Electrical inspection - and who should be doing it

What is electrical inspection?

An electrical inspection is a documented assessment of a home's wiring, panel, grounding and devices by someone qualified to judge them. The important distinction is who and why: a general home inspector gives you a visual overview inside a whole-house report, a licensed electrician gives you a trade assessment with the panel open, and a jurisdictional inspector signs off permitted work. They are not substitutes for one another, and only one of them can be hired by you at will.

Signs you need electrical inspection

• You are buying a home built before the mid-1970s and the general inspection has flagged the electrical system for further review
• You have just bought an older house and want a baseline of what needs doing and in what order
• An insurer is asking for evidence about the wiring, the panel type, or the presence of knob-and-tube or aluminium
• You are planning a renovation, an addition, a heat pump, a hot tub or an EV charger and need to know what the existing system supports
• Breakers trip in more than one place, or you have warm outlets, flickering, or a burning smell you cannot locate
• The panel is an obsolete make with a known defect history, and you want an independent view rather than a replacement quote
• You are selling and want to know what a buyer's inspector will find before they find it

Seeing something not on this list? Browse electrical problems by symptom →

How electrical inspection actually works

1. 1

   Establishing which inspection you are buying

   Pre-purchase due diligence, an insurance-driven assessment, a pre-renovation capacity survey and a municipal sign-off of permitted work are four different products. The first three you commission; the fourth is triggered by a permit and performed by the jurisdiction. Saying which one you need is the fastest way to get the right person and the right price.

   Watch forA quote that does not ask why you want it. The scope of a capacity survey and the scope of a safety assessment barely overlap.

2. 2

   The service and panel

   The panel comes off and the assessment starts there: service size, panel make and condition, breaker sizing against conductor sizing, double-tapped breakers, signs of overheating, the main bonding arrangement, and how much spare capacity exists. This is the part a general home inspector often cannot do to the same depth, because opening and assessing a live panel is trade work.

   Watch forAn inspection performed without the panel cover coming off. Most of what matters is behind it.

3. 3

   Branch wiring and what the house is actually made of

   Sampling in the attic, the basement, the crawlspace and behind a selection of device plates establishes what wiring types are present - modern cable, mid-century cloth-covered cable, aluminium branch circuits, live knob-and-tube - and whether earlier work was done to a decent standard. Mixed-era houses are the norm, not the exception.

   Watch forA report that names the house's build year and infers the wiring from it. Many houses have been partly rewired, and many have not been rewired where you would expect.

4. 4

   Devices, grounding and protection

   Receptacles are tested for correct wiring and grounding, ground-fault and arc-fault devices are checked where present and their absence noted where current code would expect them, and the grounding electrode system is assessed. Smoke and carbon monoxide alarm coverage is usually noted too.

   Watch forUngrounded three-prong outlets - a two-prong receptacle replaced with a three-prong one on an ungrounded circuit. It is common, it is invisible without a tester, and it defeats the safety assumption of everything you plug in.

5. 5

   The report, and what you do with it

   A useful report separates the genuinely unsafe from the merely non-current, and puts the findings in priority order with an indication of effort. Age alone is not a defect, and a report that lists every deviation from current code with equal weight is not decision-useful.

   Watch forA report that is really a quote. If every finding maps to a service the inspecting company sells, you have bought a sales call with a document attached.

What does electrical inspection cost?

A standalone electrical inspection by a licensed electrician commonly runs a few hundred dollars for an average home, more for large or complex properties and more again where a written report for an insurer or lender is required. The electrical portion of a general home inspection is included in that fee and is far less detailed.

See the full electrical inspection cost guide - by material, size and region →

If the number is the problem, here are the ways people pay for it →