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Electrical Service Upgrade
Service equipment ages differently from the wire it feeds, which is why the two get judged separately. A panel is the one part of a house every other circuit depends on, so it is the part worth measuring before anyone touches it.
Electrical Service Upgrade in O’Fallon and across St. Charles, St. Louis, Lincoln and Warren counties.
Clint Ehman does the work himself. Seventeen years in the trade, Infinity Electric since June 2022.
5.0 from 94 Google reviews · BBB A+ since 2022
What this work actually involves
Permits are pulled where the municipality requires them, and the work is left ready for inspection rather than tidied up afterward.
Clint measures before he quotes. The reading comes first, then what it means, then the one repair that solves it. If the honest answer is smaller than what you called about, that is the answer you get, even when the bigger job pays better.
Work that needs a permit gets one, and work that needs an inspection is left ready for it. One person does the diagnosis and the repair, so nothing is lost between a salesman and a technician.
When people call about this
- Lights that dim when a large appliance starts
- Breakers that trip under normal load
- A panel brand an inspector flags on sight
- Scorch marks, heat or a smell at the cover
Why people choose Clint for it
One person does the diagnosis and the repair, so nothing is lost between a salesman and a technician, and nobody is paid to sell past the finding.
Seventeen years in the trade, four of them running his own shop, 5.0 from 94 Google reviews, and an A+ BBB accreditation held since 2022.
Where this is done
A roughly fifty mile working radius from O’Fallon, covering thirty municipalities across five jurisdictions in the St. Louis metro.
See the full service area, or the rest of our panels & service work.
What a panel directory is worth later
An accurate circuit directory is the cheapest thing in a panel and the one most often missing. Without it, every future visit starts with twenty minutes of somebody switching breakers off and shouting down a hallway, and you pay for those twenty minutes.
Every circuit gets identified and written on the directory as part of the work. It is also one of the first things a municipal inspector looks at, because an unlabeled panel is a hazard to whoever opens it next.
How the load actually gets calculated
A load calculation is arithmetic, not a guess. Square footage sets a baseline, then the fixed appliances get added at their nameplate ratings: the range, the dryer, the water heater if it is electric, the air conditioning, and anything else with its own circuit. The largest of the heating or cooling loads counts, not both.
What comes out is a number in amps. Compare it to the service rating and you know whether the house is near its limit or nowhere close. That is the whole decision, and it is why the measurement happens before anyone quotes a panel.
Whether the service actually needs upgrading
A full panel and an overloaded service are different problems with different prices. The load calculation tells you which one you have, and a surprising number of calls turn out to be the cheaper one.
If the service genuinely needs upgrading, that means utility coordination, a permit, new equipment and an inspection, and you are told the sequence and the outage up front.
What gets left behind when the work is done
A labeled panel, accessible junctions, the old parts if you want to see them, and a straight account of anything found along the way that was not part of the call.
Where something else was found, you get told what it is and whether it needs doing now, later or not at all. That third answer is a real answer and it gets used.
What the price actually depends on
Three things move the number on almost every job: how far the run has to travel and what it passes through, whether the existing panel has space and the service has capacity, and whether the municipality wants a permit and an inspection. None of those is visible from the phone call, which is why the measurement comes before the quote.
What does not move it is urgency theatre. There is no inflated figure waiting to be discounted, and no bundle built so the thing you called about cannot be bought on its own.
“Clint did an excellent job installing two bathroom exhaust fans. He installed high-quality fans that were far superior to the ones I had purchased from a big box store. I highly recommend his services.”
David Hinners · Google review
How the visit goes
- The call
You describe what the house is doing and what prompted it: a tripping breaker, an inspector’s note, a planned addition. That shapes what gets measured first.
- The measurement
Load across the service under real conditions, voltage at the main, the condition of every lug and the bus. On an older panel, the breaker brand gets identified, because some have no listed replacement still made.
- The finding
You get the number and what it means. If the service carries what the house asks of it, you hear that, and the conversation becomes a sub-panel or a single circuit instead of a service upgrade.
- The work
Permit where required, utility coordinated for the disconnect, new equipment installed, every circuit identified and labeled, and the site left ready for the inspector.
What the job includes
- A load calculation against what the house actually runs, given to you as a number
- Permit application where the municipality requires one
- New panel, breakers and a legible circuit directory
- Utility coordination for the disconnect and reconnect
- Grounding and bonding brought to current requirements
- The site left ready for inspection, and the inspection attended
What it does not
- Drywall repair beyond the panel opening
- Appliance repair, which is a different trade
- Work on the utility side of the meter, which is the utility’s own
Anything outside electrical, you will be told who to call rather than sold it. Recent jobs are worth a look before you call.
Related panels & service work
Electrical Service Upgrade across the metro
Five jurisdictions, five different sets of conditions. What an inspector looks at first differs by address here, which shapes the job as much as the house does.
St. Louis County
The obsolete panel brands concentrate in this county, because they were installed through exactly the decades this housing was built and upgraded.
St. Louis City
Much of this stock is two and four family, which means shared services and panels that are rarely labeled accurately.
Lincoln County
Lincoln County is rural service: longer drops, well pumps and septic loads that city panels never carry, and outages that make backup power a practical purchase rather than a luxury.
Every municipality covered is listed on the service areas page.
Questions worth asking first.
How do I know if my panel brand is a problem?
Federal Pacific Stab-Lok and Zinsco both have documented failure-to-trip histories and no current listed replacement breaker, so the panel gets replaced rather than repaired. The label on the door identifies it in seconds.
Do I need a permit for panel work?
In every municipality in this footprint, yes, plus an inspection and a scheduled utility disconnect. That is why a panel change is a planned day rather than a same-day call.
Do I need a bigger service, or just more space in the panel?
Those are different problems. A full panel with spare capacity takes a sub-panel or tandem breakers. A panel that is out of capacity takes a service upgrade, and the load calculation tells us which one you have before anything is ordered.
Where do you work?
Out of O’Fallon across St. Charles County, St. Louis County, St. Louis City, and Lincoln and Warren counties, roughly a fifty mile radius.
Do you pull permits?
Where the municipality requires one, yes, and the work is left ready for inspection with the panel labeled and junctions accessible. Requirements genuinely differ across this metro, which is why it is established per address rather than assumed.
Get the measurement first.
The reading comes before the number, so you know what you are deciding about. Electrical Service Upgrade in O’Fallon and across the metro.
Weekdays 8-5, Fri to 4, Sat 10-3 · or describe it in writing.