read the actual code, and on a job we build to what they read.
Electrical inspection failed in Chicago?
The failures we get called to fix, most common first.
Wrong-brand breakers in a new panel
Somebody swapped the panel and reused breakers from the old one, or bought whatever was on the shelf. The inspector reads the door label, sees a mismatch and stops there. We replace them with listed breakers and re-torque every lug.
Double-tapped neutrals
Two white wires under one terminal on the neutral bar. Most panels allow one. It looks tidy and fails anyway. We separate them, and if the bar has no room, that tells you the panel was the wrong size for the job.
Plastic cable where conduit was required
The classic out-of-town mistake. A basement finished with sheathed cable through the joists. The only real fix is to pull it and run it again in EMT, and that is why we quote in conduit from day one.
14 gauge on a 20 amp breaker
Usually a kitchen remodel where the counter circuits were extended with leftover wire. We trace each run, replace the undersized sections and put a label on the panel that matches what is actually behind the wall.
Tandem breakers in a panel not listed for them
Two circuits squeezed into one slot to avoid buying a bigger panel. Some panels allow tandems in specific positions. Many do not. The fix is often a sub-panel or the service upgrade that should have happened first.
Loose or missing EMT fittings
A coupling that never got its set-screw tightened breaks the ground path. Inspectors tug on runs. We go over every fitting on the failed section before we call for re-inspection.
Junction boxes buried behind drywall
Every splice has to stay reachable. When a box is closed in, we open the wall, fit a blank cover where it can be reached, and patch the opening ourselves.
A failed inspection two weeks before a closing is the call we get most. The fix is usually one day. Finding the person who did the first job is usually impossible.
If you have the inspector’s correction notice, photograph it and send it with your request. It tells us more in thirty seconds than a phone description does in ten minutes.
How the crew works on site
Scope on paper first. Then the main comes off.
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Before
A written scope you can hold us to
After the walk-through you get a written quote listing circuits, materials, the permit and the patching. If something on the day turns out different, say rotten lath where we expected sound plaster, we stop and show you before the number changes. No quiet extras on the final invoice.
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Power off
We tell you how long you are dark
A typical service upgrade is one working day with the power off, plus the utility’s meter appointment, which we book. Rewiring runs floor by floor so you keep a working kitchen while we do the bedrooms. Fridge and furnace get a temporary feed when the job allows it.
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Mess
Drop cloths down, dust contained, holes patched
We cut access holes as small as the bender and the fish tape allow. Then we patch them, tape them and skim them back to paint-ready. We do not paint. Color matching is a different trade and we would rather not pretend.
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Panel
Every circuit labeled for what it actually feeds
The directory inside the door gets written by hand from what we tested, not copied from the old one. “Kitchen counter left of sink” is useful at midnight. “Kit 2” is not.
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After
We stand next to the inspector
When the city inspects, one of us is there with the panel open. If there is a correction, we fix it and book the re-inspection. Workmanship warranty terms are written out on the terms page.
Who we are not right for
Four requests we say no to, and why.
Saying no loses us some work. It also keeps our name off jobs that fail in front of a city inspector.
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No
Plastic cable to save money
People ask, usually after a cheaper bid. Where Chicago code calls for conduit, we run conduit. The cheaper bid either fails inspection or never gets inspected, and neither is a problem we want our name on.
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No
One more circuit on a panel already full of tandems
If the panel is stuffed with tandem breakers it was never listed for, adding a charger circuit makes a bad panel worse. We will quote the sub-panel or the upgrade instead, and explain the load numbers so you can decide.
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No
Open walls left for the next trade
If we cut it, we close it. Leaving a homeowner to find a drywall person for six fist-sized holes is how small jobs turn into month-long ones.
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No
A firm price over the phone
A photo of the panel label gets you a range. A visit gets you a number. A firm quote for a rewire on a call, without seeing the basement, is a guess, and guesses grow.
Where we work
Inside the City of Chicago.
Avondale, Irving Park, Logan Square, Albany Park, Portage Park, Hermosa, North Center and the blocks around them get the shortest drive. We take jobs anywhere within city limits; the further from 60618, the more we try to group visits on the same day.
Reach a person
Call the crew, not a call center.
312-284-7542Shop
3120 N St Louis Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60618, United States
The phone rings on the van. During the working week someone answers between jobs; if we are in a basement with the main off and miss you, leave the job address and what is wrong, and we call back. Email and the inquiry form land in the same inbox and get read every working day.
Site visits are by appointment only, weekdays during working hours, with evenings arranged when a tenant or a closing makes that the only option. If a breaker is tripping repeatedly or anything smells hot, do not email. Turn that circuit off and call.
Privacy questions and data requests go to the same email address. How we handle what you send us is set out in the privacy notice.