Most people don’t call us about an insurance inspection until they’re already stuck. The carrier sent a letter. There’s a photo of the panel attached. Somewhere in the paragraph is a line about “four-point” or “electrical certification,” and a deadline that’s usually two or three weeks out. That’s the call I get.
I’m Alexandr Godonoaga, and I’ve been doing residential electrical work in Naperville and the surrounding suburbs for over ten years (Illinois license #26-00032356). I’ve signed off on a lot of these. I’ve also failed a few, and those taught me more. This post is the actual checklist I run through before I’ll put my name on a home’s wiring for an insurer. If you’re searching for residential electricians near me because a carrier is breathing down your neck, this is what that visit looks like from my side of the clipboard.
First, what an insurance wiring inspection actually is
It’s not a code inspection. That trips people up. The City of Naperville permit inspector cares whether new work meets the current National Electrical Code. An insurance inspection cares about one thing: is this house likely to catch fire or hurt somebody. Those overlap a lot, but they aren’t the same list.
Carriers order these when a home is older, when they’re writing a new policy, or when something in the application flags. Sometimes it’s a full four-point (roof, HVAC, plumbing, electrical). Sometimes it’s electrical only. Either way, the electrical portion usually comes down to five questions, and I’ll walk you through each one the way I walk through the house.
The panel is where I start, every time
I pull the cover. That’s the first move, and it tells me more than anything else in the building.
What I’m looking at: the brand, the amperage, how the wires land on the breakers, and whether anything smells or looks hot. Carriers have a short list of panels they don’t like, and in Naperville’s older housing stock I still find them. Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels are the big one. The breakers in those can fail to trip when a circuit overloads, so the electricity just keeps flowing into an already-hot wire. Zinsco is the other name that makes an underwriter nervous. If I open the cover and see either, I tell the homeowner straight: this is almost certainly a replacement, not a repair, and your insurer probably already knows the brand by heart.
Amperage matters too. A 60-amp service on a house running central air, a couple of EV-adjacent loads, and a modern kitchen is going to get flagged, and it should. Most carriers want to see 100 amps minimum now, and 200 is the comfortable number. If the panel’s undersized, that’s a service upgrade conversation, and it’s worth reading up on how to tell if your Naperville electrical panel is outdated before the inspector ever shows up.
I also look for double-tapped breakers, missing knockouts, rust at the bottom of the cabinet, and any breaker that’s warm to the back of my hand. None of those are automatic fails on their own, but they add up, and an underwriter reading my report notices the pattern.
Then I figure out what the house is wired with
This is the second question, and for homes built before the mid-70s it’s the one that sinks policies.
Knob-and-tube. Cloth-insulated wire. Aluminum branch circuits. Each one is its own conversation with a carrier, and each one gets a different answer from me.
Knob-and-tube isn’t automatically dangerous the day I see it, but it has no ground, it degrades where it’s been buried under blown-in insulation, and most insurers simply won’t write a policy over it anymore. Cloth wiring from the 40s and 50s tends to have brittle insulation that flakes off the moment you flex it, which is a real shock and arc risk. Aluminum branch wiring from roughly 1965 to 1973 is the sneaky one. The wire itself is fine; the connections are the problem, because aluminum expands and contracts and works itself loose at outlets and switches, and loose connections get hot. I’ve written a full breakdown of the repair options for aluminum wiring in 1965–1973 Naperville homes, because “rip it all out” usually isn’t the only answer, and carriers will often accept a proper remediation instead.
When I find any of these, I don’t guess at what the insurer wants. I document exactly what’s there, where, and how much of it, so the homeowner can go back to their agent with real information instead of a vague fear.
GFCI and AFCI protection: the cheap fail
This one frustrates me. It’s a thirty-minute fix and it fails inspections constantly anyway.
Ground-fault protection is required anywhere water and electricity share a room: kitchens, bathrooms, garages, laundry, outdoors, unfinished basements. If I walk a 1990s Naperville home and the bathroom outlets are still the old two-slot or ungrounded three-slot receptacles with no test/reset buttons, that’s a finding. It’s also a thirty-minute fix per location. Arc-fault breakers are the newer requirement for bedroom and living-area circuits, and while a lot of older homes won’t have them, adding them is straightforward when the panel can take them.
I test every GFCI I find, too. A surprising number are installed and dead, which is worse than not having one, because everyone assumes they’re protected and nobody is. The NFPA has a plain-language electrical home fire safety overview that’s worth a read if you want to understand why carriers weight this stuff so heavily.
Junction boxes, splices, and the stuff behind the walls
The fourth thing I check is workmanship, and this is where I can usually tell whether the last person in the walls was licensed.
Open splices with no box. Wire nuts hanging in a joist bay. A junction box buried behind drywall with no access. Extension cords stapled up as permanent wiring in a finished basement. Backstabbed outlets that have worked loose. Every one of these is a heat-and-arc risk, and every one of these tells an underwriter that unpermitted work happened here. If a previous owner finished the basement themselves without pulling a permit, this is usually where it shows. Older homes that have grown over the years also tend to run out of circuit space, which is its own can of worms; if you’re not sure whether your house has room to add protected circuits, here’s what a subpanel is and when you actually need one.
Smoke and CO alarms, because carriers ask
Last one, and it’s quick. I count smoke detectors and check that there’s one on every level and outside every sleeping area, and I confirm carbon monoxide coverage. Illinois law requires CO alarms near sleeping areas, and insurers will note it if they’re missing. Hardwired-with-battery-backup units are the standard I recommend, especially in a rewire.
What happens after I walk the house
If everything’s clean, I sign the certification, note the panel size and wiring type, and you send it to your agent. Done.
If it’s not clean, you get a written estimate the same visit, with the findings separated into “your carrier will require this” and “this is a good idea but optional.” I don’t inflate the required list to sell work, because I’m the one whose license is on the certification, and padding it helps nobody. The owner walks the site with me, so you hear it from me directly rather than reading it cold in a report.
One more thing worth saying: don’t wait for the carrier’s deadline. If your home is pre-1980, or you just bought it, or you’ve never had the panel opened, get ahead of it. A pre-inspection walkthrough is a couple hundred dollars and it turns a scramble into a plan. We serve Naperville, Lisle, Aurora, Plainfield, Downers Grove, and the surrounding suburbs, and you can see the full picture of what we do for homeowners on our residential electricians in Naperville, IL page.
If a carrier’s already asked for a wiring inspection, call me at (630) 427-5923. You’ll talk to an electrician, not an answering service, and I’ll tell you honestly whether you’re looking at a signature or a project.
Cob Services LLC Licensed & Insured Residential and Commercial Electricians · Illinois License #26-00032356 2020 Calamos Ct Suite 200, Naperville, IL 60563 Phone: (630) 427-5923 · [email protected] Serving Naperville, Lisle, Aurora, Plainfield, Bolingbrook, Downers Grove & surrounding areas 5.0 ★ across 27 Google reviews · Family-owned · 10+ years · 24/7 emergency service
Written by Alexandr Godonoaga, Owner and licensed residential electrician at Cob Services LLC (IL Lic. #26-00032356). He personally runs every estimate and stays your point of contact through final inspection.