What actually happens on the day
The visit runs from the street inward, because that is the order the electricity arrives in and because problems at the front of the system change how everything behind them should be read. It usually takes one to two hours in a typical single-family home, longer where there are several sub-panels, where the crawlspace is tight, or where the house has been added to more than once.
The first stop is the service itself. On an OVERHEAD service that means the weatherhead, the mast and its condition, the service entrance conductors and the combination meter main. On an UNDERGROUND service there is no mast or weatherhead at all — the utility conductors come to a service point and terminate inside the combination meter main — so what gets looked at instead is the enclosure, the terminations and, where visible, the conduit. Then grounding and bonding, which is the part homeowners have never heard of and the part that most often turns out to be wrong in an older house.
Then the panel cover comes off. This is the heart of it: the bus, the terminations, the breakers, whether anything is doubled where it should not be, whether there is any sign of heat. Sub-panels get the same treatment. After that it is a representative sample of outlets and switches — including all wet-area GFCIs, which get tested rather than eyeballed — the visible wiring methods wherever we can get to them, exterior fixtures and outlets, and a coastal corrosion check where the house is close enough to the ocean for it to matter.
The last part is not an inspection at all, strictly speaking. It is a conversation about what you are planning — a charger, a heat pump, an induction range, a water heater, solar — and a capacity assessment against that plan rather than against nothing. An inspection that tells you the house is fine today, without asking what you are about to add, has answered the less useful half of the question.
What we look for specifically in older homes
Santa Cruz County housing stock skews old, and a handful of things recur often enough to be looked for by name rather than stumbled upon.
- FEDERAL PACIFIC and ZINSCO panels, both of which have documented failure modes and are their own conversation rather than a line item
- KNOB-AND-TUBE wiring, common in Westside and Eastside Victorians, and particularly wherever later insulation has been laid over it
- ALUMINUM branch circuits, a 1960s-70s era problem with specific remediation methods rather than a rewire-or-nothing choice
- CLOTH-sheathed and early plastic-sheathed cable, where the insulation embrittles with age and heat
- COASTAL CORROSION on exterior equipment, which near the water is a maintenance reality rather than a defect
- PSPS readiness — whether the house can do anything useful when the power goes out for a day or more
- Anything a home insurer is likely to ask about, because that is a common reason people book in the first place
What lands in the report
The report is the actual deliverable. A verbal summary at the door evaporates by the following week, and it cannot be forwarded to a carrier or a spouse or a second opinion. So the assessment is written down, with photographs, and it is yours to keep regardless of what you do next.
- PRIORITIZED FINDINGS with red, yellow and green severity coding, so the ordering is explicit rather than implied by the order things were written down
- A PHOTO OF EVERY ISSUE — the single most useful part when you need to show somebody who was not there
- RECOMMENDED NEXT STEPS for each finding, in the order we would do them, including the findings whose recommended next step is nothing
- ESTIMATED COST RANGES for the recommended work, drawn from real job data rather than a rate card
- The GRANDFATHERED-VERSUS-SHOULD-UPDATE distinction spelled out for each finding, rather than a flat list of things that are not to current code
That last one deserves emphasis, because it is where an inspection report can do real harm if it is written carelessly. Existing electrical installations are generally permitted to remain as they were legally installed at the time — that is what grandfathering means. It is emphatically not the same as being a good idea, and there are things we will recommend replacing that are perfectly legal where they sit. Collapsing those two categories into one list of failures is how homeowners get frightened into work they did not need, and separating them is most of what makes the report worth keeping.
What this is not
Three things get conflated with an electrical inspection often enough to be worth stating plainly.
It is NOT a real-estate home inspection. A home inspector surveys the entire property and covers electrical at the depth a generalist reasonably can. This goes deeper on electrical and covers nothing else. During a purchase you want both, and the electrical assessment is the one that answers questions a home inspection tends to raise and leave open.
It is NOT a code compliance certificate. Nobody can issue one of those from a walk-through, and an assessment that claimed to would be overstating what an inspection can establish. What the report gives you is a considered opinion, in writing, with photographs, against the current California Electrical Code.
And it is NOT a sales visit with a clipboard. About a third of inspections end with no work scheduled, which we mention not as a boast but because it is the number that makes the offer make sense. The visit pays for itself by making later quotes accurate, and by the fact that somebody holding a written assessment tends to come back when they are actually ready.
How to get the most out of it
The difference between a good inspection and a very good one is usually the homeowner rather than the electrician.
- Clear access to the panel, any sub-panels, and the attic and crawlspace hatches
- Write down the intermittent things — the breaker that trips occasionally, the outlet that feels warm, the lights that dip when the dryer starts. Faults that come and go are far easier to chase when described than when waited for
- Have any paperwork from previous electrical work out, including permits from past owners if you have them
- Bring a rough list of what you plan to add over the next few years, because the capacity part of the assessment is only useful measured against a real plan
- Have somebody there who knows the house, not just somebody who can open the door
Who covers what
Worth knowing where the trade boundaries fall, since an inspection frequently turns up things that are not ours to fix. Solar, battery storage and the electrical side of a generator are all in-house work for us on a C-10 licence. Heat pumps and other HVAC equipment are shared: we handle the panel and the circuit, and a C-20 contractor sets the equipment. Water-heater plumbing and gas lines belong to a C-36. We flag what we see regardless of whose scope it lands in, and say which trade it belongs to rather than leaving you to work it out.