One family firm, two trades, and the scope in writing before a wall comes open.

Sims & Sons is a family electrical contractor in Lakeview that also does plumbing. The name is the business: a family trade, with sons in it. You call one number for the panel and the pipes, and the person who answers knows what a Chicago two-flat looks like behind the plaster.

Call 312-282-1170 Send a job

We pull the permit. You do not have to call the city.

How every permitted job starts

01Who runs this site

A Lakeview electrician on Eddy Street, not a call center.

This website is run by Simsandsonselectric, trading at simsandsonselectric.co as Sims & Sons Electric and Plumbing. We are a residential and light-commercial electrical contractor that also takes plumbing work, and we are based at 1338 W Eddy St, Chicago, Illinois 60657, United States. That puts the shop in Lakeview, on the North Side, which is where most of our van miles start.

Family firm means something practical. The people on your job know each other's habits. The older hand checks the younger one's terminations; the younger one is usually the one in the crawlspace. Nobody is a subcontractor we met last Tuesday.

We do not publish a founding year, a crew count or a tally of jobs on this site, and we will not make one up to look bigger. What we will tell you is what a job involves, in amps and gauge and gallons, before you agree to it.

Chicago housing is its own animal. Greystones with 60 amp fuse boxes. Frame cottages with cloth-wrapped wire that was fine in 1940 and has been drying out in the walls ever since. Galvanized supply lines rusted to half their bore. Courtyard buildings with a shut-off on every riser and nobody sure which one feeds which unit. The city also requires most residential wiring to run in metal conduit, which most of the country does not, and that changes how long a job takes and what it costs. We price to that reality instead of pretending it is the suburbs.

Two Sims & Sons tradesmen pulling new wiring in a kitchen under renovation — **Kitchen rewire**One feeds wire through the ceiling, one checks the box

02What the business does

Electrical first, plumbing second. The phone gets answered at any hour.

Here is the work we take, in terms you can check against any other electrician near you in Chicago.

Trade one

Electrical

Most of our hours. Emergency repair at any hour, service and panel upgrades, rewiring of old housing stock, and dedicated circuits. All of it run in conduit where Chicago code calls for it.

Dead circuits, burning smell, tripped main, storm damage
60 or 100 amp service to 200 amp, meter socket coordinated with ComEd
Knob-and-tube and cloth wiring replaced in EMT
EV charger circuits on a dedicated 240V line

Electrical work and price bases

Trade two

Plumbing

A narrower list, done properly. Leaks, burst and frozen pipes, and water heater replacement. Not sewer excavation, not new-build rough-ins.

Burst and frozen pipe repair, copper or PEX, pressure tested
40 or 50 gallon water heaters, gas or electric
Venting and expansion tank checked on every install
Seized gate valves swapped for full-port ball valves

Plumbing work and price bases

Everything is quoted on inquiry. Emergency work is a call-out charge plus time and materials, stated on arrival. Planned work gets a fixed written quote after a site visit. Nothing is sold or paid for on this website.

03How a job runs

From your call to the city inspector signing off.

This is a planned job, a panel upgrade say. An emergency skips straight to step five, with the price basis stated at the door.

You call or send the job.
We ask what you have now: fuses or breakers, how old the building is, what you want to add. A photo of the panel with the door open helps. We still do not quote a panel upgrade over the phone.
Day one
Site visit.
We look at the meter, the service drop, the existing panel and the route the conduit has to take. For plumbing, the tank, the flue and where the main sits.
Booked at a time that suits you
Written scope and price.
What is in, line by line, and what is not. The price covers the panel, the breakers, the conduit, the permit and the inspection visit. It does not cover drywall patching, and we say so up front.
After the visit, by email
Permit pulled, ComEd coordinated.
We file with the city. Where the meter or service drop is involved, we schedule the disconnect and reconnect with ComEd so the house is not dark longer than it has to be.
Before work day
The work.
Drop cloths down, power or water off only as long as needed, conduit run square and strapped. Old material hauled away.
Work day
Inspection.
We meet the city inspector. If anything is flagged, we come back and correct it. Getting the work through inspection is part of the job we quoted.
When the city schedules it

04What we will not do

Three lines we do not cross.

We do not quote a panel upgrade over the phone.We need to see the meter, the service drop and the existing panel. A phone number given blind is either padded or wrong.
We do not run Romex where Chicago code calls for conduit.It is faster and cheaper, which is why some people do it. It also fails inspection and leaves you paying twice.
We do not leave a burst-pipe call with the water still on.Even if the repair has to wait for a part, the line is isolated before we go. Otherwise the job is not finished, it is postponed.

05Reach a person

Call 312-282-1170. Someone picks up.

The phone is answered around the clock, every day, for emergencies: no power, a burning smell, water coming through a ceiling. At 3 a.m. it is a person, not a menu.

For planned work, quotes and anything about your data, email [email protected]. Email is read during the working day and answered by the same people who do the work. If it is urgent, do not email. Ring.

Post reaches us at 1338 W Eddy St, Chicago, Illinois 60657. The full inquiry form, with job type and details, is on the contact page.

Old wire, old pipes, one call.

For a scheduled job, send the details and we book a site visit.

Call 312-282-1170