[diychat09]

Hi,
I bought a house with 100 Amp serice and we are thinking of upgrading the service to 200 amp because we are thinking of adding some appliances.
The house some some old wiring and new wiring. No permits were pulled for new wiring. My electrician is telling me that the inspector is going to see all these new wires and since there were no permits pulled. He may give you hard time. He wants to do this without permit.
I think he is taking advantage of my ignorance in this area and want to get away without pulling permit. What should I do?
How can I prove these are existing wires( before after picture?).
How do these inspector react with existing new wiring in the house with no permit record.
Is it possible to just get the new service to the panel without any inspection?

Please provide your comments.

 

[sparky48]

My suggestion, find another contractor. I know in our area it's pretty hard to change a service anymore without a permit. For one upgrading from 100 to 200 amp, changing the meter can and everything in line sends a signal to the powers to be. We can't even tamper with the lock on the meter anymore. The power company has to remove it or fines are applied. Check with your local Building and Engineering department. Back in the day the inspector could only inspect what the permit was pulled for, they had no authority to inspect anything that was previously done. Have the contractor take a look at anything that was previously installed and if he has a problem with it have him straighten it out to meet code. That way he's covered and so are you.

 

[jimn]

Assuming the wiring was done properly, or at least nothing obvious, I wouldn't worry about it. However if the wiring looked like it was a done by a hack, sloppily or wrong that might be a different story. I had my 20 slot box upgraded to a 32 slot box with permits. The only the electrician notices some one had double tapped the the power to the range, running two number 10 cables off the 50AMP breaker. That would be a flag to the inspector. He gave me a decent price on replacing the cable. As for the other crap work in my hose from the prior hacks, I ripped most of it (basement) out. Wasn't needed anyway.

 

[GottaFixIt]

When I had this done a couple years back, they had to have the inspector tag the service panel before the power company would turn the power back on.

There was plenty of unpermitted hack work done by the previous homeowners right within eyeshot of the new panel. They didn't say a thing about it.

There was one old circuit that I had disconnected, but left the wire hanging outside of the panel. It was visibly cut at the other end, about 10' away. I asked him why he hooked it up. He said that if the inspector can see it when he's looking at the panel, it's got to be hooked up.