Two Lions Electric Call
Hands working with a screwdriver on the branch wiring inside an open loadcentre.

Services

Electrical Panel Upgrades in North Vancouver

An old panel, a fuse box, or not enough capacity left for a charger or a heat pump.

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Price
$3,500–$7,000 typical for 100A to 200A
Google rating
5.0
Service in
English

Service and panel upgrades on North Shore houses, including the City permit and the inspection that goes with them.

What people worry about, and how the call actually goes

  • 01

    The look

    When nobody picks up

  • 02

    The number

    When a part gets swapped and nothing gets explained

  • 03

    The permit

    When the bill is the first number you hear

What to check, and what to ask

General guidance for homeowners, not specific to your system — worth knowing before you book anyone, including us.

  1. Your service size is a number you can read for yourself

    The main breaker at the top of the panel has its rating printed on it. That number, and the date on the panel label, decide most of the conversation before anyone quotes anything.

  2. A full panel and an undersized service are different problems

    No empty slots is a space problem and sometimes has an answer inside the existing panel. Not enough total capacity is a service problem and does not. Ask which one you have, and how it was determined.

  3. Ask for the load calculation, not the opinion

    The size of service a house needs is calculated from what is connected to it. An electrician who upgrades on a calculation can show you the sheet. One who upgrades on a glance cannot.

  4. This work is permitted and licensed, and that is checkable

    Panel and service work in BC requires a permit and a licensed electrical contractor to pull it. Ask who is pulling it and under which licence. If permits never come up in a quote, ask why.

Try these first

  1. 1. Read the number on the main breaker

    Stand in front of the closed panel and read the rating printed on the large breaker at the top. That number is the first thing anyone quoting the work will ask you for. Do not open the cover.

  2. 2. Count the empty slots and read the label

    The label inside the door lists the circuits and often the year. Photograph it. A photo of the label and the closed panel answers more questions on the phone than a description will.

  3. 3. Write down what you are actually adding

    A car charger, a heat pump, a suite, an induction range, a hot tub. The list of what is coming is what a load calculation is run against, and having it ready shortens the visit.

  4. 4. Note which circuits trip, and what was running

    If breakers trip, write down which one, how often, and what was switched on at the time. That is evidence of a capacity problem, or of a fault, and the two are handled differently.

  5. 5. Label what you already know

    Working out which breaker feeds which room, from outside the panel, is genuinely useful and costs nothing. Write it on the existing label in pencil.

An open fused disconnect with the cartridge fuses seated and the conductors landed and dressed — Two Lions' own photograph.
Two Lions's own photo, from a job in North Vancouver.

Before you call

What does a panel upgrade actually cost on the North Shore?
Most 100A to 200A service upgrades on a detached North Vancouver or West Vancouver house land between $3,500 and $7,000 all in, and a complicated one — a mast that has to move, a long run to the meter, a heritage facade, knob-and-tube in the way — runs $8,000 to $10,000. A like-for-like panel swap with no change in service size is a smaller job, usually $1,500 to $3,500. If the panel is where you can get at it and the service size is not changing, you are at the bottom of that range. You get a firm number in writing before anything is touched, and the estimate is free.
Who pulls the permit, and does North Vancouver do it differently?
Two Lions pulls it, under the company's own contractor licence — you never take out a permit for work they do. That matters more here than it does across the water: the City and District of North Vancouver, West Vancouver and Vancouver are self-administering, meaning they issue and inspect their own electrical permits rather than routing through Technical Safety BC. Either way, the permit is what puts an inspector who does not work for the contractor on your job, and that inspection is the only independent check that the work is right. It also matters at resale — unpermitted panel work is a standard thing for a home inspector to flag.
Do I have to upgrade the panel before an EV charger or a heat pump?
Sometimes, and the honest answer is that a load calculation tells you rather than a rule of thumb. Plenty of 100A services will carry a Level 2 charger once a load-management device is in the picture; plenty of others will not carry it alongside an existing electric range and a heat pump. The calculation is part of the site visit. Where a panel genuinely has to be upgraded, doing it at the same time as the charger is cheaper than doing it twice.
My house has knob-and-tube or aluminium wiring and my insurer is asking.
Neither is automatically a full rewire, and the assessment is the part worth paying for. Knob-and-tube is ungrounded and its insulation is brittle by now, and most BC insurers will not write over it — so it usually does have to go, often in stages. Aluminium branch wiring from the 1960s and 70s is safe when it is terminated correctly with rated devices and antioxidant compound, and pigtailing a house to an insurer's satisfaction typically runs $3,000 to $7,500 against $12,000 to $35,000 for a full replacement. The first step is opening a few boxes and finding out which situation you are actually in.
Are you licensed and insured, and can I check it?
Two Lions publishes that the company is licensed, bonded, insured, Technical Safety BC certified, WorkSafe BC certified, BBB accredited, and that it employs certified electricians. The part worth asking for on the phone is the Technical Safety BC contractor licence number, because that is the one credential you can look up yourself in about a minute rather than take on trust. Ask for it. Any legitimate BC electrical contractor will give it to you without hesitating.
How do I tell one five-star electrician from another?
Ask three questions. What is your Technical Safety BC licence number. Who pulls the permit and who books the inspection. And what do I get in writing when you are finished. A contractor who answers all three without hesitating is telling you the work will be documented, and documentation is the only part of an electrical job that is still there in ten years when an insurer, a buyer's inspector or the next electrician needs to know what happened.

What we do

Tell Two Lions what's going on

604-245-8668

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Address
6-801 1st Street West, North Vancouver, BC
Service Area
North Vancouver · West Vancouver · Vancouver · Burnaby · New Westminster · Port Moody · Coquitlam
Hours
Monday–Saturday, 7:00 am – 7:00 pm. Sunday closed.
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