I’ll soon be tearing down my SW Florida home and building a new one with all sorts of whizbang tech like the Tesla Solar Roof and two PowerWalls battery storage (11 days without power after Hurricane Irma was miserable) and some other “secret” new tech…
I’ve been watching Thomas Nagy on YouTube… he’s an electrician in London who does really remarkable work (he puts his name, licensed electrician # and his contact info on the fuse box), isolates all the connections in little plastic boxes etc… it’s a lot of fun to watch.
The terrifying side is what he finds behind the walls from prior electrical work… seriously dangerous scary scary stuff.
So the question is… the Tesla stuff is all handled by their team, the rest of the house is open for business… do you go with the contractors suggestion? What questions do you ask before hiring an electrician? How can you “check” their prior work?
This house is being built to survive any hurricane and not even notice if the mains grid goes down and will be wheelchair and elderly and crippled friendly (which the current house is most definitely NOT) I dont want to have to worry about the wiring (or the plumbing !!) like, ever… help? Is this all down to finding the magic contractor? So many things to do for this project, please, help?
I’m an electrical contractor, but I don’t do photovoltaic systems. It seems to me that you will be building a house and the large majority of the wiring will be standard. (Just because you are investing heavily in a solar/battery system does not mean that the majority of the project is specialized.)
Personally, I would use whoever your GC recommends for the majority of the house and then use the more specialized contractor recommended by Tesla (or whoever your system manufacturer will be). Think of it this way, if we build a commercial building, we most often use a commercial electrical contractor for all lighting, outlets, panelboards, etc., and then bring in a more specialized contractor for the installation and connection of the generator itself. In fact, the contractor who installs the generator and associated systems is often not interested in doing the remainder of the building. They make extra $$$ by being more specialized. You will probably also be installing other systems (home theater, data, security, and so forth) and you may find that your GC will bring in a third contractor do install these systems.
I agree that a lot of legacy electrical work I see is simply abysmal, as well as unsafe. However, it is often the case that the work was executed without a permit and never inspected. I also see a lot of work that was obviously done by the homeowner or his friend and that they had no idea what they were doing. This does not mean that the majority of electrical contractors do crappy/unsafe work.
TL;DR: Take the GC’s recommendation for general work, but check on BBB or Yelp to make sure. Check their current license status through the State electrical board. Use the contractor recommended by Tesla for the systems they provide.
Not going to disagree w/ the expert! As a general rule, if you like your GC, why would you question their choice of subs? As you see their performance during construction, you’ll get a good idea of whether you like the quality of their work enough to hire them for other jobs.
The other sources are recommendations of neighbors who did similar projects and whose opinions you respect. Or - our favorite for all manner of contractors - go to your local building/zoning board and ask them which electricians they NEVER have problems with.
We’ve got a local guy who is willing to do basically any electric we want for time + materials. We love it. Gives us great control over what we are paying - as opposed to trying to suss out an opaque job proposal. And we’ve used him often enough that we know he isn’t going to rape us.
Agree with zonex. Also, your GC will be pulling permits for the job and the electrician will also have to pull permits for his/her work. The city or county will come out and inspect the work to make sure that it’s in code compliance before it is covered up by sheetrock, and again for final closeout.
As a general rule, if you like your GC, why would you question their choice of subs? As you see their performance during construction, you’ll get a good idea of whether you like the quality of their work enough to hire them for other jobs.