Category: Residential

WHAT IS A TWO PRONG OUTLET? These outlets are all over the Seattle area.   Older homes built before about 1960 had outlets with only two openings for a hot wire (black) and a neutral wire (white).  These type of outlets have no ground wire (bare copper or green).  Over time...

Great lighting really ads a "little extra" to a home and certainly a kitchen area.  Kitchens are a great place to invest in items that really can provide a good return when you sell.  In the Seattle area having a well-lit bright home is wonderful for those times of the...

My kids rented the movie "lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events".  Although the movie was a little different my kids loved it and Jim Carrie was his usuall funny self in a sort of eerie way. Well this week, we found some breakers that nearly caused  a fire in...

Coming home after work to find that your power is out is absolutely no fun.  For a lot of the calls we get for outages in homes they are just for small parts of the home.  Our top 5 areas that loose power are: The bathroom The garage The bedrooms...

The splice above is from the overhead service drop.  While we were doing other work we noticed the wires dangerously overheating and called PSE to make an emergency repair. This customer had a significant amount of work done. We upgraded his main electrical panel to 200 amps, and installed circuits...

How Much Does it Cost to Hire an Electrician? Are you frustrated because you need an outlet where there is none or have an outlet where you don't need it? Want to install a dimmer? With technology booming and becoming a more prominent fixture in our lives, adding or updating...

This Tacoma homeowner contacted us after having repeated breaker failures over the last three years. Sometimes lights would flicker and at one point the oven stopped working entirely. The electrical problems became very clear as soon as we opened the 200 amp Electrical panel. We found pooling water on the...

This panel in Des Moines still worked, but a panel upgrade would go a long ways and provide cleaner and safer Power. Now it is true that this electrical panel is "grandfathered in".  Basically meaning that at the time is was installed it did in fact meet the electrical code...

100 feet of trenching later we installed our wire in our fresh trench. We scheduled the city of Des Moines electrical inspector the same day and were given approval for cover. The required burial depth for this type of residential install is 24". We also had to splice onto existing...

The thieving marijuana growers decided that a good way to increase their profits was to get "free" power. They literally cut open the rigid metal conduit riser with the un-metered and un-fused conductors. Very gutsy, with no overcurrent protection device this could have been fatal. It was a very clean...