Brian's Electrical Blog

Do I Need Surge Protection? How Much Does Surge Protection Cost?

Fortunately, there are ways to be prepared for the loss of electricity. The best thing you can do is have a backup generator to supply electricity for your home. When it comes to backup generators, there are two basic styles, the permanent standby generator and the portable generator. We can have your home ready to plug your portable generator (which you can pick up at any home improvement store) for as little as $1,300.

To replace an existing service with a new 200 amp service can cost anywhere from $3,200 to $4,000. To replace an existing panel with a new panel and circuit breakers can run from $1,900 to $2,600. Why the range? There can be many variables such as logistics of doing the work, length of wire runs, type and number of circuit breakers required, etc.

Winter is a wonderful time of year but it also comes with storms that can disrupt your electricity supply. Are you prepared?

“My light bulb keeps burning out after a few days! Can you replace my light?” This is a common service call that we often receive. And the answer is, “We could but…...” Yes, we would be happy to replace your light fixture if you are having problems and you would like to update the light fixture. But if you just want the problem to be solved and still like the fixture you already have, there is a simple solution. It is a quick fix. We can do it for you or, if you are comfortable with working with electricity, you can do it yourself. In order to explain what your problem is, we will first talk about how the light socket works. If you look inside of where you screw the bulb into, you will see an outer aluminum socket that is threaded to match the threads on the bulb. A little deeper and in the center, you will see a copper tab. These two components are the electrical components of the socket and are isolated from each other electrically. When the bulb is inserted, it makes contact with both the outer socket and the tab, completing the circuit and allowing current to flow through the bulb. The problem with light bulbs frequently burning out is that the copper tab has been over compressed. This tab should have some spring to it. It should stick slightly out toward the opening of the socket. These tabs often get pushed back too far by the overtightening of bulbs. When this happens, the tab no longer makes sufficient contact with the bulb. This ends up causing arcing and bulb failure.

This is a question that too many people don’t ask. Too many people just assume that their house needs to have a 200 amp panel. And too many electricians are happy to sell them one, whether they need it or not. So how can you know if you need to upgrade your electrical panel and service? The only way to really know is to have an electrician perform a load calculation on your house. These load calculations take into consideration the size of the house, number of appliances, VA ratings of appliances, type and size of heating and air conditioning systems, etc. The method of calculation is set by the National Electrical Code and any good electrical contractor will be able to do this for you. But before you go and pay for a load calculation, ask yourself, “Why do I think I might need to do this in the first place?” If the sole reason is that you heard that it is better to have a 200 amp panel than a 100 amp panel and you haven’t had any actual problems then you probably don’t need to upgrade. The only reason a 100 amp electrical service is too small is if you are using more current at one time than your service allows. If you are not having any electrical issues, such as the main breaker tripping, lights dimming or overheating conductors, then this is probably not the case. However, if you are having any of those issues you should have an electrician check things out. You might need to upgrade or you might have other electrical issues. If the reason you are thinking about upgrading your panel is because you are adding significant load to your home, then you have a good reason to consider an upgrade. What would be considered significant additional load? It could be an addition to the house, added air conditioning, installation of a new swimming pool, some new shop tools in the garage, the addition of electric heat (baseboard heating, heated floors), installation of a hot tub or sauna, etc. If you are making any of these change to your home, you might want to consider at least having a load calculation performed. Another common reason is that you are putting your house on the market. Although many houses already have an electrical service and panel that is more than adequate, having a newly upgraded 200 amp electrical service is a selling point! This is something that many prospective buyers look for and even expect. This is something you might want to discuss with your realtor first. It would also be a good idea to get a home inspection to find out what other electrical issues also need to be addressed before putting your home on the market. A service upgrade can be a very worthwhile investment. Just make sure that it is the right investment for you.

How to hire an electrician? How much does an electrician cost? You probably have many questions and have done many Google searches trying to find out what to do when you need to have some electrical work done. It can be overwhelming. It doesn’t help that every person you ask, every website you visit, gives a different answer. Or the answers online are based on a national average which usually doesn’t accurately reflect prices in your area. I can’t answer these questions on behalf of every electrician out there. What I can do is explain the process here at Mid Penn Electrical Services. Here is our process: 1. Give us a call. 2. Talk to an electrician about your project. 3. Receive pricing over the phone. Or receive a budgetary estimate and schedule an on-site consultation, if necessary. 4. Sign a Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act contract, submit the down payment and schedule the work.

