Holy [censored]!!!!!

[AmbulanceDriver]

So one of the things I'd like to do in our home is rewire.  The electrical is the flower of 1969 technology, and I've found a couple of different "stupid homeowner tricks" already, so I wanna try to get things done properly.

So just for kicks and giggles, I went to the county website to figure out what we'd be looking at as far as the electrical permit....

Holy crap!!!      Right around $1000 just for the [censored] electrical permit!

[Balog]

Do you actually need a permit to replace circuits for like in kind as the home owner?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

So one of the things I'd like to do in our home is rewire.  The electrical is the flower of 1969 technology, and I've found a couple of different "stupid homeowner tricks" already, so I wanna try to get things done properly.

So just for kicks and giggles, I went to the county website to figure out what we'd be looking at as far as the electrical permit....

Holy crap!!!      Right around $1000 just for the [censored] electrical permit!

Look for the words. "nessacary emergency repairs and replacements"

[Jim147]

Do you actually need a permit to replace circuits for like in kind as the home owner?

This.

I'm not used to the homeowner needing a permit in this area.

jim

[AmbulanceDriver]

Well, since we're gonna replace everything from the service mast to the outlets, and we have to have an electrician to do the live stuff, and well, they're kinda sticklers about that whole permit thing......

[Northwoods]

You don't have a cousin-in-law or something that's an electrican?

[Balog]

Well, since we're gonna replace everything from the service mast to the outlets, and we have to have an electrician to do the live stuff, and well, they're kinda sticklers about that whole permit thing......

Only thing you need an electrician for is the stuff between the panel and the meter head. Anything before the meter head is on the service to take care of. Anything panel or after is on you, and can be replaced like in kind sans permit. Unless Oregon is way, way different than WA.

[brimic]

Only thing you need an electrician for is the stuff between the panel and the meter head.

That.
You can buy books that will illustrate how to wire your house from Home Depot.
You can download electrical code documents from the internetz.

I have a real bitter cynical outlook on the whole permit/inspection racket and am very adverse to allowing any agent of the .gov into my house without a warrant.

[bedlamite]

Only thing you need an electrician for is the stuff between the panel and the meter head. Anything before the meter head is on the service to take care of. Anything panel or after is on you, and can be replaced like in kind sans permit. Unless Oregon is way, way different than WA.

This. Mount the new box next to the old one and install a pair of breakers big enough to run to the old box, pay them to run service to the new box and run the old box off those two breakers. Once it's inspected, you can run lines to the new box at your leisure. Get at least 200 amp service.

[MrsSmith]

I have a real bitter cynical outlook on the whole permit/inspection racket and am very adverse to allowing any agent of the .gov into my house without a warrant.

This. Unless what I'm doing will be visible from the street, I'm not giving the .gov money to make improvements to my own home. Passive resistance.

[Hawkmoon]

Do you actually need a permit to replace circuits for like in kind as the home owner?

Unless you're in an area that doesn't have an electrical code (and that's just about nowhere, these days), ALL electrical work requires a permit. A homeowner is usually allowed to perform his/her own work, but it still requires a permit and has to comply with the code. Basically, a permit is required to do anything more than changing a light bulb -- even replacing one receptacle requires a permit.

Emergency repairs? You make the emergency repair, then take out the permit the next day and have the repair inspected. Emergency means "emergency," as in "if I don't fix this in the next five minutes, she's gonna melt down." It doesn't mean "I'd really prefer not to pay for a permit." Completely rewiring a house is NOT an emergency repair.

[Hawkmoon]

I have a real bitter cynical outlook on the whole permit/inspection racket and am very adverse to allowing any agent of the .gov into my house without a warrant.

Be cynical to your heart's content, but don't call building inspection a "racket." I am a building inspector, and I've seen electrical work done by licensed electricians that could kill someone. What homeowners do when we don't know about it is terrifying. If the department I worked for is typical (and I suspect it is), the permit fees we charge don't even cover the cost of running the department. Our fee schedule gets updated maybe every five years, and that just brings it current. For the next four years we're basically losing ground, unless a few people take out permit sof VERY expensive houses and the permit income rises by enough to cover inflation.

It's not a racket. Certainly, there are a few inspectors out there who are on a power trip, and a few who should have retired a decade ago. For the most part, all we want to do is be sure the work is done correctly and safely. Even most of the "bad" inspectors have that as their intent -- they just like to use their own rules for what's "safe" rather than follow a code book wrotten by a bunch of people they've never met.

[RoadKingLarry]

This. Unless what I'm doing will be visible from the street, I'm not giving the .gov money to make improvements to my own home. Passive resistance.

I'll be damned if I'll pay the goobermint to beg permission to work on my own house.
Whether it be electrical, plumbing or structural, If I can do it myself I will.
I did or redid what the previous owner had screwed upwith the plumbing on my house, I've added 2 220 ckt and 3 110 ckts inside the house.
I had a 1500 sq ft shop built. The electric CoOp came and set me a new pole and meter and I wired the entire shop including 220 and 110 ckts from the pole in.
I never paid a dime for permits or inspections.
The only .gov employee that has ever asked me anything about any of it was the gorram county tax assessor and that was only because he could see the shop from the county road.

