About
Willfish Construction LLC is a licensed electrical contractor in Wichita, KS, specialising in panel faults and service changes since 2009. Call (316) 616-4692.
Willfish Construction started in 2009 as a general contractor, and panel work was the part of every remodel that other trades quietly hoped somebody else would handle. Open a 1968 board in a College Hill kitchen renovation and you are no longer doing a kitchen.
That became the business. Not because panels are glamorous, but because they were where homeowners were being told the least and charged the most. A board that needed a lug torqued and a bar cleaned was routinely being quoted as a full service change.
Wichita housing made the specialism obvious. The median house here went up in 1974 and about one in five predates 1950, which means a great deal of the city is running boards that were sized for a household with a fraction of today's load. Some of those boards are perfectly sound and need a component. Others carry a name on the door that no amount of repair makes safe. Telling those two apart is the whole job.
The company works out of a yard on N Hydraulic Street, holds an electrical trade licence with MABCD, and carries general liability and workers compensation on every job. No electrician here is paid on what a customer spends.
Standards
No panel gets a verdict until the cover is off and thermal readings have been taken across the bus, the lugs and every breaker connection. A recommendation made from a photograph of a panel door is an opinion, not an assessment.
Roughly half the boards we are called out to look at need a component rather than a replacement. We fit the component. Nobody here earns more by talking you into a service change you do not need.
Every termination goes to the manufacturer's specification with a calibrated wrench. Undertightened lugs are the most common panel fault we find, and overtightened ones are the second. Both damage the connection, and neither can be judged by feel.
Permits through MABCD, inspections booked, Evergy disconnects coordinated on service changes, and the documentation handed to you at the end. You are never asked to pull a permit in your own name.
Who does the work
A licensed electrician on the Willfish payroll, in a marked truck, with the test equipment a panel call needs. No subcontractors, no salesperson riding along, and no apprentice sent to a live board on their own.
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Martin Willfish
Owner · Master electrician
Started the company in 2009 doing service changes on the north side. Still takes the panels nobody else wants to open, which by now means most of the Federal Pacific boards left in Sedgwick County.
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Curtis Ambrose
Lead electrician · Diagnostics
Sixteen years on residential service work. The one who will spend forty minutes with a thermal camera rather than quote a board he has not measured.
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Ray Estrada
Service electrician · Panels and subpanels
Came up through commercial work, which is where the habit of torquing every lug to specification rather than to feel came from. It has stuck.
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Bethany Kohl
Permits and scheduling
Files with MABCD, books the inspections, and coordinates the Evergy disconnect on service changes. If your job has a permit number, she has it.
Permits and code
Swapping a breaker for the same type does not. Almost everything else on a panel does, and the permit comes from MABCD. Here is where the line sits and who is responsible for what.
Replacing a breaker with one of the same rating and type. That is genuinely the whole list at panel level. Everything beyond it is permitted work.
Panel replacement, panel relocation, service changes and upgrades, subpanels, new circuits, and any work at the meter or service entrance. Solar PV in this jurisdiction must be carried out by a licensed electrical contractor.
The Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department, at 271 W 3rd St N, Suite 101 in Wichita, on (316) 660-1840. MABCD covers the City of Wichita and Sedgwick County, including the smaller cities that contract with the county.
The 2023 National Electrical Code with local amendments, enforced here since January 1, 2025. On a panel replacement that edition governs breaker types, working clearance in front of the board, grounding electrode conductors and bonding at the service.
Any service change means the utility disconnects and reconnects at the meter. That has to be scheduled, and it is the part that decides your calendar rather than the electrical work itself. We book it, not you.
The contractor. Always. If anyone asks you to pull an electrical permit in your own name, there are only two explanations: they cannot pull it themselves, or they want the liability sitting with you. Both are reasons to call somebody else.
Andover, Augusta and Rose Hill sit in Butler County, outside MABCD's jurisdiction, and permits there are issued locally by the city. Contractors working across the county line get this wrong regularly. We confirm the route before starting.
Common on subpanels, added circuits and hot tub feeders. Unpermitted does not automatically mean unsafe, and we will not pretend it does. It does mean nobody inspected it, which is what a buyer's inspector will say. Better to find out now than during a negotiation.
Coverage
Switch the main off if it is hot or you can smell it, then call. We hold same-day slots back every weekday for exactly this, and you get a fixed price once we have taken readings rather than a range over the phone.