Multifamily & Apartment Building
Electrical Contractor — Santa Clara County

A single-family job is one service, one panel, one customer. A multifamily building is a layered system: a main service feeds a house/landlord panel for common-area loads — corridor and exterior lighting, elevators, laundry, fire/life-safety, EV management — while each dwelling unit runs from its own sub-panel, often through a meter bank or multi-meter stack. Sizing is governed by the NEC 220.84 optional multifamily method, which applies demand factors across the dwelling units and adds the house load on top. The service-disconnect grouping follows NEC 230.71/230.72. And the work is frequently done in an occupied building, which makes scheduling, tenant notice, and phasing part of the electrical scope rather than an afterthought. We carry all of that on one page and one point of contact.

For new multifamily, the 2025 CALGreen code (Title 24 Part 11) requires EV-ready provisions at parking, effective for permits submitted on or after Jan 1, 2026. Each assigned space gets a Low Power Level 2 EV-ready receptacle — minimum 208/240V on a 20A branch circuit — wired back to that space's corresponding dwelling-unit panel. Separately, 25% of unassigned or common spaces require installed Full-Power Level 2 chargers. Because every assigned receptacle ties back to a unit panel, the mandate drives the per-unit feeder and load calculation, which is exactly where under-scoped bids fall short. Automatic load management (ALMS) is typically needed to comply without oversizing the service. Verify the exact CALGreen section and any local amendments against the adopted Santa Clara County or City of San Jose ordinance for your specific project — we handle that on the permit package.

Occupied-building work is its own discipline. We start with a site assessment, then build a phasing plan around the residents — written notice, scheduled outage windows, and temporary power where a unit or common system can't go dark. With Cali Rollin Electric, you get a dedicated point of contact, backed by our full crew, who plans the sequence, coordinates with the property manager, and is on the phone if something needs to change mid-job. One overloaded panel or one damaged feeder in a multifamily building can affect several families at once, so the safety and continuity planning is part of the electrical scope, not a separate conversation.

It depends on the building's condition, the load you're adding, and how much downtime the residents can absorb. A complete replacement is cleaner and often the better long-term value when the service is being upsized anyway — for electrification load, EV-ready capacity, or an obsolete service. A phased approach keeps an occupied building energized while work moves through it section by section, which can be the right call when residents can't all lose power at once or when the budget is spread across cycles. We lay the trade-offs out in writing after the site assessment so the decision is made on real numbers, not a default. There are no placeholder prices on our quotes — the number follows the walk.

Yes. Federal Pacific (FPE), Zinsco, Pushmatic, Challenger, and Sylvania panels are known-hazardous or discontinued equipment — parts are hard or impossible to source, and they're commonly flagged at sale, refinance, or inspection. In a multifamily setting that can mean house panels, per-unit sub-panels, or both. We replace them with current-code equipment sized under the NEC 220.84 multifamily method, sequence the work to keep the building livable, and note any related code bring-up the plans missed in the cover letter.

Multifamily services commonly land in the 600A to 1000A-and-up range, but the right number comes from the NEC 220.84 optional multifamily load calculation — not a rule of thumb. That method applies demand factors across the dwelling units (when each has electric cooking and electric space heating or AC), adds the house load per Part III, and accounts for the feeders the building actually carries. On top of that we build in CALGreen EV-ready capacity and the electrification load coming from BAAQMD appliance replacement rules, so the service is sized for where the building is heading. Meter banks and the service-disconnect grouping (NEC 230.71/230.72) are part of the same design. We state the amperage on the bid.

Yes — across the county's multiple authorities having jurisdiction. City of San Jose multifamily electrical typically routes through Standard Plan Review with a multifamily submittal checklist, and not all multifamily work qualifies for online permits. Service-change work requires confirming the serving utility will approve the ampacity and location of the new service equipment before final, with the utility meter reconnect coordinated after city inspection. Santa Clara County sits across three utility territories — PG&E for most of the county including San Jose, Silicon Valley Power for the City of Santa Clara, and City of Palo Alto Utilities for Palo Alto — and we identify the serving utility up front because the equipment rules and sequencing differ. We serve every Santa Clara County AHJ from Morgan Hill.

Yes, as distinct service lines. Electric sub-metering and load disaggregation are governed by Title 24 Part 6 §130.5, which calls for user-accessible disaggregated measurement once the service reaches 50 kVA — it isn't universal for every small service. CTEP-approved submeter tenant billing is a separate, sound state requirement we can scope alongside it. Note that SB 7 submetering is a water requirement, not an electric one — we keep the two precisely distinct so the bid is accurate. For lighting, Title 24 Part 6 §160.5 requires occupancy/vacancy sensing on at least one luminaire in bathrooms, garages, laundry, utility, and walk-in closet spaces, with common-use areas complying under §160.5(b)–(e). Corridors, garages, laundry rooms, walkways, and exterior all fall in scope.