[AmbulanceDriver]

Hawk, I generally tend to agree with what you're saying.   I honestly don't have a huge problem with the fact of the permit itself, at least from the viewpoint of stupid homeowner tricks, it just nearly gave me a heart attack when I started adding it all up.  And yeah, those scary things that you've seen are exactly why I want to rewire this place.   Things like the blind junction behind the sheetrock in the family room that was just wire nuts and electrical tape.  On a 220v line.  W/ no ground (yes, I know that technically the neutral is bonded to ground - there just wasn't a separate ground wire).  Yup, apparently there are some instances where you can run 12-3 with no ground for 220.  Or at least that's what they did anyways.  The way it was done, I'm guessing that it was originally for one of those cadet forced air heaters, and then they decided to do a baseboard heater instead, so they did a blind junction behind the wall and then just sheetrocked over it.  Well, they never did install the heater, so there was just a loop of romex sticking out of the baseboard with electrical tape covering the tip off (where it had been shoved back into the wall).  Imagine my shock when my father in law put his non-contact voltmeter up to it and it started beeping....

However, when we built our bay window out, we also did it the legal route and took out a permit.   The inspections were an absolute joke.   For the structural inspection, the inspector came out here, glanced at it for *maybe* 2 seconds, and handed me the "passed" slip.   The insulation/wallboard was even worse, if you can believe it.   Our final was probably the most ridiculous, the guy didn't even get out of his truck.

When my parents rewired their house (different county), their electrical inspection was pretty much the same thing.   Inspector came in, picked 1 plug, put one of those "3 light" wiring testers into it, flipped a couple light switches, and called it good.  Didn't even take the cover off the panel to inspect any of the wiring in there.

So while I respect the reasoning behind it, and appreciate that your'e one of the good guys, my two experiences with the permitting process have left a less than reassuring feeling about the "inspections".

[brimic]

Be cynical to your heart's content, but don't call building inspection a "racket." I am a building inspector, and I've seen electrical work done by licensed electricians that could kill someone.

Me too. In my own house. After it passed inspection by the city so an ocupancy permit could be issued.

The worst possible house you could buy will be built to code.

In my village it absolutely is a racket. My house was built in 2000, in the midst of the housing boom. There were probably a thousand houses going up in my village in any given year. A few years after moving in I started looking to finish my basement and found all kinds of problems.
1. There were no sill plates on top of the foundation- the floor joists simply connected to a 'rim joist' and sat on top of the foundation there were huge gaps where I could see sunlight.
2. The wiring was terrible. I found lots of loose wires and receptacles mismatched to the circuits.
3. I called the city inspector's office and specificaly asked him about the rim joist- he told me that they accepted that method but didn't as of 2 years after my house was built. My impression was that they let pretty much everything and anything go as two large subdivisions were built up inside the village, then tightened up restrictions to cover their butts later. The permitting system was simply a way to get their cut of money off the new construction.
Edit: I'm sure inspectin

[brimic]

Edit above: I'm sure not all municipalities are equally bad to my own, but in my case, I choose to opt out when possible.
I get that not all builders/do-it yourselfers aren't equally competent or ethical either.

[Tallpine]

On top of everything else, the "building permit" cost in the county that we left in Colorado included prepayment of the local sales taxes on an estimate of all your building materials.

IOW, you were required to buy all your materials locally instead of a hundred miles away where they would be far cheaper, or else pay the sales taxes locally as if you did.  If you did have the materials trucked in, then you had to pay sales taxes for both counties.

 

[Balog]

Unless you're in an area that doesn't have an electrical code (and that's just about nowhere, these days), ALL electrical work requires a permit. A homeowner is usually allowed to perform his/her own work, but it still requires a permit and has to comply with the code. Basically, a permit is required to do anything more than changing a light bulb -- even replacing one receptacle requires a permit.

What an absolute fascist nightmare. "Sure you own this. But you can't do anything to it without Big Daddy Government taking your money and looking over your shoulder to protect you from yourself."

Here's a question: when done incorrectly, is faulty handloading, firearms modification, or vehicle repair work less dangerous than faulty electrical work in a house? Do you support having to beg for .gov approval every time you want to reload or replace the brakes on your car?

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Perd Hapley]

Never a dull moment around here.

[MicroBalrog]

The most awful houses I've lived in or visited were not merely built to code - they were built by the government.

[Jamisjockey]

The most awful houses I've lived in or visited were not merely built to code - they were built by the government.

Military barracks come to mind.

[geronimotwo]

Well, since we're gonna replace everything from the service mast to the outlets, and we have to have an electrician to do the live stuff, and well, they're kinda sticklers about that whole permit thing......

what make is your breaker box, and how many amp is it?  i am assuming it is less than 200 if you are going this route, as most wiring from 1969 is decent.  where we are, direct replacement of individual breakers and circuits does not require a permit.  replacing the meter pan, mast, main panel or adding circuits will.

[roo_ster]

Military barracks come to mind.

Oh, do they ever!


My dad added on a room on their house on the coast of Florida.  The inspectors there were the real deal.  Did their job, knowledgeable, and thorough.  Same thing in eastern Iowa, they made sure it was squared away.

Where I live now they want a permit for everything.  Well, if it can be seen from the street, I jump through the hoop.  If not, I don't.  My house was built in 1959 and everything I have done beats the heck out of those standards, except that they used redwood on all my framing & roofing.

[JonnyB]

In Minnesota, we work with State electrical inspectors. The County and City inspectors try to get involved but we can properly and legally tell them to urinate off. There are no city or county electrical codes; only state.

I doubt a building permit is required here, and I certainly wouldn't get one. For technical stuff I may hire an electrician but more likely, I'd have one come look at it after I finished, to see if it will pass the inspection. I often ask for advice from a master electrician that I see at my job.

jb

[K Frame]

Go off grid.

Shut off your electric and live like a 15th century French peasant.