What Goes Into Wiring an 80-Unit Apartment Building

By Crown Electric • Updated June 30, 2026 • 5 min read

A single-family home and an 80-unit apartment building are both "electrical work," but they're worlds apart in scope, coordination, and timeline. Multi-unit and mixed-use buildings are some of our favorite projects at Crown Electric — they're right in our wheelhouse. Here's what goes into wiring one, using a few buildings we've completed in downtown Vancouver.

A real example: Grand Vista Apartments

One of our recent commercial projects was Grand Vista Apartments — an 80-unit building in downtown Vancouver, near Highway 14. It included a parking garage and a lot of rooftop equipment, including heat pumps. Start to finish, the project ran close to a year and a half. That's typical for a build of this size: it's not a one-day job, it's a long, phased effort that has to stay coordinated with every other trade on site.

What's involved in a multi-unit build

An 80-unit building is really many electrical jobs stacked into one:

• Service and distribution — bringing power in and distributing it safely across the building.
• Per-unit rough-ins — every apartment needs its own circuits, devices, and lighting, repeated dozens of times.
• Common areas — hallways, lobbies, and shared spaces.
• Parking-garage and exterior lighting — including security and code-required lighting.
• Rooftop equipment — wiring heat pumps and other mechanical systems.
• Permits and inspections — coordinated and passed at each phase to keep the build moving.

We've been doing this for years

Grand Vista wasn't our first large building. Earlier in our history we wired Open House Ministries — a three-story office-and-gymnasium building in downtown Vancouver that supports families transitioning out of homelessness — and a 20-unit downtown apartment building. Those projects are the kind of work that built our commercial reputation, and they're the reason multi-unit buildings feel routine to us today.

It's not all big buildings

While the 20-to-80-unit range is our sweet spot, the majority of our commercial work is faster-turn: panel changes, added circuits, lighting and code corrections, and tenant improvements — most completed in one to four days with minimal disruption to your operations. Whether it's a one-day panel swap or a year-long build, the constant is coordination: we schedule tightly and we show up when we say we will.

Commercial electricians in Vancouver & Clark County

From multi-unit builds to tenant improvements, we handle commercial electrical across the county. Learn more about our commercial electrician service or see what we do for commercial clients in Vancouver.