Choosing a contractor
Ten questions to ask a generator installer
A whole-house standby generator is a permitted electrical job and a permitted gas job on a machine you expect to keep for fifteen years. Most of what separates a good installation from an expensive one is decided before anybody digs. These are the questions that surface it — each with the failure it prevents, and each verifiable without taking anyone's word for it, including ours.
Who actually holds the electrical license?
Ask for: Ask for the TECL number and the name it is registered to, then search it at tdlr.texas.gov.
In Texas an electrical contractor works under a licensed master electrician, and the license is issued to a specific legal entity. The company on your quote and the company on the license are not always the same.
What goes wrong without it: You sign with a sales company that holds no license, the work is done by whoever it hired that week, and your recourse runs against a business the state has no record of licensing.
Us: TECL 40628, held by UTS ElectricPros, LLC. That is the same legal entity that sells you the generator.
Is the seller an authorized dealer for the brand?
Ask for: Check the manufacturer's own dealer locator, not the seller's website. Cummins, Generac and Kohler all publish one.
Factory warranty on a home standby unit is tied to the equipment being sold and commissioned through an authorized channel.
What goes wrong without it: Gray-market equipment bought through a third party. It arrives, it runs, and the warranty claim in year two is denied because the unit was never registered by an authorized dealer.
Us: Authorized Cummins Residential and Light Commercial dealer. The unit is registered to you at commissioning.
Does the company selling it also install it?
Ask for: Ask directly: are your crews employees, and is the installing company the same legal entity as the selling company?
A generator install is an electrical job and a gas job on a permanent piece of home equipment. Warranty on the machine and warranty on the workmanship are different promises, and they are often made by different companies.
What goes wrong without it: In year three the unit will not transfer. The seller points at the installer, the installer points at the manufacturer, and the subcontractor who actually ran the gas line is no longer trading.
Us: One company. UTS ElectricPros, LLC is the dealer and the license holder, and it installs under its assumed name Clements Electric — the crews are ours and have been working in DFW since 1982.
Will they quote the installation without seeing the property?
Ask for: Ask for the installed price over the phone and see what happens.
Installed cost is driven by things nobody can see from a desk: distance from the pad to the panel, gas meter capacity, line length and sizing, service and panel condition, and what the city wants.
What goes wrong without it: A confident phone number becomes a change order once someone measures the gas run. The quote you compared against was never the price.
Us: We will not quote an installation sight-unseen. The survey is free, a licensed electrician walks the property, and the number you get afterwards is fixed and in writing.
Is the quote itemized?
Ask for: Ask to see equipment priced separately from labor, materials and permits.
Home standby equipment is sold at a published minimum advertised price, so every authorized dealer shows the same figure for the same model. What varies between quotes is the installation.
What goes wrong without it: One number for everything. You cannot tell whether you are comparing installation scope or being quietly marked up on the box, and you cannot compare two bids at all.
Us: Equipment at the published Cummins price, installation quoted as its own line after the survey. The equipment price on this site is the price you pay for the machine.
Who pulls the permit and meets the inspector?
Ask for: Ask whether the permit is in their name or yours, and who stands in the driveway when the inspector arrives.
Texas Local Government Code § 229.102 limits what a Texas municipality may impose on the installation and inspection of a residential backup system at or under 50kW, but the permit, the inspection and the utility release are still how a job gets legally closed out.
What goes wrong without it: "Permit by owner" on the paperwork. You are now the responsible party for an electrical and gas installation you did not perform, and an unpermitted generator is a problem that surfaces when you sell the house.
Us: We pull the permits, we meet the inspector, and re-inspection is at our cost if something needs correcting.
Has anyone checked the gas meter?
Ask for: Ask what the existing meter delivers, what the unit needs under load, and whether the line will be pressure-tested.
This is the single biggest swing in an installed price. A standby generator is usually the largest gas appliance a house has ever had, and an existing meter and line are often sized for a furnace, a range and a water heater.
What goes wrong without it: A quote that assumes the existing gas line is adequate. It is not discovered until install day, and meter upsizing runs on the utility's timeline, not yours.
Us: Meter capacity and line sizing are part of the free survey, before you have a number. Gas work is pressure-tested and inspected.
Is the unit commissioned under load?
