Electrical Service in Mortimore

Mortimore is a registered Tucson neighborhood in Ward 5. Of the homes here with a published build year, the median went up in 1972 — and in electrical terms, the year a house was built tells you most of what you need to know about what is behind its walls.

381Homes with a published build year

1972Median year built

55%Built before 1974

1956–2007Oldest to newest

When Mortimore was built

Before 19500%

1950–196435%

1965–197320%

1974–19894%

1990–19951%

1996–200739%

2008 or later0%

Highlighted bands are the eras that carry a known electrical issue — pre-1950 knob-and-tube, the 1965–1973 aluminum branch-circuit window, and the 1974–1989 Federal Pacific / Zinsco panel years. Source: City of Tucson and Pima County assessor records, read parcel by parcel inside the neighborhood boundary.

Post-war services and ungrounded circuits

About 35% of the homes here went up between 1950 and 1964 — Tucson's post-war boom. Services from those years were 60 to 100 amps, often originally a fuse panel that has since been swapped for breakers without the service itself ever being enlarged. Grounded branch circuits did not become the norm until the early 1960s, so much of the original wiring in these houses is two-wire with no equipment ground, and the cloth jacket on that era's NM cable embrittles in a Tucson attic.

Aluminum branch-circuit wiring

Roughly 20% of homes here went up between 1965 and 1973 — the window when solid aluminum was used for 15 and 20 amp branch circuits. The wire itself is not the problem; the terminations are, and the accepted repairs are COPALUM crimps or AlumiConn connectors. A wire nut is not a repair. If your house is from these years, this is the single most worthwhile thing to have checked.

GFCI and AFCI gaps

Much of this neighborhood was built before the code caught up on protection devices. GFCI protection reached every kitchen counter receptacle only in 1996, and AFCI protection did not enter the code until 1999 — bedrooms only, effective 2002 — and did not expand to most living areas until 2008. Neither gets added retroactively, so expect to find them missing in otherwise modern-looking houses.

Neighborhood boundaries

NorthJulian Wash
EastAlvernon
SouthBenson Highway
WestBantam Rd

Check your actual address

Neighborhood averages are a starting point, not an answer. Our free Property Electrical Profile reads the county record for one specific parcel — the build year, the assessor’s use and zoning, and the permit history — and tells you what that suggests about the service, the wiring era, and the panel.

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What we do in Mortimore

We are a licensed Arizona electrical contractor working across Tucson and Pima County. In neighborhoods like this one that usually means panel and service upgrades, replacing obsolete or unsafe panels, correcting aluminum branch-circuit terminations, adding grounded and GFCI-protected circuits, and sizing a service that can carry EV charging or a heat pump. If you want the load math first, the free load calculator runs NEC 220.82.

Other Tucson neighborhoods

Talk to an electrician who knows this housing stock

Tell us the address and what you are planning. We will tell you what we would expect to find and what it takes to get there.

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