Electrical Contractor for Apartment and Multifamily Buildings
House power, unit power and common areas, in buildings where people live.
An apartment building is many small electrical systems and one shared one. Each unit has its own panel and meter; the owner pays for the house side — corridors, stairwells, laundry, parking, pumps and anything else the residents share.
Multifamily is one of the building types ThreeCo has worked in recently, alongside the rest of our commercial work across the Kansas City metro.
House power and unit power
Knowing which loads are on the house meter and which are on a unit's matters for both the bill and the repair. Meter banks, the house panel and the feeders to each unit are the parts of the building an owner is responsible for, and they age at the same rate as the building.
Common-area lighting runs long hours — corridor and stair lights are often on all night — which makes it one of the clearest places in a multifamily property for an LED retrofit to cut the house bill.
- Meter banks, house panels and feeders to units
- Corridor, stairwell and lobby lighting, including emergency and egress fixtures
- Parking lot, carport and exterior building lighting
- Laundry rooms, pool and amenity power
Working in occupied buildings
Residents are home while the work happens. Shutting off a feeder or a meter bank means notice to every unit it serves, and the timing of any outage is something the property manager usually wants to agree before it is booked.
Units between tenants
A unit between leases is the easiest time to replace a panel, add circuits or update fixtures, because nobody is living with the disruption. Owners who turn units regularly often plan electrical upgrades into the turnover rather than doing them all at once.
Older buildings sometimes reach the limit of what a unit panel can carry once residents add window units, induction ranges or electric-vehicle cords run out of a window. A load calculation for a typical unit tells an owner whether the problem is one apartment or the whole building.
FAQ
Questions from multifamily owners and managers
Our house electric bill is high. Where should we look first?
Common-area lighting is a frequent culprit, because corridor, stair and parking lights run for most of the day and night. Counting those fixtures and their hours is a quick way to see what an LED retrofit would change.
Can you replace a unit panel while the tenant is still living there?
It can be done with notice and a short planned outage for that unit. Many owners prefer to do it between leases, when nobody is home to be inconvenienced.
Do you handle the parking lot lights too?
Yes. Parking lot poles, carport lighting and exterior wall packs are part of the exterior lighting work we do.
What if a resident loses power at night?
Our office hours are Monday–Friday, 8:00am–3:00pm Central. Outside them the emergency line is answered at a higher after-hours rate, for any customer, commercial or residential. Call (816) 730-9100.
Managing an apartment property?
Tell Watt the property and what is going wrong, or what you want upgraded.
New customers: start with Watt and get 10% off your first job.