Electrical Panel Upgrade and Replacement

Find every GFCI in the house and check whether one has tripped, then check the breaker properly. GFCI outlets protect other outlets downstream of them, and those can be in completely different rooms, so a dead dining room outlet is regularly caused by a tripped GFCI in a garage or bathroom. A tripped breaker often does not look obviously off; push it fully off first, then back on. If the GFCI will not reset or the breaker trips straight back, stop and call, because both are telling you something.

Yes, and it should be treated as urgent. Electrical devices should be at room temperature. Warmth means resistance, resistance means heat, and heat at a connection is how fires start. The same goes for a burning smell, brown or black discolouration around a socket, or sparking beyond the tiny momentary arc normal with a heavy load. Switch that circuit off at the panel and tell us when you call, because it gets escalated to a person rather than into a booking queue.

Almost always one failed connection upstream, and usually a back-stab. Most receptacles allow the conductor to be pushed into a hole in the back rather than wrapped around the screw terminal; it is faster to install, it is a worse connection, and after twenty years of thermal cycling it loosens. Outlets are daisy-chained, so a failure at one box kills everything downstream. Telling us which outlets are affected turns an hour of hunting into ten minutes.

Often not, and it is very common in older Triangle houses where someone replaced a two-prong receptacle with a three-prong one without a ground being present. It looks safe and it is not: anything relying on that ground has none. The correct fixes are running a ground where a route exists, or fitting GFCI protection and labelling it as code requires. Swapping in another three-prong outlet is not one of them.

Yes, and it should be replaced. Both brands were installed widely across the Triangle from the 1950s through the 1980s, and both have documented failure modes where a breaker fails to trip under fault conditions, which means the protection you are relying on may not operate. There are no reliable replacement breakers for either, so replacing the panel is the only fix. Insurers increasingly ask about them.

Six to eight hours, on one day. The work has to be scheduled around a utility disconnect, which we book with the power company rather than choose, and the county has to inspect before the utility will reconnect. We sequence both so the panel is signed off and the power comes back the same day. Expect two to four weeks from accepting the quote to the work happening, driven by the permit and the disconnect appointment.

No, and it is one of the most dangerous things a homeowner can do. The breaker is sized to protect the cable behind it, not the appliance in front of it. Fit a 30 amp breaker on cable rated for 20 and you have not solved anything, you have removed the protection and left the cable free to overheat inside a wall where nobody will see it. A breaker that trips is doing its job and reporting a fault: an overloaded circuit, a failing appliance, a short, or a genuinely undersized circuit that needs a new one run. Which of those it is takes twenty minutes to establish. A total loss of power is a different question and is answered in our emergency set.

That is the first thing we work out, and the answer changes the whole job. A Level 2 charger is one of the largest continuous loads in a house, so it is not about whether there is a spare slot but whether the service has headroom once your existing loads are counted. With plenty of headroom it is a straightforward circuit. Tight but workable means a load management device, which throttles the charger when the house is busy and is far cheaper than an upgrade. No headroom means a panel upgrade first.

For most Triangle households, no. If you drive a normal commute and charge overnight, a 32 amp charger replaces your entire daily range several times over while you sleep, and a 48 amp unit needs heavier cable, a larger breaker and more panel headroom at every step. The faster unit earns its cost for high-mileage drivers and two-EV households. There is also a hard limit: your car's onboard charger caps what it can accept, so a bigger circuit on a car that cannot use it buys nothing.

No, never. That backfeeds power out onto the utility lines, where it can electrocute the line worker restoring your street, and it is what a transfer switch exists to prevent. Portable generators also produce carbon monoxide in quantities that kill, so they must run outdoors only, well away from the house, never in a garage even with the door open, and never near a window or air intake.

Usually not, and choosing essential circuits instead is frequently half the cost. An essential-circuits system feeds a subpanel carrying what you actually need in an outage, which in the Triangle is typically the fridge, the freezer, some lighting, internet, a well or sump pump, and one HVAC system. The difference in lived experience during a two-day outage is small. Air conditioning is the decision point, because a heat pump is a large starting load that often pushes you into the next generator size.

Almost never a faulty fitting. It is a dimmer designed for incandescent bulbs driving an LED load: old dimmers expect a resistive load of a few hundred watts, and a room of LEDs might draw thirty, so the dimmer cannot regulate that low and you get flicker at the bottom of the range. The fix is an LED-compatible dimmer matched to the specific fittings, which manufacturers publish compatibility lists for.

Only on a fan-rated brace, and a standard ceiling box is not one. A fan weighs a good deal and, unlike a light, it moves. A standard box is rated to hold a static fixture, and a fan hung from one works the box loose over months of vibration until the whole fan comes down. A fan already hanging from an unrated box is the most common unsafe thing we find in this category, usually where a previous owner swapped a light for a fan themselves.

