In case you haven’t read my previous posts on this (which you can find here & here), my name is Charlotte, I’m an insurance broker, and I’m currently in the process of changing my heating from an old inefficient oil tank to a new heat pump.

Inspecting Electrical for Heat Pump Addition

I purchased my home about 13 years ago, and although we’ve done many updates to make sure that it’s remained in tip-top condition over the years, we hadn’t updated the electrical service. Our electrical was fine, the age of the home meant that we didn’t have any knob & tube wiring (which can be a hazard), and we were also lucky that our home had no aluminum wiring either. Both of those types of wiring can cause issues with insurance as they can cause a higher risk of fires.

So ultimately our wiring was fine in terms of insurance, but we only had a 100amp panel in the home. The panel was fine for most of our usage, but we needed to up the amperage to 200 in order for the heat pump with electrical backing to be installed. We also needed to increase the amperage to get the hot tub my husband keeps promising me…

Top Tips for Hiring an Electrician

So we had to get some electricians in to do that upgrade. There are a few things that I would suggest doing when you are hiring an electrician, to make sure you get the best work done with no issues.

Here are my top tips:

1. Hire a licensed electrician.

Licensed electricians will have the proper training to handle any unexpected outcomes. You can check to see if your electrician is licensed here. Luckily we didn’t have anything too unexpected, but it was great to know that if a curveball came up that our electricians could handle it.

2. Make sure that you get permits.

Your licensed electrician will most likely do this for you. It’s really important because if you don’t, you could be fined by the city. In our case, the electrician needed to make some alterations to the outside to meet the current code, so now we know that our home is that much safer.

3. Make sure that your electrician is insured.

Again, hiring a reputable licensed electrician will make it far more likely that they carry insurance. But you want to make sure that they have current coverage for their business, including liability coverage so that if they make a mistake on your installation that it will be covered. It’s also important to make sure that they have WorkSafe coverage for all employees so that you don’t need to worry about being responsible financially for any issues.

So now our electrical is upgraded (still waiting on the hot tub), and our next step is the installation of the heat pump itself!

Stay tuned!