Older homes have plenty of charms, but knob-and-tube wiring isn’t one of them. Modernizing these antiquated electrical systems can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of home improvement projects, especially HVAC and appliance upgrades.
That concern is what led to the creation last November of Mr. Poppy Electric, a Berkeley-based electrical contractor firm founded by longtime friends Tenzin Soepa and Andrei Smith, both Berkeley High School graduates.
The two, along with a third Berkeley High classmate, had co-founded a heat pump installation company in 2023 called 1-888-Heat-Pumps. As sales reps for the heat pump company, the biggest challenge they encountered was the enormous cost of electrical work. Older home electrical systems typically can’t handle the high loads of heat pumps or other modern amenities, like EV chargers and induction stoves.
“We kept seeing the same issue come up,” Soepa said. “Homeowners were ready to move forward with upgrades, but the electrical infrastructure was often the limiting factor.”
According to Smith, the challenge wasn’t only technical. “A lot of people didn’t know who to trust,” he said. “Especially when it came to older homes that need careful, thoughtful work.”
The pair wanted to offer an affordable, customer-friendly option for electrician services.
How they save money
The lightbulb moment came when they were trying to make the economics of a new heat pump system work for the owner of a historic home. What should have been a $20,000 heat pump installation had ballooned into a $60,000 quote — $40,000 of that for electrical upgrades. Determined to make the price work for the homeowner, Smith and Soepa went about seeking out and eliminating any inefficiencies in the plan.
“We found that of the $40,000 that we were quoted for electrical work, $20,000 was going toward ripping out and replacing drywall,” Soepa recalled. “So the electrician was paying $200 per hour to the drywall company, which was paying their laborers $30 per hour. We realized that if an electrician could take that work in house (hiring drywallers), they could save a lot of money for customers.”
Another source of the high cost was vendors not doing their homework.
“Some of the electricians we talked to wanted to move the electrical panel to the other side of the house because they thought that’s what PG&E required,” Soepa continued. “They were quoting five months and $10,000-$15,000.
“Well, we read the rules and we talked our plans over with PG&E, and we found a solution that satisfied code requirements at a fraction of the price and could be completed in three weeks. The electricians we talked to didn’t think to do that, because they’re just not as skilled in navigating bureaucracy.”
Electrical expertise plus customer service
Satisfied that there was ample opportunity to bring down the cost of electrician work while still turning a profit, Smith and Soepa brought on Tenzin (“Tee”) Fablay, a licensed electrician they’d partnered with on over 100 heat pump projects. Tee brought on his cousin, Tenzin Choenyi, a journeyman electrician, who also happened to be a Berkeley High alum, and former teammate of Soepa’s. The two tradesmen bring more than two decades of electrical experience to the company.
Mr. Poppy Electric came together as a partnership built around complementary strengths, said Soepa. Choenyi and Tee lead the technical side of the company and now have three trainee electricians, and two people doing drywall, patching and painting. Soepa and Smith focus on planning, communication and helping homeowners understand what their homes need and why.
“We are very competitively priced and also offer what I believe is not only the friendliest, but also the most transparent customer service in the industry,” Smith said. “We document everything. There’s hundreds of photos from each job to show customers ‘this is what we said we’d do, and here’s what we did.’ ”
In addition to knob-and-tube replacement, Mr. Poppy specializes in upgrading electrical main panels to handle the load of a modern, electrified home. The company also offers budget-friendly quick-turn services, such as induction stove conversion and EV charging port installation. (Both types of equipment require double the voltage of a standard 120-volt plug.)
With Mr. Poppy, Smith and Soepa are continuing a mission of accelerating electrification that started for them with 1-888-Heat-Pumps.
“People want things like heat pumps and electric appliances in their home because they’re better for the environment and they’re safer,” Soepa said. “By making electrical work more accessible, we hope we can help facilitate the process of replacing fossil fuels with sustainable alternatives.”
