Hey everyone, have a question about permitting and code for the state of Georgia regarding a panel swap.
I want to own the part that is on me: I didn’t follow through on any of this in a timely or effective manner. It was my first go around doing any home improvements, and I wasn’t as diligent as I should have been.
When we bought our house, the inspector noted that the panel was a Challenger and that they had a history of overheating. We had the sellers provide an inspection and those electricians said no signs of overheating present and we went on with our life.
A couple years later, December 2024, I was getting an EV charger installed. Looked at local electricians and found one with lots of reviews talking about EV chargers so I had them come take a look. They gave me a good quote and so I said let’s do it.
The head guy for the company, decidedly not the dude I talked to, like this is the owner comes out to do the install. They’re busy and trying to fit me in, I appreciate it. He pops open the panel and calls me over, because there’s obvious scorching on the bus bars. He says it’s up to me if I want to swap it out or not, and staring at the black and oil spill colored bus bars, I agree. He gives me a quote of around 2 grand, which seems on the money and I agree. He leaves and a few weeks later, now in January 2025, they come back and install the panel and then shortly after, my EV charger. Huzzah. The guy does mention arc fault breakers and that it’s code to install them, but he only installs the one as a freebie and says they can pop in more if I decide I want them. I just had a new baby, so I have them put it in the breaker slot for the babies room and go about my day. I know I should have pushed harder on what he meant by code.
An inspector never follows up, but I don’t find that strange just yet because again, my first time and I don’t really know the process. Figure maybe they just provide pictures or something for something as routine as a panel swap.
Later in the year I’m getting a new roof on my house, and this process is different. The county is emailing me about the permit status, and this makes me wonder why I never had that with the electrician. I reach out to them about it and they never call me back, and life shoves it out of my brain.
2026 rolls around and my wife decides to get an EV as well, so we now are interested in a second charger. I call them up and while they’re giving me an inspection for the new install I remember and mention that the inspector never came and looked at the panel. The guy said that was weird and I should follow up with the county. He also said that EV chargers don’t require a permit and his suggested installation for this one involved just shutting my garage door in the EV cord, which he said was code compliant, but naturally alarm bells are starting to ring because… uhhh.
So I call the county. No record of any electrical permits, and yeah, EV chargers definitely need them.
So I call the electrician. I have been calling them for a week, actually. They keep taking my messages and then nothing.
Today the desk lady connects me to the permit guy who said he spoke with the guy who did my initial EV charger quote and that guy said they never pulled permits because it would be a huge amount of extra work to bring the house up to code. I ask for the guy to call me and he does so and we talk.
In that conversation he tells me they always offer permit vs unpermitted work to save money (this is again, a company not a guy in a pickup off marketplace). He misremembered as him giving me the panel upgrade quote instead of it being his big boss in an unplanned off the cuff manner, and he said the following tasks would have had to be done to make the panel swap permittable:
All Arc fault breakers
Smoke detectors added into every bedroom that could talk to one another
Another ground line for the house
Whole home surge suppressor installation
I’m kind of reeling. It’s been a long time, so I don’t know how accurate my memory is on all that, but that seems like a crazy amount of extra work just to swap a panel out and I don’t remember all of that being presented up front. No circuits added except for the EV charger in the garage.
So I guess my question is pretty simple: Is that all correct? Would all that have to be done just to swap panel and add an EV charger? I had assumed the paperwork for the initial permit just fell thru the cracks since it was kind of ad hoc and that they were just wrong on EV chargers. Between the other guy confidently stating that chargers don’t need permits and suggesting what felt like a pretty bad call with cord management, I just don’t know how trusting to be here. I want to make this all right and make sure my family is safe and I have no qualms with the quality of the install so far, but I don’t want to just assume everything will be fine forever.
Thanks for any insight anyone can offer.