P-01
The math before the money
Every panel and charger quote comes with the load calculation that produced it — the same sheet that goes in the permit set. If an estimate has no arithmetic behind it, it is a guess with a price tag.
Walt Prochazka’s shop · licensed, permitted, inspected since 1998
Electrician in Fort Worth, TX
Panel and service upgrades, EV chargers, generators, and the load calculations behind all three — shown, not asserted, starting with the configurator below.
Call (817) 555-0126
4.9 stars · 1,088 Google reviews · most recent 4 days agoAfter hours — hazards dispatch now ($195, waived for Safety Plan members). Scheduling reopens Monday at 7:30 AM.
$189 whole-home safety inspection, credited toward work over $1,000.. Offer good through Dec 31, 2026
- TECL 990417
- Master of record: Simone Aduba
- Since 1998
- Financing from $57/mo*
*200A panel upgrade from $3,400 — 84 monthly payments at 10.11% APR through GreenSky, zero down, on approved credit.
Fort Worth, Arlington Heights, Ridglea, Wedgwood, Tanglewood, Keller, Benbrook, Westover Hills, Southlake, Colleyville, Burleson. Every job under the master of record, every permit on the record.
02
Three things you can hold us to
P-02
Every job on the record
Permit pulled under the master license, rough and final inspections passed, and the paperwork handed to you. It is worth real money at resale, and it is the difference between an installation and an opinion.
P-03
Panels dressed and photographed
Conductors combed into parallel runs, every termination torqued and logged, photographed before the dead front goes on. You get the pictures. Any electrician who opens it next will know who was there.
03
Will your panel carry an EV charger? Run the sheet.
One field first — the zip — and the sheet answers before it asks who you are. The same NEC 220.82 arithmetic our permit sets use, every line shown; a Texas house books its AC before anything else. Screening basis — the in-home visit reads your actual nameplates.
The sheet draws itself from the zip. No name, no phone — the arithmetic first.
04
Four things Fort Worth built into its houses
Identification guidance, written to be used with your panel door open. None of these is an emergency by default; all four are worth knowing you have.
Federal Pacific Stab-Lok
FPEOrange bus labels, "Stab-Lok" on the door. Documented failure-to-trip rates — breakers that hold until the day it matters. Widespread in 1950–1975 metro stock.
Replacement from $3,900
Zinsco / Sylvania
ZINColorful thin breakers in a narrow tub. The bus bars arc-scar and breakers fuse to them. If the door says Zinsco or Sylvania-Zinsco, it is worth ninety minutes of our time.
Replacement from $3,900
Aluminum branch wiring
ALHomes wired 1965–1973. Read the cable jacket in the attic: "AL" or "ALUMINUM" printed every foot. The fix is per-device remediation, not a rewire.
$32 per device, typical home $1,400–$2,600
Knob-and-tube
K&TCeramic knobs in the attic, cloth conductors, no ground. Original K&T is not automatically a hazard — buried under insulation, it is. Insurers increasingly decline it either way.
Staged replacement, families stay home
The $189 safety inspection identifies all four in one visit, with thermal imaging of the panel, and credits toward the fix.
05
What a Fort Worth panel upgrade actually takes
Nobody in this trade tells you where the time really goes. Here is the whole sequence, with the honest ranges — including the step that belongs to the utility.
Permit application
1–3 days
Filed under TECL 990417 the day you sign, Simone Aduba the master of record. Fort Worth reviews faster than the mid-cities suburbs think it does; we say which applies to you.
Oncor coordination (the bottleneck step)
5–15 business days
THE REAL BOTTLENECK. Oncor schedules the service disconnect, and their queue sets the pace — longer in storm season, when the same crews are rebuilding feeders. We file this request the same day as the permit so the two clocks run in parallel.
Shutdown & install
1 day
Power off in the morning, new panel and service by evening. The only day you feel. In July we stage a portable for the refrigerator — this is Texas.
