Free Electrical Calculators and Tools for New Hampshire
Free tools for the questions that come before a quote. Whether your service has room for what you are adding, what a job is likely to cost, and what size of thing you actually need.
Tools You Can Use Now
Will My Service Take It?
Work out whether your existing service has room for an EV charger, a heat pump, a hot tub or an addition, before you buy anything.
What Will It Cost?
Rough ranges for a rewire, an EV charger, a panel upgrade or backup power, and what moves the number.
What Size Generator Do I Need?
Pick the circuits you want running in an outage and get the size of unit that covers them.
Is My Panel One of the Bad Ones?
Identify a Federal Pacific, Zinsco or Challenger panel from the front, and find out what the concern actually is. Named "bad" and not "recalled": none of them ever were, and the page explains why that matters.
Why Does My Breaker Keep Tripping?
A few questions to tell you whether this is something to check yourself, something to book, or something to deal with now.
LED Retrofit Payback
For businesses: fixture count, hours and rate, and what a retrofit saves against what it costs.
What Each of These Calculators Actually Answers
Why These Exist at All
Most people calling an electrician have already spent a while trying to work out whether they need one. These are built for that part: the hour before the phone call, when the question is still whether this is a problem and roughly what it would involve.
They are free, none of them asks for your details before showing you the answer, and where the honest answer is that somebody has to look at the building, they say so rather than routing you to a form.
Working Out Whether Your Service Has Room
This is the most common question behind everything else, because almost every modern addition to a house is a load the house was not wired for.
The load calculator runs the Article 220 method on your house, against what it will be rather than what it is, and tells you whether an EV charger, a heat pump, a hot tub or an addition fits inside your existing service.
Our guide to what size electrical service a house needs explains the calculation in plain English, and where the answer is that you are short, panel and service upgrades covers what that job involves.
Identifying a Panel Before You Panic About It
Federal Pacific, Zinsco and Challenger panels turn up regularly in New Hampshire houses, and the internet is not a calm place to research them.
The panel identification tool works from the label and the breaker handles, tells you which type you have, and sets out what the actual concern is. It says "bad" rather than "recalled" deliberately: none of them were ever recalled, and correcting that is more useful than repeating it.
Does my electrical panel need replacing works through age, brand, capacity and condition, which are four separate questions people tend to collapse into one.
Working Out Why a Breaker Keeps Tripping
A breaker that trips is almost always doing its job, and the useful question is which of three things it is telling you.
The breaker triage tool asks a few questions and tells you whether you are looking at an overload you can sort out yourself, a fault that needs booking, or something to stop using now. It is willing to tell you it is probably nothing, which most such tools are not.
Our guide to why breakers trip covers the rest, and where it turns out to be the circuit rather than the load, that is an inspection and repair.
Sizing Backup Power From the Circuits You Need
Generator sizing is normally quoted at you from the outside in. This does it the other way round.
The generator sizing tool asks which circuits you actually want running during an outage, counts the motor starting loads properly, and gives you the size of unit that covers them. The answer is usually smaller than people expect, particularly once you decide the whole house does not need to run.
Standby generators explained covers what each option genuinely protects, and generators and backup power covers the installation.
What an LED Retrofit Saves a Business
The one tool here built for commercial rather than residential, and the one with the clearest payback behind it.
The LED payback calculator takes a real fixture count, the hours they run and your own rate, and works out the annual saving and how long it takes to cover whatever you have been quoted. It costs your energy rather than our labor, so it works against anyone's quote.
It deliberately excludes maintenance savings, utility rebates and reduced cooling load, all of which shorten the payback. The number it gives is a floor rather than a sales figure. Working out an LED retrofit payback explains what belongs in the calculation, and commercial lighting covers the work.
What These Tools Deliberately Do Not Do
They do not ask for an email address to show you a result. A tool that holds the answer hostage is a lead form wearing a calculator's clothes.
They do not tell you to do electrical work yourself. Knowing what you are looking at and doing it are different things, and the second one is permitted and inspected for good reasons.
And they do not pretend to replace looking at the building. Every one of them is working from what you type in, which cannot include what is actually behind the wall. Where that is the deciding factor, the tool says so instead of guessing confidently.
Common Questions About These Electrical Calculators
Are These Tools Free?
Yes, all of them, and none of them ask for your details to show you the answer. You get the result on the page. There is no email wall and nothing is sent anywhere.
How Accurate Is the Load Calculator?
It runs the same Article 220 method an electrician uses, on the figures you give it. That makes it accurate enough to tell you whether you are comfortably inside your service, obviously past it, or close enough that it needs checking properly. The last case is the one worth a phone call.
Can I Rely on These Instead of an Electrician?
For deciding whether to worry, yes. For the work itself, no. They tell you what you are probably looking at and what it would involve, which is what most people actually want before they pick up the phone. None of them can see what is behind your wall.
Why Does the Panel Tool Say "Bad" Rather Than "Recalled"?
Because none of those panels were ever recalled. The CPSC investigation into Federal Pacific closed in 1983 on resources rather than on findings, and "recalled" has been repeated ever since. The concern is real, the word is wrong, and the page explains the difference.
Do the Tools Work on a Phone?
Yes. Every one of them puts a live answer under the header as you work through the questions, so you are not answering four things blind before you see anything.
Which Tool Should I Start With?
Depends what prompted it. Adding an EV charger, heat pump or hot tub, start with the load calculator. A breaker that keeps going, the breaker triage. An old panel you have been told about, the panel identification. A business looking at lighting costs, the LED payback.