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the barn the quonset the machine shed the calving barn grain bins the grain dryer aeration fans the auger the roller mill the feed mixer heat lamps the brooder

Every one of these
has wire in it.

stock waterers tank heaters the trough de-icer the fence energizer the well pump the pressure tank the pump house the yard light the pole light the driveway light corral lights block heaters plug-in posts the welder the plasma cutter the air compressor the hoist the overhead door the shop heater exhaust fans high-bay lights

Most electricians in Red Deer will wire your house. We wire the yard — and we keep it running when the grid drops.

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Family owned, in Red Deer County · In the electrical trade since 2015

vapour-proof fixtures the freezer on the porch the deep freeze the milk cooler the vacuum pump the furnace the heat pump in-floor heat baseboard heaters the hot tub the EV charger the truck charger the generator the transfer switch the main panel the sub-panel the meter socket the service mast the weatherhead the buried feeder direct-burial cable the ground rod the bonding jumper sixty-amp service aluminum branch circuits knob-and-tube rodent-chewed romex corroded terminations stray voltage the sump pump the septic lift pump the bin monitor the dusk-to-dawn photocell the gate opener the RV plug the chicken coop greenhouse fans the cattle oiler the livestock scale the hay elevator shelterbelt lights smoke alarms the surge protector

The barn

A barn is the worst room an electrical system can live in. Humidity. Dust. Ammonia and hydrogen sulphide eating at every connection. And rodents, who chew cable insulation to wear their teeth down — until enough is gone that two conductors find each other.

Inside an old wooden barn at dusk: rough beams, dust in the air, old wiring stapled along a joist and a single bare bulb burning.
Old wiring, a barn full of dust, and something living in the walls.

When a barn burns, the wiring is the most common reason why. Ontario’s agriculture ministry puts electrical faults at about 40% of barn fires — the single largest cause. A national study of barn fires found 76% were electrical or mechanical.

A straight answer

Nobody knows how often it happens in Alberta. The only national count is a tally of news coverage, and its own authors say the western numbers are far too low because only the worst fires get reported. So we won’t quote you odds.

A barn fire is rare. It is also total. And the leading cause is the one thing you can take off the table in advance.

The annual barn inspection

Once a year, under load, by a licensed contractor. That isn’t our idea — it’s what Ontario’s agriculture ministry tells farmers to do, and nobody in Central Alberta sells it. So we do. We walk the whole system with the load on, photograph what we find, and hand you a list in two columns: fix now, and this can wait.

  • Service, subpanels, and every outbuilding on the yard
  • Rodent damage, corrosion, heat at the terminations
  • Heaters, waterers, fans — the loads that never get turned off
  • A written record you can hand your insurer
Book a barn walkthrough

Also: new outbuildings · lighting retrofits · troubleshooting · grain and feed equipment circuits

The shop

The post-frame crew puts up the shell and drives away. What’s left is a bare building and a decision you only get to make once: how much power to run to it.

Almost every shop we get called back to was sized for the day it was built — not for the welder, the compressor, the hoist, the plasma table and the truck charger that showed up afterwards. Trenching twice costs more than sizing it right the first time.

So we’ll stand in the empty building with you and talk about what’s going in it. Then we run the service, the subpanel, the lighting and the circuits to suit — and we leave room.

Sub-service to outbuildings · welder and compressor circuits · high-bay lighting · equipment charging

The panel

Nobody upgrades a panel because they want a panel. They do it because of the hot tub. The truck charger. The air conditioning that finally went in. The suite above the garage. The panel is never the reason — it’s the thing standing in the way of the reason.

Farmhouses carry their own version of this. If the place was wired before 1970 it may still be on knob-and-tube, aluminum, or a sixty-amp service. The insurance trade press is blunt about what that means: most insurers treat those as high risk, which “prevents clients with those systems from easily obtaining home insurance.”

— Canadian Underwriter, February 2024

Bring us the thing you actually want. We’ll tell you what the house needs to say yes to it.

Panel and service upgrades · EV chargers · surge protection · renovations · new construction

The pole

A yard light isn’t decoration. It’s whether you can see the ice between the house and the barn at six in the morning, and whether the yard looks occupied at two in the morning.

We hang yard lights, set the poles, light the driveway and the corrals, and run the landscape lighting around the house — on circuits built to survive a winter here.

The waterer

A cow hesitates at the bowl. She’s nervous in the parlour. Production slides and there’s no reason for it. You blame genetics, you blame stress, you blame the ration — and the power company tells you a couple of volts is nothing.

Beef cattle at a steel watering bowl in a snowy corral at dusk, breath steaming, one animal hesitating at the bowl.
She can feel something you can’t.

A few volts between two things an animal can touch at once is not nothing. Cattle feel voltages a person never will. It is measurable, it is findable, and it is fixable — and it takes an electrician who has gone looking for it before.

Ask the other electricians in Red Deer about stray voltage. We’ll wait.

The transfer switch

The reason people put off a generator isn’t the price. It’s that you can picture the frozen waterers and the dark calving barn perfectly well, but you have no idea what the odds are — so you decide again next year.

A plain steel standby generator on a concrete pad against a barn wall in the snow at dusk, its conduit running into the wall, one warm window lit above it.
The window above it is still lit. That’s the whole product.

Forget the odds. Decide what has to stay on: the well pump and the waterers, the heat in the calving barn, the freezers, the furnace. Then we size the generator to that list, install the transfer switch, and the changeover happens whether you’re standing there or you’re in Arizona.

Nobody in Central Alberta sells both halves of this. The shops that wire barns don’t sell generators. The shop that sells generators has never used the word “barn.”

Standby generator installation · automatic and manual transfer switches · load sizing · whole-yard backup

The truck

Innovative Design Electric is a young company — we started in 2023 — run by a family that lives in Red Deer County, on the same gravel you do. Before that, ten years in the trade.

What that gets you is an electrician who will drive out, who will tell you what can wait, and who will still be the one who picks up the phone next time.

Commercial work too: new projects, lighting upgrades, circuit installation and upgrades.

Left empty on purpose

The name on the truck.

This is where your name goes, and your face, and the first three reviews you ask a customer for. It’s the most valuable space on this page, and it’s the one thing we couldn’t build for you.

We could have invented a testimonial. Every farmer in this county would have known.

Note for the owner: search “Innovative Electric reviews” and you’ll find a company in Scottsdale, one in Oklahoma City, and one in New Jersey. Not one job you’ve done since 2023 is findable. Asking after each job is the cheapest thing on this page.

A weathered barn on a snow-covered Alberta field at dusk. A single yard light burns on a utility pole, and the service drop runs from the pole to the barn.

Red Deer County, a little after five.

Tell us what’s on the yard.

Call, or send a photo of the panel and the building it’s in. You’ll get a straight answer about what it needs and what it doesn’t.

Call403 872 8844 Emailinnovativedesignelectric@gmail.com
HoursMonday to Friday, 07:30 – 16:30
WhereRed Deer County — serving all of Central Alberta