Before you buy, sell or sign
Electrical Inspections
Panel inspections, presale inspections and home inspection corrections. Starting at $150.
Chapter 01
What a panel inspection looks at, and why it is worth $150
A panel inspection is an electrician looking at the heart of your electrical system and telling you what he sees. Thunder Electric lists panel inspections starting at $150. The panel is where every circuit in the house begins, so it is where trouble tends to show itself first: a breaker that has been warm or tripping, a scorched or corroded spot, a connection that has worked loose, a panel with no labels, or one that has been added to over the years until nobody is sure what feeds what.
The electrician is checking whether the breakers look sound, whether each breaker’s size suits the wire it feeds, whether anything looks damaged, loose or overheated, and whether the panel can be understood by the next person who opens it. You come away knowing what you have, and what, if anything, should be fixed and in what order. Some panels pass with nothing to say. That is a perfectly good result for $150.
Do not open your panel to look for yourself. The cover comes off for a trained person only, and even with the main switched off, parts inside can still be live. Call the office and have it looked at properly.
Gloved hands testing breakers in an open residential panel with a multimeter
Presale inspections: the electrical surprise you find before the buyer does
If your house is going on the market, a presale inspection puts an electrician through the electrical system before the listing, not after the buyer’s inspector has been through it. Anything old, tired or unsafe shows up on your schedule, when you can fix it and have a quote in hand, instead of showing up on a buyer’s report as a reason to ask for a lower price.
It does not have to be a big production. A presale look covers the panel, the visible wiring and fixtures, and the little things that annoy a buyer on a walkthrough, like a switch that does nothing or a light that will not come on. The fix list is yours to keep, whether Thunder does the repairs or not.
Showings rarely wait for a convenient moment. Diane Harkins had a closet light go out right before a realtor came to view her house, and Thunder, short handed that day, still sent an electrician out late in the afternoon to fix it. She called it a “Very accommodating last minute request.” That was a repair, not an inspection. A presale inspection is the planned version of the same idea: sort it out before someone is standing in the closet.
Chapter 03
Home inspection corrections: turning a report into a short list
When a general home inspector’s report comes back with electrical items flagged, Thunder Electric’s home inspection corrections work is the part where those items actually get fixed. Starting at $150, it is built for the moment after the report, when a deal, a closing date or your own list of repairs is waiting on the electrical lines to be cleared.
Bring the report, or a photo of the pages with the electrical notes, when you call the office. The electrician works down the list. Donald Farmer needed a GFCI replaced in a hurry, and wrote that he spoke with Kara, who dispatched an electrician to replace it that same afternoon. A flagged outlet or a missing cover plate is the kind of item that should not hold up a closing for a week.
Small items are usually a matter of time and parts. Thunder’s service call rate is $65 per 30 minutes with a one hour minimum, and the office can tell you how your list would be billed. A longer list, or anything that turns out to need a panel change, gets an on-site estimate. Invoices come by mail and email, usually within 1-2 weeks of the work.
Thunder Electric, Inc. is licensed, bonded and insured: WA L&I Electrical Contractor THUNDEI004S4. Inspections starting at $150. Call (509) 575-8362.