How we think about coverage
Three regions, three very different electrical realities
A century old rowhome in Catasauqua, a warehouse fit out off Route 33, and a lake house in Kidder Township that nobody visits between November and April are three different jobs. They differ in housing age, in who issues the permit, in which utility owns the service point, and in what happens when the power goes out for three days.
This page lays out what we actually know about each community we serve, with sources, so you can see the reasoning rather than a list of city names. If your town is on this page, we work there regularly.
Lehigh and Northampton counties
Lehigh Valley
The Lehigh Valley is our home base. It is a dense mix of pre war city housing, mid century suburbs, historic boroughs along the Lehigh River, and a very large modern warehouse and light industrial base built on former steel land. That combination means one crew can go from a 60 amp fuse panel in a borough rowhome to a warehouse lighting retrofit in the same week.
Storms take the grid down here too
The March 2018 nor'easter left roughly 110,000 PPL customers without power across the region, and a December 2002 ice storm knocked out about 14,000 households for multiple days. Those events are the reason standby generators and whole home surge protection sell steadily in the Valley, not just in the mountains.
Permits are handled municipality by municipality
Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code lets each borough or township either run its own code office or contract a certified third party agency. In practice that means an electrical permit in Emmaus, Catasauqua, and Hellertown follows three different processes. We pull the permit under whichever office has jurisdiction.
Warehouse and logistics growth drives commercial demand
The Lehigh Valley Industrial Park was built on roughly 1,000 acres of former Bethlehem Steel land and now hosts large distribution tenants, including a 1,041,600 square foot Nike lease signed in 2021. Tenant fit outs, high bay LED retrofits, and equipment wiring follow that growth.
Two utilities, one region
PPL Electric Utilities is headquartered in Allentown and covers most of the Valley, while Met-Ed serves adjoining territory. Near the county edges the boundary matters for service upgrades and meter work, so we confirm the serving utility from the published territory list before scheduling a cut in.
Lehigh and Northampton counties
Allentown, PA
Lehigh County
The March 2018 nor'easter left roughly 110,000 PPL customers without power across the region, and a December 2002 ice storm knocked out about 14,000 households for multiple days. Those events are the reason standby generators and whole home surge protection sell steadily in the Valley, not just in the mountains.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
About 127,225 residents, which makes Allentown by far the largest single service area on this list.
Permits
Electrical and construction permits go through the City of Allentown Bureau of Building Standards and Safety at City Hall on Hamilton Street, submitted through the city's online portal.
Utility
Allentown sits inside PPL Electric Utilities territory, and PPL is headquartered here on Hausman Road.
Bethlehem, PA
Lehigh and Northampton counties
A city split between a protected historic core and one of the largest industrial redevelopment footprints in the state, which is exactly why residential and commercial work here look nothing alike.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Historic districts
The South Bethlehem Downtown Historic District was added to the National Register in 2005 with 288 contributing buildings, and the city maintains a South Bethlehem Historic Conservation Commission plus a Mount Airy conservation district with Certificate of Appropriateness review. Exterior fixtures, meter relocations, and service masts in those areas can require design review.
Inspections
Bethlehem runs its own Bureau of Code Enforcement with a staff electrical inspector rather than outsourcing to a third party agency.
Housing
The city commissioned a 2023 housing study documenting the age and condition of its housing supply, a useful reference point for anyone weighing a rewire against a targeted repair.
Easton, PA
Northampton County
A river city at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware, with a downtown built around Centre Square and a documented flood history that shapes how we place equipment.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
Roughly 29,739 residents with a median age of 31.6, a younger renter heavy profile than most of the boroughs around it.
Permits
The City of Easton Bureau of Codes administers UCC building, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing permits, filed through the city's OpenGov portal.
Whitehall, PA
Lehigh County
The Valley's retail spine. MacArthur Road concentrates more storefront, restaurant, and shopping center electrical load per mile than anywhere else we work.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Whitehall Township enforces the UCC through its own permitting and code enforcement office on MacArthur Road and uses a dedicated electrical permit application.
Coplay, PA
Lehigh County
A compact Lehigh River borough of tightly spaced older homes, where storm damage repairs and small lot service work are the everyday reality.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Whitehall Township enforces the UCC through its own permitting and code enforcement office on MacArthur Road and uses a dedicated electrical permit application.