Most visits carry a two hour arrival window, and roofing and construction visits carry three. We quote a window rather than an exact time because a trades crew genuinely cannot promise a minute, and we would rather be accurate than optimistic. We text you when the crew is on the way.

Yes. The diagnostic fee covers the technician's time and a written fault report, and it is waived when you approve the repair. Installation and replacement quotes carry no diagnostic fee at all, because nothing is being diagnosed on an estimate visit.

Not quite. A request is not a held slot. We confirm within 30 minutes during dispatch hours, and first thing the next dispatch day if you request outside them. The availability shown on the site reflects how full a day usually is rather than a live view of the dispatch board.

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, ACH bank transfer, and financing on qualifying projects. Payment is due on completion for service work, and on a staged schedule set out in the quote for larger projects. There are two payment methods we cannot take, which are covered in our billing questions.

Give us 24 hours notice and there is no charge. One call or one text is enough to reschedule, and we would much rather move you than charge you. Cancelling inside that window, or nobody being home when the crew arrives, carries a no-show fee.

There is a no-show fee, and it is the same figure as the late cancellation fee. It covers the slot another customer could have used and the crew's drive. If you are running late rather than absent, call us and we will usually wait or come back later the same day at no charge.

A technician arrives inside the arrival window, diagnoses the fault, tells you the repair price before touching anything, and completes the work if you approve it. You get a written report either way. Nothing is added to the invoice without your approval first, and we do not carry out extra work while you are out of the room.

The office is open Monday to Friday from 07:30, and Saturday mornings. Crews dispatch on a wider window, from 07:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and 08:00 to 16:00 on Saturday. There is no scheduled dispatch on Sunday. Emergency coverage runs 24 hours a day, every day, including holidays.

We cover Raleigh, Durham, Cary and the wider Triangle, with coverage recorded city by city because it is not uniform. Most cities have every trade and no travel fee, two have a limited set of trades and a travel fee, one is emergency coverage only, and some adjacent zip codes are outside the service radius entirely. Enter your zip code on our service areas page for a definitive answer.

No. We are residential only, including multifamily buildings up to four units. A four-unit building is the ceiling and it is a real one rather than a preference: our crews, our insurance and our licences are all sized for residential work. For anything larger, or for any commercial or industrial property, you need a commercial general contractor.

No to all three, and we will point you at the right trade for each. Pool and spa equipment sits under a separate licence, so you need a pool service company. Septic systems need a licensed septic contractor, and Wake County keeps a list of permitted installers. Solar needs a solar installer, though we will happily reroof around an existing array. We publish the full list of work we do not take on rather than making you ask.

Yes, Monday through Friday. We do not staff Spanish-speaking crews at weekends. If you need one, ask when you book and we will schedule you on a weekday rather than send someone who cannot explain the work to you.

Yes. We hold five North Carolina licences covering HVAC, general contracting, roofing, plumbing and electrical, and every licence number is published on our site rather than available on request. We carry general liability cover and workers compensation cover, and we are bonded. Certificates go to your adjuster or your HOA the same day you ask.

Twelve months on labour and parts is the standard, and several services carry considerably longer. Roof replacements carry ten years on workmanship, repiping ten years, structural repair five years, and cabinetry five years. Manufacturer warranties on equipment run separately and are often longer still, and we register them in your name before we leave.

We come back and put it right at no charge. There is no time limit on a workmanship complaint about a repair we performed. Call the office rather than the crew directly, so it gets logged and scheduled rather than depending on one person remembering.

Secure them away from the work area before we arrive. This is genuinely for their safety rather than ours: crews prop doors open, carry sharp and heavy things through the house, and use tools that frighten animals. Tell us when you book if you have a dog that needs handling carefully, and we will note it on the job.

For most visits, no, provided we can get in and reach the work. Inspections, maintenance visits and outdoor work frequently happen with nobody home. You do need to be there for anything where we will be quoting work, making decisions with you, or entering occupied rooms. We will tell you which yours is when you book.

A clear path to the work area, clear parking for a van near the house, and unlocked side gates where the job is round the back. Roofing and outdoor work need the driveway, sometimes for a skip. If parking is difficult where you are, tell us when you book, because a crew circling for twenty minutes is time on your job.

Two separate operations with separate rules. Scheduled work runs inside published dispatch hours, is booked into an arrival window, and carries the ordinary diagnostic fee. Emergency work runs around the clock on a fixed shortlist of eight services, targets a 90 minute response, and carries a call-out fee on top. Ringing the emergency line about something outside that shortlist does not upgrade it; you get booked into the next ordinary window instead. Our emergency questions list exactly which eight services qualify and set out what to do while you wait.

