Your electrician in Irvine.

What I see in Irvine homes

Irvine is a city of villages, and each one belongs to its own decade. University Park opened in 1966, a year after UC Irvine, and Turtle Rock followed in 1967 as the first hillside village. The first phases of Turtle Rock, University Park, and Westpark, which was called Culverdale at the time, were finished by 1970, the year Northwood began, and the city incorporated in 1971. Woodbridge was started in 1975 and mostly built out by the mid-1990s. Portola Springs came in 2006, and the Great Park neighborhoods, on the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, are the newest of all.

That spread means two very different sets of needs. In the original villages the houses are more than fifty years old, and they commonly have panels of that era with no room left, ungrounded outlets in the older rooms, and kitchens and baths that were remodeled for looks without the wiring ever being brought up to date. A Turtle Rock or University Park kitchen remodel is often the right moment to add the circuits a modern kitchen actually needs.

Woodbridge and Northwood are younger but still past forty, and at that age the usual needs are worn switches and receptacles, bath fans that have given up, and lighting owners want to replace with something better. In Portola Springs and around the Great Park the wiring is new, so what those homes need is additions: a Level 2 charger in the garage, a circuit for a garage refrigerator or a home gym, under-cabinet lighting, and cameras wired in properly instead of hanging off a plug.

The other thing to know about Irvine is the homeowners' associations. Many village neighborhoods have one, and they control how the outside of a home looks, so an exterior light, a camera on the eave, or a charger on an outside wall may need architectural approval before it goes up. Parts of the older Northwood tracts were built without an association, so the rules really do change from street to street.

Permits in Irvine

Irvine's electrical permits are handled by Building and Safety, part of the Community Development Department at City Hall, 1 Civic Center Plaza. Permits that do not need plan check are applied for online through the city's PermitsDIRECT portal; bigger jobs go through plan check first. I pull the permit, book the inspection, and stay for it. The city permit and your HOA's approval are two separate things, and for exterior work I help you put together what the association asks for and wait for its answer before I start. Irvine's utility is Southern California Edison; a main service upgrade means coordinating the disconnect and reconnect with them, which I build into the schedule.