Catasauqua, PA
Lehigh County
An old iron borough on the Lehigh with dense nineteenth century housing stock and a third party code office, so permitting timelines look different than in the neighboring cities.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Third party inspection framework
Pennsylvania's UCC allows municipalities to appoint certified third party agencies like this one, which is why borough to borough process varies across the Valley.
Northampton, PA
Northampton County
A Lehigh River borough of long standing single family and twin housing, where permits are required for essentially all electrical work, not only major projects.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Northampton Borough requires permits for construction plus all electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work, and a zoning permit alongside the building permit.
Utility boundary
Northampton sits near the PPL and Met-Ed boundary in Northampton County, so we confirm the serving utility from the published tariff territory before any service or meter work.
Nazareth, PA
Northampton County
A historic borough with a walkable core and surrounding single family neighborhoods that felt the 2018 nor'easter outages hard enough to make backup power a common conversation.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Nazareth Borough processes UCC construction permits through Barry Isett and Associates as its third party code and inspection agency.
Bath, PA
Northampton County
A small, essentially built out borough. Very little new construction means most of the electrical work here is upgrade, repair, and replacement inside existing homes.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
The Borough of Bath on South Walnut Street handles zoning and UCC permit applications directly and distinguishes between zoning only and full UCC review projects.
Emmaus, PA
Northampton County
A small, essentially built out borough. Very little new construction means most of the electrical work here is upgrade, repair, and replacement inside existing homes.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Inspections
Emmaus instructs applicants to call the borough directly for all electrical inspections rather than a third party agency.
Macungie, PA
Lehigh County
A borough where the permit application itself asks about flood plain location, a useful signal for where equipment should and should not be mounted.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
The Borough of Macungie issues its own zoning and UCC permits from Locust Street, and the application requires a flood plain disclosure.
Hellertown, PA
Northampton County
A Saucon Creek borough with a mix of older borough housing and newer development on the edges, permitted through a third party code agency.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Hellertown Borough's Zoning and Codes Department uses Barry Isett and Associates as its UCC third party code and inspection agency.
Center Valley, PA
Northampton County
A Saucon Creek borough with a mix of older borough housing and newer development on the edges, permitted through a third party code agency.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Upper Saucon Township, which contains Center Valley, handles building permits, zoning, and inspections in house through its Community Development Department.
Coopersburg, PA
Lehigh County
A Saucon Creek borough with a mix of older borough housing and newer development on the edges, permitted through a third party code agency.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Historic guidance
Coopersburg's zoning and permits page references adopted 2019 Historic Design Guidelines and a borough map of historic properties.
Lower Nazareth, PA
Northampton County
A township along the Route 33 and 248 corridor that has grown into a retail and business area, so residential and commercial calls run side by side here.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Lower Nazareth Township handles zoning permits in house, including accessory buildings, fences, home occupation, and signs, with building permits processed separately.
Monroe County
Pocono Mountains
Monroe County is a resort economy layered on top of older mountain housing. Long tree lined distribution lines, heavy snow and ice, short term rentals, and homes that sit empty for weeks at a time all change what good electrical work looks like. Backup power and freeze protection are not upsells here, they are how a house survives February.
Ice storms are the defining grid risk
Monroe County has a documented history of multi day ice storm outages. January 2005 left residents without power for days, and Winter Storm Riley in March 2018 knocked out about 12,372 of PPL's 67,822 Monroe County customers, a storm PPL called one of the ten worst on record.
Two utilities serve the county
Monroe County is served by both PPL Electric Utilities and Met-Ed. Confirming which one serves the address is the first step on any service upgrade or new service here.
There is no countywide building department
Monroe County does not run a countywide UCC permitting office. Each borough and township administers its own permits and inspections, often through a certified third party agency, so the process changes from one township line to the next.
Wells and unoccupied homes raise the stakes
A well pump does not run without power, and an unheated vacation home in a February outage is a burst pipe waiting to happen. That combination is the practical case for a properly sized standby generator and automatic transfer switch on mountain properties.
Communities we serve in the Pocono Mountains
Stroudsburg, PA
Monroe County
The Monroe County seat, with a dense older borough core and a Main Street commercial corridor that carries the county's downtown retail and restaurant load.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
About 5,898 residents with a median age near 41, a small borough that functions as the county's civic and downtown center.
