The Electricians Northeast Ohio Homeowners Call Back
We are a residential-focused electrical contractor working across seven Northeast Ohio counties. We do the unglamorous work that keeps old houses safe and new loads supplied.
Raber Electric is a residential electrical contractor. Panels, lighting and generators - it is written on the side of the truck because it is genuinely what we do all day.
That focus is a deliberate choice. A contractor splitting time between commercial fit-outs and homeowners is guessing at your 1954 Parma bungalow. We are not. We know what the panel looks like behind that cover, what the utility will want before they cut the service, and which building department is going to inspect it.
Northeast Ohio is a genuinely distinctive place to be an electrician. Cuyahoga County's median home dates to 1957 and more than a quarter of its housing predates 1940. Drive twenty minutes south-west to Medina and the median jumps to 1984. Head east into Geauga and four out of five households are on a private well, in a county that averages over 120 inches of snow. Those are three completely different service calls, and we work all three.
One crew, seven counties.
How We Operate
Four Things We Do Not Compromise On
01
We Pull The Permit
Here is something most homeowners in this state do not know: Ohio has no residential electrician licence. The Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board licenses electrical contractors for commercial work only - the Legislative Service Commission's own description says the Board does not require a licence for residential projects. Residential qualification is set locally, through city or county contractor registration.
Which means a homeowner in Cleveland can legally be sold electrical work by someone with no state credential at all. We hold the state contractor licence anyway, we register with the local building department, and we pull the permit in your name so the inspection record follows the house.
02
We Quote Before We Start
You get a number before a tool comes out of the van. No hourly meter running while somebody drives to the supply house. If we open a wall and find something genuinely unexpected - and in a hundred-year-old house that happens - we stop, show you, and re-quote before continuing.
03
We Size It Honestly
Not every house needs a 200-amp service. Ohio has no rule that forces an upgrade at any particular amperage - what forces it is an Article 220 load calculation your service actually fails. We run the numbers and show you. If 100 amps carries your house, we will tell you that and take the smaller job.
04
We Answer At 2am
Electrical emergencies do not keep business hours. Burning smells, dead circuits, water in the panel, a service mast pulled off the wall by an ice-loaded limb - these are the calls that matter most, and they almost never come in on a Tuesday afternoon.
Our Standard
We Work To The 2023 NEC - And We Tell You What Changed
Ohio's Residential Code adopted the 2023 National Electrical Code on 15 April 2024 (the commercial Building Code moved on 1 March 2024). It brought a meaningfully expanded set of GFCI requirements under 210.8, which is why homeowners keep asking us why a replacement receptacle suddenly needs GFCI protection when the old one did not.
Ohio also amended the code in eight places for dwellings, and one of those amendments is worth knowing about:
Whole-home surge protection is not mandatory in Ohio. The 2020 NEC introduced section 230.67 requiring a surge protective device on all dwelling services, and the 2023 NEC carried it forward. Ohio amended 215.18(A), 225.42(A) and 230.67(A) so the requirement applies only "where provided as part of" the feeder or service supply - turning a mandate into a conditional.
Ohio Administrative Code 4101:8-34-01
We mention it because most national content gets this wrong, and because it puts the decision back on you. Given what PUCO has documented about equipment failures on the local grid, we think surge protection is worth buying even though the state does not make you. Your local building department can still require it - they are permitted to be stricter than the state, just not looser - so we check before quoting.
That is the level of detail we would want from a contractor working on our own house, so it is the level we give.
Receptacle work is where most of the 2023 GFCI changes actually land.
Coverage
Seven Counties, One Phone Number
From Avon Lake east to Madison, and south through Akron to Ravenna.
