Panels, service upgrades, dead circuits and the outlet that has been warm
for a month. Permitted, inspected, and you can look us up in the state’s own
database before we ring the bell.
Scroll — make the connectionEmergency line answered 24 hours
200AThe service most houses in this
area should be on, and most older ones are not
1960sWhen a lot of local panels were
installed. Some of those brands are no longer considered safe
100%Of our work is permitted and
inspected. There is no version where we skip it
2016Working in
Ferndale and the neighboring communities since
Michigan law, not our policy
If he can’t pull the permit, ask yourself why.
Michigan is unusually clear about who is allowed to obtain an electrical
permit. There are exactly two answers, and “a guy who does side work” is not
one of them.
A contractor licensed by a municipality or by the State Electrical Administrative
Board — or the homeowner, for a single-family home they own and occupy or
are about to occupy.
That is the whole list. Anyone else working on your house is working without the permit
the state says is required, which means no inspection, and a record that does not
exist when you sell.
Michigan LARA, Electrical Permit Information: “A person shall not equip a building
with electrical conductors or equipment or make an alteration of, change in, or addition to,
electrical conductors or equipment without receiving a permit to do the work described.”
Read the page →
What we do
Four kinds of call, and roughly what each costs.
Start with the job: restoring power, upgrading a panel, adding a charger, or wiring a room. The sample prices below show how a contractor could explain the scope before an estimate.
01
The panel
Service upgrades to 200A, panel replacements, and the older brands that insurers and home
inspectors now flag on sight. The biggest job we do and the one worth doing once.
$2,400 – $5,200 including permit and inspection02
Something stopped working
Dead circuits, a breaker that will not stay in, half the kitchen out. Diagnosis is a flat
fee so you are not paying us to think slowly.
$145 diagnostic, credited against the repair03
Adding something
EV chargers, a subpanel for the garage, kitchen and bath circuits, outdoor and landscape
lighting, whole-house surge protection.
Your panel is the oldest safety device in the house.
Everything else got replaced at some point. The furnace, the roof, the water
heater. The panel is frequently original, which in a lot of houses around here means it was
installed when a kitchen had two appliances in it.
There are also specific panel brands that home inspectors and insurers now
flag on sight. If you have one, you will find out at the worst possible moment —
during a sale, or during a claim.
Gray, flush with the wall, usually in the basement. Open the door — not
the cover behind it — and read the number off the biggest breaker.Photograph by Famartin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not a photograph of Brightwell Electric’s work.
Check yours in 60 seconds
Go and look at it right now
Open the door. You are looking for a number on the main
breaker at the top — 60, 100, 150 or 200. That is
your service size.
Then look for the brand name on the panel door. Write both
down. Those two facts are most of what any electrician needs to quote you, and they save
you a visit.
Do not remove the cover.
The cover is the only thing between you and the service conductors, and those are live even
when every breaker is off.
Not a real electrician. Not a real technique.
What not to do
The five jobs people try, and the one that actually kills.
Plenty of household electrical work is genuinely fine to do yourself, and we
will tell you which. The list of things that are not fine is shorter than you think and more
specific than “call an electrician for everything.”