Utility & Permits
Served by PPL Electric or Met-Ed depending on the address, with permits and inspections administered by the borough rather than the county.
East Stroudsburg, PA
Monroe County
A borough with a large rental and multi unit component alongside single family housing, which puts steady pressure on panels, subpanels, and code compliance work
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
Population, housing, and income detail for the borough is published in Census QuickFacts.
Utility & Permits
Same dual utility picture and municipal level permitting as the rest of Monroe County.
Mount Pocono, PA
Monroe County
High elevation, exposed, and one of the first places in the county to lose power in an ice event, which is why standby generators are a normal part of the conversation here.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
About 3,072 to 3,086 residents with a median age near 47, and a median property value of $241,100 in 2024.
Utility & Permits
PPL or Met-Ed depending on address, permitted at the borough level.
Tannersville, PA
Monroe County
The commercial heart of Pocono Township and home to Camelback Mountain Resort, with a regulated short term rental market that brings its own inspection and safety expectations.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
Population, housing, and income detail for the borough is published in Census QuickFacts.
Utility & Permits
Same dual utility picture and municipal level permitting as the rest of Monroe County.
Carbon, Wayne, and western Monroe counties
Pocono Lake Region
This is second home country. Private lake associations, gated communities, cabins built for summer use and later winterized, and owners who live somewhere else most of the year. The electrical priorities shift accordingly: unattended freeze protection, generator reliability, remote monitoring, and work that can be scheduled and verified without the owner standing there.
Seasonal housing is the norm, not the exception
In the Lake Harmony ZIP code, seasonal housing accounts for about 62 percent of the housing stock, with a median age of 57 across roughly 306 households. Around Lake Wallenpaupack, local reporting describes thousands of vacation homes whose owners arrive for the season.
Private associations set their own rules
Communities such as Emerald Lakes and Wallenpaupack Lake Estates are private, association governed developments with their own bylaws, rules, and gate access procedures. We work within the association's contractor and access requirements as well as the municipal permit.
Low density means long, exposed lines
Kidder Township covers nearly 69 square miles with only about 27 people per square mile. Long rural distribution runs through wooded terrain are slower to restore after an ice event than a city block, which lengthens every outage.
Short term rentals are regulated here
Tobyhanna Township, which includes Pocono Lake, adopted a short term rental ordinance in 2022. If a lake house is rented out, its electrical condition is part of keeping that permit clean.
Communities we serve in the Pocono Lake Region
Jim Thorpe, PA
Carbon County
A nineteenth century town whose historic architecture is the entire tourism draw, which makes careful, minimally invasive electrical work inside old buildings the default here.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
About 4,540 residents across roughly 2,375 housing units, with a median age of 48.7 and a median property value near $209,800.
Permits
Jim Thorpe Borough runs its own UCC permitting, plan review, and inspection process through the zoning and codes administration office.
Lake Harmony, PA
Carbon County
A predominantly seasonal lake community in Kidder Township where most owners are not on site, so reliability and remote peace of mind drive nearly every project.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Permits
Kidder Township administers its own UCC and contracts Building Inspection Underwriters of Pennsylvania for permit issuance, plan review, and inspections. A township zoning permit must be issued before the building permit is processed, which affects project scheduling.
Emerald Lakes, PA
Monroe County
A predominantly seasonal lake community in Kidder Township where most owners are not on site, so reliability and remote peace of mind drive nearly every project.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Association governance
Emerald Lakes is a private, patrolled residential and recreational community governed by the Emerald Lakes Association with published bylaws and rules, registered on Long Pond Road in Pocono Summit.
Jurisdiction
The community falls under Monroe County's municipal permitting framework and the county's PPL and Met-Ed utility split.
Pocono Lake, PA
Monroe County
Part of Tobyhanna Township along Route 940, mixing year round households with long standing summer colony property, including the historic Pocono Lake Preserve.
What we get called for here
Local details and sources
Population
Pocono Lake is located in Tobyhanna Township, which covers about 52 square miles and roughly 8,290 residents, including the villages of Blakeslee, Pocono Pines, and Pocono Summit in addition to Pocono Lake.
Not sure your town is covered?
We dispatch daily across the Lehigh Valley and into the Pocono Mountains, including the surrounding lake communities. Tell us where the property is and what is going on, and we will tell you straight whether it is a fit.