Thirty days from the date on it. Beyond that we will re-price rather than honour a figure that no longer covers the materials, and material prices on roofing and lumber in particular move enough that a quarter-old quote is not meaningful. Re-pricing an expired quote is quick, because the survey work is already done.

It depends on how much work you expect to need. The plans bundle seasonal visits with priority dispatch and a standing discount on repairs, billed monthly, and the discount alone pays for the cheapest tier if you have one significant repair a year. If you rarely call anyone out, paying per visit is the better arithmetic and we will say so.

No. Cedarline Home Services is a fictional company used for demos. Every price, policy, licence number and phone number on this site is invented for that purpose, and none of it should be relied on as a real quotation or a real business record.

Leave the building first. Call the gas utility from outside. Then call us. Do not operate light switches, do not touch any appliance or control, and do not go looking for the source. The gas utility makes the property safe; we deal with the equipment afterwards. Our phone agents escalate any report of a gas smell to a person immediately and will not attempt a diagnosis while you are still in the house.

Eight services qualify, and they are the ones where waiting until morning does real damage. In HVAC: AC repair, furnace repair and heat pump service. In roofing: roof repair where a leak is active. In plumbing: leak detection and repair, sump pump service and gas line service. In electrical: a panel upgrade where power has been lost entirely. Nothing else on our catalogue is emergency-eligible at any hour.

No. Neither is emergency work and we will not dispatch a crew overnight for either. Emergency cover exists for eight specific services: AC repair, furnace repair, heat pump service, roof repair with an active leak, leak detection and repair, sump pump service, gas line service, and a panel upgrade with total loss of power. Cabinetry, fencing, decking, remodeling, lawn and patio work, and all cosmetic work are never emergency work, whatever time you call. We will book you into the next ordinary dispatch window instead, and we would rather say that plainly than charge you an emergency rate for a job that can wait.

When we dispatch outside dispatch hours there is a call-out fee on top of the repair itself, and our target is to be with you within 90 minutes. That call-out fee is separate from the after-hours surcharge that applies to work carried out between 19:00 and 07:00 or on a Sunday. Both figures are published on our hours and pricing pages rather than left for the invoice, and both can apply to the same visit.

Yes, for emergencies. Emergency coverage runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including every holiday on which the office and ordinary dispatch are closed. Scheduled work does not run on those dates, and our holiday closures are published in full with their dates so you can see exactly which days are affected.

Our target is 90 minutes for an emergency, and it is a target rather than a guarantee. Response times stretch during widespread events: a regional hailstorm or a hard freeze puts every crew in the region under the same demand at the same time. When that happens we tell you the realistic window rather than repeating the target, and we prioritise by severity rather than by call order.

Leave the building, call the gas utility from outside, and call us second. Treat it exactly as you would a gas smell: do not go looking for the source and do not assume it is a faulty alarm. Carbon monoxide has no smell, which is the whole reason the alarm exists. Once the property is safe we will find the cause, which is most often a cracked heat exchanger or a venting fault.

Close the main water shutoff, usually where the supply enters the house, turning it clockwise until it stops. If you cannot find it or it will not move, tell us when you call and that report goes straight to a person while a crew is already moving. If water is reaching a light fitting or a distribution board, switch that circuit off at the consumer unit if you can do so safely, and tell us that too.

Yes, if it is active. Water actively entering the house, a ceiling bulging with water above it, the roof torn open to the sky, or water reaching anything electrical are all emergency-eligible and covered around the clock. A stain that appeared last month and has not grown is not, and we will book that into an ordinary window rather than charge you an emergency rate. Put a bucket under the drip and move furniture out from under the stain before we arrive.

Below 40F outdoors is the threshold we use for no heat, and above 85F indoors for no cooling. Those are the points at which a failure stops being uncomfortable and starts being a health risk, particularly for very young, elderly or unwell people in the house. Tell us if anyone in the household is vulnerable, because that changes how we prioritise regardless of the thermometer.

The utility, if your street is out too. Look at whether your neighbours are dark: if they are, only the power company can restore it and they will be faster than anyone, because there is nothing on your side of the meter to fix. If your neighbours have power and you do not, the fault is on your side, it is emergency-eligible, and it is ours.

Then we make it safe and come back. An overnight visit is about stopping the harm: isolating a circuit, capping a line, tarping an opening, getting the water off. A permanent repair needing a part nobody stocks at two in the morning waits for the supplier to open, and we book the return visit before we leave rather than asking you to ring again. You are told at the time which of the two you are getting, and you are not charged an emergency rate twice for the same fault.

It means we will come out to you for the eight emergency-eligible services around the clock, but we do not schedule ordinary work there. Chapel Hill is our one emergency-only city. You get the same 90 minute response target and the same call-out fee as anywhere else in the coverage area; what you cannot book is a routine repair, a maintenance visit or a project. Enter your zip code on our service areas page for a definitive answer on your address.