Electrical panel upgrades in Los Angeles
An electrical panel upgrade, or replacing an old fuse box or breaker panel, is more than a new box on the wall. Most of the work, and usually most of the price, is in the service entrance and the circuits that have to come up to what is required now.
Coming out to look is free. Your price the same day you ask.
What decides this job
- How far the new panel is from where the power comes in
- Whether the service entrance and the meter socket get reused
- How many circuits have to come up to what is required now
- Which utility and which permit desk your address is on. Look up your address
What a panel upgrade involves
The load center on the wall is the visible part and it is rarely the expensive part. A service upgrade takes in the service entrance conductors, the meter socket, the main disconnect, the grounding electrode system and the bonding, and then every circuit that has to be brought up to what is required now before it can go back on the bus.
That is why two quotes for the same house can be far apart. One of them is pricing a box. The other is pricing the job the box is part of.
Which half of the job is ours
The meter is a real line on the side of your house, and every cost on this job falls on one side of it or the other. Above it, the service drop, the transformer and anything in the street belong to the utility, which in most of this county means LADWP or Southern California Edison. What it costs is worked out by their service planning engineer, and it is not money we keep. Below it, the price is ours and it is written down before anything starts.
We tell you which side each part of your job falls on before you are asked to decide anything. Find your utility and your permit desk.
What a finished panel looks like
Conductors dressed in parallel runs with square bends, breakers seated in an even row, and a directory card that gets filled in before the cover goes back on. A panel somebody can read is a panel the next person can work on safely, and it is what a final inspection is looking at.
If your insurance company named your panel
Letters like this usually name a Federal Pacific, Zinsco, Challenger or Pushmatic panel and give you 30 to 90 days. They usually ask for a licensed contractor, a permit that gets closed, and a final inspection sign-off. A paid invoice is not what they are asking for.
Tell us what the letter says. We will tell you which of the four you have and what the letter is asking for, and if a photograph of the label inside the panel door would help, we will ask for one when we get back to you.
Do you really need 200 amps?
Sometimes not. A load calculation answers it, and where the answer is that a smaller service is enough, we say so. We will tell you that on the phone.
Adding a charger or central air is often what raises the question. Our Encino page walks through it for the 1950s and 60s houses there.
Say what is happening and we will tell you what it involves.
One sentence about what is happening will do. Sending it costs nothing and does not book a visit.