City inspection
1–3 days
Fort Worth inspects our work before the utility reconnects.
Oncor reconnect
0–2 days
Usually same-day after a passed inspection; occasionally the queue again.
Record closed
1–3 days
The permit record closes and you keep the paperwork — it is worth money at resale.
“Only contractor of the three who told me the Oncor wait exists. The other two quoted "next week" and Meridian quoted twelve days with a diagram of why. It took eleven. I will take honest scheduling over optimistic scheduling every time.”
06
The price list, drawn to scale
| Work | Included | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Service call / diagnostic | Method, not part-swapping. Waived when we do the repair. | $95 |
| Whole-home safety inspectionCredited toward any work over $1,000 | Written report, panel thermal imaging, findings ranked by hazard.Credited toward any work over $1,000 | $189 |
| 100A → 200A panel upgrade | Permit, Oncor coordination, rough and final inspection included. | from $57/mo$3,400–$4,800 total84 months at 10.11% APR, zero down |
| Zinsco / Federal Pacific replacement | The two panels every Tarrant County inspector flags. Documented before and after. | from $65/mo$3,900 total84 months at 10.11% APR, zero down |
| Level 2 EV charger, existing capacity | Hardwired, load calculation filed with the permit. | $1,150–$1,900 |
| EV charger with 200A panel upgrade | One permit set, one Oncor coordination, one inspection day. | from $82/mo$4,900 total84 months at 10.11% APR, zero down |
| 22kW standby generator, installed | Pad, gas coordination, transfer switch, commissioning under load. | from $214/mo$12,800 total84 months at 10.11% APR, zero down |
| Aluminum remediation, per device | AlumiConn, torqued to spec and logged. Typical home $1,400–$2,600. | $32 |
Financing through GreenSky. 84 monthly payments at 10.11% APR on approved credit, zero down. The payment shown is rounded up to the whole dollar. No prepayment penalty, no deferred interest.
06A
Current notices, with expiry dates
N-01expires Dec 31, 2026
$189 whole-home safety inspection
Ninety minutes, panel thermal imaging, written report ranked by hazard. The fee credits toward any work over $1,000.
One per household per year. Tarrant County service area.
N-02expires Oct 31, 2026
Storm-season generator sizing, no charge
Load calculation, gas meter capacity check, and a written quote for an interlock, a transfer switch, or a standby unit — before the next ERCOT conservation alert, not during it.
Applies to owner-occupied homes. Quote honored 90 days.
N-03expires Dec 31, 2026
EV-ready bundle: charger + 200A upgrade from $82/mo
One permit set, one Oncor coordination, one inspection day. $4,900 total.
84 monthly payments at 10.11% APR through GreenSky, zero down, on approved credit. Payment rounded up to the whole dollar. No prepayment penalty, no deferred interest.
07
From the panel schedule
A dressed panel is a signed drawing
Every conductor combed into parallel runs, every breaker labelled in the directory, every termination torqued and check-marked. Electricians recognize a well-dressed panel the way machinists recognize a clean weld — it is the visible fraction of care you cannot see. Marcus finishes every Ridglea change-out this way before the dead front goes on, and it costs him twenty minutes he considers non-negotiable.
The lug you cannot see glowing
This Tanglewood panel looked immaculate. The thermal camera disagreed: one neutral lug at 94°C under a July AC load — a connection quietly cooking itself toward a failure that would have read as "random" in a year. Ninety seconds of imaging during a $189 inspection, one re-termination, hazard closed. This photograph is why the inspection includes thermal every time, not as an add-on.
The Zinsco, photographed as evidence
A 1964 Wedgwood ranch. The Zinsco panel’s bus bars showed the arc scarring the brand is infamous for — breakers that fuse to the bus and cannot trip. We photograph these before replacement, with the burn marks in frame, because identification guidance beats fear-selling: if your panel door says Zinsco or Federal Pacific, that photograph is what we are checking for, and the check is ninety minutes and $189.
