21 miles west on the 210 from our shop in San Dimas. Pasadena has over 800 Craftsman bungalows in Bungalow Heaven alone, 28 landmark districts, and its own municipal power company. We know what's behind the plaster walls in this city — and we know how to rewire it without tearing the house apart.
Nearly 30% of Pasadena's housing stock was built before 1940. That means thousands of homes — across Bungalow Heaven, Madison Heights, Historic Highlands, Garfield Heights, and the Arroyo Terrace district — were originally wired with knob-and-tube. This two-wire system has no ground conductor and relies on air space around the wires for cooling. After 80 to 120 years, the cloth insulation cracks, exposes bare copper, and becomes a fire hazard, especially where blown-in attic insulation has been piled on top of it. We trace every circuit, identify what's still live, and replace it with modern grounded copper wiring. In a Craftsman with plaster-and-lath walls and original woodwork, we fish new wires through existing pathways to avoid tearing out irreplaceable plaster wherever possible.
Unlike most of Southern California, Pasadena is not served by Southern California Edison. The city runs its own municipal utility — Pasadena Water and Power (PWP). That means panel upgrades require coordination with PWP for the meter disconnect, service drop, and reconnection — a completely different process than SCE with different paperwork, different timelines, and different inspection requirements. Many Pasadena homes built between 1920 and 1960 still have their original 60-100 amp panels. Between central AC loads, EV charger demand, and modern kitchen appliances, these panels are dangerously overloaded. We upgrade to 200A and 400A panels, handle the full permit process through Pasadena's Planning and Community Development Department, and coordinate the PWP side so you're not stuck waiting.
Pasadena has one of the highest EV adoption rates in the San Gabriel Valley, driven in part by the city's sustainability programs through PWP — check PWP's website for current green energy and solar incentive options. But charging at a public station is slow compared to a Level 2 home charger that fills your battery overnight. We install dedicated 240V/50A circuits for Tesla, Rivian, Ford, and any other EV. In older Pasadena homes, the panel almost always needs an upgrade first — we bundle the panel upgrade, charger circuit, and installation into a single project with one permit. PWP handles the utility side, and we handle everything from the weatherhead into the house.
Pasadena has 28 landmark districts — more than almost any city in California. From the 1906 Greene & Greene masterpieces along Arroyo Terrace to the working-class bungalows of Bungalow Heaven, from the grand estates of Oak Knoll to the period homes in Bellefontaine and Madison Heights, each district comes with preservation standards enforced by the Historic Preservation Commission. Many of these homeowners participate in the Mills Act, which can reduce property taxes by 40-60% in exchange for maintaining the home's historic character. We understand how to do modern electrical work inside a landmark-designated property — routing new wiring without damaging original plaster, matching period-appropriate exterior fixtures, and keeping all visible work consistent with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards so your Mills Act contract stays intact.
Recessed lighting, under-cabinet LEDs, landscape lighting, outdoor security lights, and period-appropriate porch fixtures for Pasadena's Craftsman homes. We add GFCI outlets in kitchens and bathrooms, dedicated 20-amp circuits for home offices — a necessity in a city that's home to Caltech, JPL, and Art Center College of Design, where remote work is the norm — and we replace the two-prong ungrounded outlets that are still everywhere in pre-1960 Pasadena homes with properly grounded receptacles.
We're 21 miles east on the 210 — about 25 minutes in normal traffic. When you smell burning from an outlet in your 1920s Craftsman, a breaker keeps tripping during a heat wave, or a windstorm takes out your service line, call us any time, day or night. Pasadena's foothill neighborhoods — Linda Vista, Poppy Peak, and the areas near JPL — sit in designated fire hazard severity zones, and the January 2025 Eaton fire, which destroyed thousands of structures across the Pasadena and Altadena foothills, was a painful reminder of how fast conditions can turn dangerous. We respond to emergencies across all Pasadena zip codes: 91101, 91103, 91104, 91105, 91106, and 91107.
Pasadena is not a typical Southern California suburb. It's a city of 137,000 people with a median household income over $105,000, a world-class research university, a nationally recognized preservation program, and — critically for electrical work — its own municipal power utility. The housing stock reflects over a century of development: pre-1900 Victorians near Orange Grove, thousands of 1900-1930 Craftsman bungalows across the central neighborhoods, mid-century ranches and colonials in the flats, and modern construction along the South Lake corridor. Each era has its own electrical problems.
We're based in San Dimas, 21 miles east on the 210 freeway. We've worked on Pasadena properties ranging from 1908 bungalows with active knob-and-tube to 1960s split-levels with undersized panels and cloth-insulated wiring. We know the Pasadena Water and Power coordination process, we know which projects need Historic Preservation Commission review and which don't, and we know how to get a clean inspection from Pasadena's building inspectors — who hold a higher standard than most cities in the county.
Knob-and-tube wiring was the standard electrical installation method from the 1880s through the early 1940s. It uses porcelain knobs to support individual hot and neutral wires run through open air space, and porcelain tubes to pass wires through framing members. When it was installed, it was good work — well-engineered for the electrical loads of the era, which amounted to a few light bulbs and maybe a radio. The problem is that Pasadena's Craftsman homes have been in continuous use for 90 to 120 years. The cloth and rubber insulation has become brittle, cracked, and in many cases has fallen away entirely. Over the decades, homeowners and handymen have spliced modern wiring into original knob-and-tube circuits, overloaded them with modern appliances, and buried them under blown-in insulation that traps heat around wires designed to be air-cooled. Most insurance companies in California now require knob-and-tube to be removed before they'll write or renew a homeowners policy. If you own a pre-1940 home anywhere in Pasadena — and that's roughly 30% of the city's housing stock — this is the single most important electrical issue to address.
Most of Southern California gets electricity from Southern California Edison (SCE). Pasadena does not. The city owns and operates Pasadena Water and Power (PWP), a municipal utility that has been generating and distributing electricity since 1906. This matters for any electrical project that involves the service entrance — panel upgrades, service size increases, meter relocations, and new service installations. The forms are different. The scheduling process is different. The inspection requirements are different. When we do a panel upgrade in Arcadia or Azusa, we coordinate with SCE. When we do one in Pasadena, we coordinate with PWP. If your electrician doesn't know this distinction, your project is going to stall while they figure it out. PWP also offers programs that affect electrical decisions — including green energy options, solar and battery storage incentives, and time-of-use rate structures. Check PWP's current rate schedules, as off-peak EV charging rates can make a meaningful difference in your electricity costs.
Pasadena is home to one of the densest concentrations of Craftsman architecture in the United States. Bungalow Heaven alone — a 125-acre, six-by-six block neighborhood in northeast Pasadena — contains over 800 Craftsman bungalows built between 1900 and 1930 and was designated as a landmark district in 1989. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. These homes have plaster-and-lath walls, original Douglas fir woodwork, built-in cabinetry, clinker-brick fireplaces, and sleeping porches that define the Craftsman aesthetic. A careless rewire can destroy all of it. We use fish tape and flexible drill bits to route new Romex through existing wall cavities, stud bays, and attic runs. We minimize penetrations through original plaster. When we need to make openings, we patch them properly. The goal is a home that has every modern electrical safety feature — grounded outlets, AFCI protection, properly sized circuits — without looking like it was hacked apart. For Mills Act properties, this approach isn't just preferred — it's required to maintain compliance with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.
We're 25 minutes away in San Dimas — straight shot on the 210. Call for a free assessment on any residential, commercial, or industrial electrical project in Pasadena, from knob-and-tube remediation to Eaton fire rebuilds.
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