House calls
The small electrical jobs, handled properly in Ann Arbor
Your small electrical problems get a quick fix. Grounding, GFCI installs, surge suppressors, lighting and circuit repair: the jobs that keep a house's wiring safe and code compliant, from a licensed Ann Arbor electrical contractor.
Chapter 01
When half the kitchen or bathroom loses power at once
A dead outlet in the kitchen or bathroom is rarely a dead outlet on its own. Half a counter or an entire bathroom can lose power at the same moment because a GFCI receptacle upstream tripped and took every outlet down the line with it. The GFCI is easy to find once you know what to look for: a receptacle with a test and reset button on its face, sitting between the panel and whichever outlets went dark. Unplug whatever was running in the affected outlets, press reset, and in most cases the power comes right back.
Vedder Electric describes itself, on its own Facebook page, as an Ann Arbor electrical contractor willing to work on the small jobs, and this is exactly that kind of call: a quick fix for a homeowner who did not know where the GFCI lived, or a slightly longer visit to install one where the kitchen or bathroom never had one at all. Installing GFIs and adding outlets to a room that never had enough of them are two of the more common repairs Vedder gets called out for, often on the same trip.
A finished kitchen lit by recessed ceiling lights and a pendant fixture over the counter
Two-prong outlets: run a ground, or install a GFCI
Older Ann Arbor houses still turn up two-prong, ungrounded outlets, and the question that comes with them is always the same: does every one of them need to be grounded? Not necessarily. New electronics are starting to require a ground, and having one is a good idea, but most everyday devices in a house do not need one to run safely.
Swapping an ungrounded outlet for a GFCI meets electrical code and gives better shock protection than most grounds do, without opening up a wall. Actually grounding a circuit is a bigger job, and how big depends on where the outlet sits and how the house was built around it. Grounded circuits are worth the extra work in a home office or a home gym, where the equipment benefits from a true ground rather than a GFCI in its place, and any brand new circuit Vedder installs anywhere in a house is grounded from the start.
Chapter 03
Surge suppressors: the whole house first, plug strips second
A lightning strike near the property, or a fault on Detroit Edison's own equipment, can send a surge through a house's wiring that a plug strip was never built to stop by itself. A whole house surge suppressor installed at the panel is the first line of defense against both, rated to absorb far more than anything sitting under a desk.
That does not retire the plug strip. Vedder still recommends keeping surge protected plug strips on the computers and electronics that matter most, because the whole house unit and a plug strip cover different parts of the same problem: one protects everything in the house at once, the other adds a second layer right at the equipment.
Lighting, foyer fixtures, and the wiring that feeds them
A foyer chandelier or a run of pendant lights is a common enough job that Vedder has a review naming it directly: "We needed a foyer chandelier replaced and three new pendant lights installed. Spoke with Matt and he was very helpful, got us scheduled a week later. Zach arrived on-time and was courteous. He completed the job in a reasonable timeframe and cleaned up. The lighting looks great." That is the shape most lighting repair calls take: a fixture that has reached the end of its life, replaced without the visit turning into an all-day project.
Behind the fixture is where circuit repair and cable and wiring work actually happens: a circuit that has started tripping under a load it used to carry fine, cable that was run incorrectly or has worn with age, or wiring that needs to reach a new fixture location. Vedder traces the problem back to the circuit or the cable run rather than swapping the fixture and hoping the wiring underneath it was fine all along.
Vedder Electric holds Michigan Electrical Contractor License #6106506 and has been taking calls like these in Ann Arbor for over 35 years. Reach the office at 734-662-6220, Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM.