Electrical Services in Dallas, TX

On a Dallas block, the house that worries us is usually not the oldest one. An owner in a house from the early part of the last century already knows the wiring came from another era and treats it that way. The house that gets overlooked is the one from the middle of the century: three-prong outlets on the wall, breakers instead of fuses, a panel cover that looks like every other panel cover. It reads as modern from the hallway, and two of the more serious things we find in Dallas live behind exactly that kind of cover.

The first is aluminum branch wiring. Houses wired from the mid-1960s into the 1970s often ran it, and it expands, loosens, and overheats at outlets and switches unless it is pigtailed to copper with the correct connectors. There is nothing to see from the room, since the outlet looks like any other outlet. When we find aluminum on a job in Oak Cliff, East Dallas, or Lakewood, the correction happens at every device in the house rather than at the panel, which is a different sort of job than most owners are picturing when they call.

The second is the panel itself. A large number of Dallas homes built from the 1950s through about 1980 were fitted with Federal Pacific Stab-Lok or Zinsco panels, two brands with a well-documented history of breakers that do not trip when they should. The whole job of a breaker is to trip, so one that will not leaves the circuit with nothing protecting it. We can tell you which panel you have as soon as the cover is off, and replacing one of those is some of the most worthwhile electrical work an older Dallas home can have done.

We work across Dallas, from Oak Cliff and the Bishop Arts District to Lakewood, the Swiss Avenue Historic District, Deep Ellum, Preston Hollow, Uptown, and Lake Highlands. Because we come in from the northwest side of the metroplex, we also cover the neighbors along the way, including Irving, Coppell, Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Addison, and University Park.