Ask for: Ask whether the handover includes a real transfer test with the house on the generator, or only a start-up.
A generator that starts in a driveway has proved almost nothing. The failure that matters is the transfer switch not transferring, or the set not holding load when the air conditioning restarts.
What goes wrong without it: It ran fine on install day. The first genuine outage is when you discover it will not carry the house.
Us: Commissioned under actual load, with a walkthrough of the controls, the exercise cycle and the maintenance interval before we leave.
What happens in years three to five?
Ask for: Ask what the maintenance interval is, who performs it, and when parts coverage and labor coverage each end.
Air-cooled warranty commonly covers parts for longer than it covers travel and labor. The years after labor coverage ends are the years a neglected unit fails.
What goes wrong without it: An unbudgeted service bill, or worse, no service at all until the machine does not start during a storm. Batteries and stale fuel cause more no-starts than any component.
Us: Published maintenance scope and a service plan, performed by the same crews that installed it, on genuine Cummins parts.
How long have the people doing the work been trading?
Ask for: Ask how long the installing company has operated in the Metroplex, and go and read its reviews rather than the testimonials on its website.
A workmanship warranty is only worth the trading life of the company that wrote it, and a generator is a fifteen to twenty year piece of equipment.
What goes wrong without it: A two-year-old company writes you a ten-year workmanship promise. Both of you know which one expires first.
Us: Clements Electric has traded in Dallas-Fort Worth since 1982 and holds 4.7 stars from 500+ Google reviews. That rating belongs to the installer, which is the company whose crews do your work.
The three that matter most
If you only ask three, ask the first three. They test one thing from three directions: whether the company selling you the generator is also the company licensed to install it and authorized to warranty it. When those three answers name one business, the warranty on the machine, the warranty on the workmanship and the license the work is performed under all belong to the same party — and there is nobody to point at when something goes wrong.
When they name three different businesses, that is not automatically bad work. It is a warranty you will have to assemble yourself at the moment you most need it to already exist.
Why we published this
Because the checklist works against us too, and we would rather you ran it. A buyer who checks a TECL number and a dealer locator is a buyer who ends up with a working generator, whoever fits it. A buyer who compares two totals and picks the lower one is the buyer who calls someone like us eighteen months later about a unit that was never commissioned under load.
4.7 from 500+ Google reviews — installed by Clements Electric, DFW electricians since 1982Questions
Should I use an electrician or a generator dealer?
Ideally neither in isolation. A dealer who subcontracts the electrical work and an electrician who buys equipment outside the authorized channel each leave a gap — one in the workmanship warranty, one in the factory warranty. What you want is a single licensed entity that is also an authorized dealer for the brand, so both warranties are owed to you by the same company.
Is a plumber or HVAC company a reasonable choice?
For the gas side, often yes, and several do good work. The constraint is the electrical side: the transfer switch and the service tie-in are electrical work in Texas and require a licensed electrical contractor. If the company you are talking to subcontracts that portion, apply question 3 to whoever actually performs it.
Why do all the quotes show the same price for the generator?
Because they should. Home standby equipment is sold at a published minimum advertised price, so any authorized dealer quoting the same model quotes the same equipment figure. A quote well below it is a signal worth investigating rather than a bargain — it usually means equipment sourced outside the authorized channel, which is question 2.
How much of the total is installation?
Roughly two thirds. A complete 20kW whole-house installation in Dallas-Fort Worth runs $13,500 to $17,000 all in, of which the equipment is about a third. That is why comparing quotes on the equipment line tells you almost nothing and comparing them on installation scope tells you almost everything.
When are you not the right call?
If you want a portable generator, you do not need an installer at all and should not pay for one — buy it, and if you want it to run house circuits, have an interlock or a manual transfer switch fitted and nothing more. If you are outside the Metroplex, hire locally; a warranty call is worth more than a brand preference. And if your outage history genuinely does not justify the spend, we would rather tell you that during the survey than sell you a machine that exercises for fifteen years and never carries a load.
Run the list on us
The survey is free and a licensed electrician does it. Bring the ten questions.
Rather just talk to someone?
Leave a number and we will call you. No sales script, no obligation.
Got it. We will call you. If you would rather not wait, ring (214) 957-4307 and ask for whoever is on generators.