Sylvia Electrical Contracting

Snow came and the new meter was not put in for months. There were some faults with the wiring and I ended up with expensive bills.

I couldn't be happier with the quality of work on what was a challenging job. They have ample experience with K&T, were on-time and very professional.

We were installing a new fiberglass pool and needed an electrician to hook it up. Steve was able to come out the same day that I called to check out the work we needed to have done and to provide a quote. He spent a lot of time with us, discussing the project. Then, we scheduled him to come out and perform the work approximately one week later. Steve checked in with us prior to the scheduled work day to make sure everything was still on track, and then arrived promptly, with his assistant, on the day we chose to do the work. He and his assistant were both professional, cooperative, honest, and did excellent work. Steve's original quoted price even came in under budget - when does that ever happen?! We will gladly hire him for more electrical service in the future, and we happily recommend him to anyone looking for electrical services.

The work took longer than expected because the house is old with lots of fire blocks, making it hard to snake wires through the walls. Also, I bought the ceiling fans on Amazon; they were Hunter ceiling fans but they were not designed to take light kits. Steve put up the fans before I learned that the models I had ordered didn't take light kits, so he had to wire lamps to the wall switch. He had to make lots of holes in the walls and ceilings and did rough plastering over the holes. The price was more than I had anticipated but reasonable for the amount of work and less than another quote I had received from another licensed and insured electrician. The work was not immaculate--I can see where cuts were made in the ceilings and walls and I might have to caulk around some places, but that might be unavoidable. Steve and his father were very responsive to my questions over email and worked hard to accommodate my schedule.

I was satisfied with their service and will use them again.

'Overall it went very well. Things took a little more time than planned, but that was because the wiring in the house was unbelievably screwed up.

Steve's son and various helpers did the actual work. They were all nice guys. Steve was sympathetic to our plight with the other contractor bailing on us, but as a result of that situation, we never signed a contract with him, and he billed us for time and materials. We failed the finish electrical inspection three times, and they billed us every time to come back and correct what the inspector had pointed out. In their defense, the inspector was a pedantic a** and failed us just because he didn't like the way things looked. His first comments on walking into the house was that he didn't like the colors we had chosen and things went downhill from there. My other nit about their work is that the quality was not that great. They cross-threaded and broke off a screw on one of the outdoor fixtures and made no attempt to fix it. On another outdoor fixture they left out the rubber gasket that seals out water; I found it in the trash at the end of the day they were working. I took down a light to paint and found that they hadn't bothered to connect the ground wire. A ground on a light fixture is a fairly trivial thing, but it's that lack of attention to detail that makes you wonder about the work that you can't see. In the crawlspace under the kitchen, they didn't bother to tack the wire to the floor joists. The inspector should have failed us for that, but of course he didn't notice it. They had to drill some holes to fit 4" round electrical boxes for light fixtures... and didn't bring a hole saw. They borrowed one from me. We bought an electric oven for the new kitchen, and it requires a 30 amp service. They didn't have a long enough piece of the large gauge wire, so they cobbled together two dirty pieces they dug out of the back of their van. The wire looks like it was previously used. Many of these problems would probably have been avoided if we had contracted with Steve to do the whole job, and I would probably hire him again if I need an electrician to find out, since he was responsive and good about returning phone calls and getting back to us. The circumstances were a bit unusual, and on the whole, Steve was flexible and worked with us to move the project along.

The job went exceptionally smoothly and the 3 men were absolutely friendly and professional -- Dan, Edwin Sr., and Edwin Jr. They showed up on time and quickly got to work, the 3 splliting off to take care of exterior service, main panel, and mapping the house. They answered additional questions I had about the installation as well as ancillary ones such as whole-house surge protection. They took the initiative to clean up additional wiring, stapling it all in place neatly and remove some non-conforming wiring to a few lights in the same room as the panel box (the previous home-owners have done some sketchy stuff) as well as do an exceptional job cleaning up after themselves. I highly recommend Sylvia Electrical -- their pricing was totally competitive and the owner, Steve, is very attentive and quick to get a response to you, even if it's as brief as "got your message and looking into it" just so you know that he is indeed on the case.