I want to start out by saying that there are amazing handymen out there. There are men and women who don’t specialize in any one area of home repair but can do just about everything and do it very well. Those individuals have my respect and admiration. The problem is that there are many handymen out there that are tackling electrical, plumbing, and HVAC jobs that are not doing the jobs properly. The outlet they install provides power where you wanted it to. The toilet flushes like it’s supposed to. Everything seems to work when they are done. But that is the problem - everything seems fine. A year later, an improperly installed seal on your toilet floods your bathroom. The outlet that was working so well begins arcing and starts a fire. What seemed fine was actually a disaster waiting to happen. We ran into a situation recently where a handyman was doing electrical work. The homeowner was a close friend of mine. He had a handyman doing some painting and other small repairs around his house and since this handyman was already there and my friend wanted to replace his kitchen light, he went to the local home center, bought a light, and gave it to his handyman to install. The new light never worked. And that’s a good thing because if it had worked, my friend would not have known how dangerous it was until it was too late. When one of our electricians, Jason, went over to the house he found that the new light had been wired in such a way that the entire light fixture was energized! My friend was very lucky that it had not been wired in a way that would have allowed the entire fixture to be energized and the lamp to light up. If that would have happened, nobody would have known there was a problem until they touched the light fixture, maybe to change the bulb or to clean it, and had 120 volts of electricity traveling through their body! Fortunately, Jason was able to quickly repair the wiring so that the fixture worked properly and safely. So why do people hire a handyman to do work that should only be done by an experienced electrician? I get it. That’s why I mentioned toilet repair in the beginning of this blog. I would rather be a handyman at my own house and fix my own toilet than go through the hassle of finding a plumber and paying a plumber’s rates, although I usually regret that decision. After all, I am a very handy person. But in my own house, I am accepting the responsibility for any future disasters. But as the owner of Mid Penn Electrical Services , I would never do plumbing in your house. I would never allow anyone in my company to do plumbing for any of our customers. Why? Because, although electricians are naturally handy, we are only experts in one field. I believe that there are two main motivations for people using a handyman instead of an electrician: convenience and price. I also believe that using a handyman for these reasons actually produces the opposite of the desired outcome. Let me explain. The first reason is convenience. If you already have a handyman that you know and use for other things, why not use him for something small like changing your kitchen light fixture? After all, you don’t have to go through the hassle of calling around to different electricians, trying to get pricing, taking time out of your day to meet them to get an estimate, and then scheduling time for the work to be done. But most of the time, it is much easier than you think. For example, when you call Mid Penn Electrical Services , you will be transferred to me and I will ask you a few questions about what you would like to have done. If I am not available, I typically call back within twenty minutes. For most jobs, I can give you a price right over the phone – no appointment for estimating needed! And if you want to go ahead with the work, we will do our best to find a day that is suitable for your schedule as well as ours. So, calling a qualified electrician is actually much simpler. Whether you call us or a handyman, it still takes the same amount of time to set everything up. Plus, like in the case with my friend’s light, he had to take the time to communicate what he wanted done with his handyman, make sure his handyman had access to the house, question his handyman about why the light wasn’t working, try to get a refund for the handyman’s work, and still call an electrician in the end. The second reason is price. I will admit, a handyman’s hourly rates are going to be lower than those of a qualified electrician. There are many reasons for this including increased overhead for specialized equipment, higher insurance premiums (for the protection of the homeowner), licensing, continuing education, employee benefits (we want to hire and retain quality electricians that will best serve you), etc. But hourly rate is not the only consideration when it comes to cost of a project. You also need to consider the amount of time it will take to do the job. I’ll give you an example. Yesterday I got a call from a general contractor that uses us for a lot of their jobs. For some reason, instead of calling us, they had their foreman, an experienced builder and very handy guy, install a LED light fixture. Something went wrong and he ended up ruining the light fixture, which is why he called me for advice. Now maybe it was cheaper per hour to pay him than one of my electricians. Even if his labor per hour costs half of our rate for an hour, we would have had this done in an hour and it would have been done right. Instead, this foreman probably had to read the instructions, install the fixture (at a much slower pace than an electrician), test the fixture, scratch his head when it didn’t work, call around for advice, go out to the store to buy a new fixture, come back and install the new fixture (probably more slowly than the first time to avoid messing up again). Fortunately for the homeowner, this was done by the general contractor so they probably absorbed the cost of this mistake because they are a very good and honest contractor. But what if this had happened to you because you used a handyman? If his hourly rate is half of ours but it ends up taking four hours instead of one, you’ve ended up paying double what you would have for an electrician. And don’t forget the cost of the second light fixture. You can bet the handyman won’t be covering that cost. So for your next electrical project, big or small, save your time and money by giving us a call at (717) 269-6183 . You can also check out our monthly specials at www.midpennelectrical.com/specials .