08
Checkable, not testimonial
“Ran their online load calculator before calling and the tech who came out ran the same numbers on paper and got the same answer. My 100A service could not take the charger, exactly as the site said. The bundle quote matched the website to the dollar.”
“Only contractor of the three who told me the Oncor wait exists. The other two quoted "next week" and Meridian quoted twelve days with a diagram of why. It took eleven. I will take honest scheduling over optimistic scheduling every time.”
Something arcing right now?
Warm outlets and burning smells jump the queue
(817) 555-0126After hours: $195 dispatch, stated here — waived for Safety Plan members.
“Hail storm took a limb through my mast at 9pm. Their site had a banner saying they were running extended crews with a four-hour window — truck was here in three. Taped the hazard, coordinated Oncor, rebuilt the mast next day. Safety Plan paid for itself in one night.”
09
What the house is trying to tell you
Written from the symptom, because that is what you own — the service category is our problem. Two of these answers end with “call now”; the rest can wait for morning.
One fixture or one room: usually a loose connection — at the fixture, the switch, or a backstabbed receptacle feeding through. In 1965–1973 houses, flicker that moves around a room is the classic aluminum-branch symptom and worth a device check.
The whole house, especially when big loads cycle: that can be a failing service neutral, which is genuinely dangerous — it puts your 240 volts in charge of deciding which half of the house gets overfed. Call us the same day, and if the drop or meter looks involved we bring Oncor in. Say "whole-house flickering" on the phone and you jump the queue.
A compressor draws a locked-rotor inrush several times its running current for a fraction of a second. A healthy, correctly sized breaker rides through it. One that trips has three suspects, in order: a breaker aging out (they weaken with every trip), a compressor drawing harder as it wears, or a circuit that was marginal from day one — common where a bigger condenser replaced a smaller one without anyone re-checking the wire.
In a North Texas summer the AC circuit is the hardest-worked wiring in the house. The $95 diagnostic settles which suspect it is with a clamp meter, not a guess.
Heat at a device means resistance where there should be none — a loose termination, a worn contact, or an aluminum joint oxidizing. It is the one symptom on this list we treat as same-day, every time, because the failure mode it precedes is not an outage, it is a fire. Say "warm outlet" when you call and you move to the front of the board.
Your service is two 120-volt legs; losing one takes out roughly half the circuits and can leave 240-volt appliances limping. If neighbors are dark too, report it to Oncor at 888-313-4747 — the fault is on their side. If it is only you, the split is usually at the meter, the main, or a failed leg in the panel — our side, and dispatchable now.
A faint 60-cycle hum under heavy load can be normal. A buzz that comes and goes, gets louder, or smells like anything at all is arcing — current jumping a gap it should not — and in Zinsco and Federal Pacific panels it is often the bus itself. Do not open the panel; call. This is precisely what the $189 inspection with thermal imaging exists to catch before it announces itself.
Yes — and you want one. The permit puts a city inspector between you and whoever did the work, and the closed record is a document your buyer’s inspector will ask for at resale. A panel change without one is cheaper the day it happens and expensive every day after.
We file under TECL 990417 with Simone Aduba as master of record, the same day you sign. The honest schedule, Oncor wait included, is drawn out in the timeline above.
Meridian Safety Plan
$129 a year, engineered like a maintenance contract
- Annual whole-home safety inspection with a written report
- Thermal imaging of the panel, images included in the report
- 15% off every repair
- Priority dispatch during storm and outage events
- No overtime charge, ever
The annual inspection alone is the $189 service — the plan is the inspection plus standing, for $129. During outage events, members dispatch first. In a wind event that difference is measured in hours.
“The $189 inspection report is a real document — thermal images, photos, findings ranked by hazard not by price. It found one genuinely loose lug and said everything else was fine. No upsell. That report went straight in the house file.”