Hiring an Electrician in Iowa and Illinois: What to Ask

The Quad Cities sit across a state line, which makes hiring slightly more involved here than it is in most markets. A contractor who works Bettendorf and Davenport is not automatically set up to work Moline, Rock Island and East Moline, and that is worth establishing in the first phone call rather than the week the permit is due.

• Are you licensed, bonded and insured in the state this job is in, and can you say so for the city as well?
• Who pulls the permit, you or me, and is the inspection included in the price?
• Will I get the scope in writing before anything starts?
• What happens to the price if you find something behind the wall, and when do I hear about it?
• Who actually does the work, and who do I call if something is wrong six months from now?
• Is there a warranty on the workmanship, and what does it cover?

You are not testing anyone with those questions. You are finding out whether the answers come back straight away, because a contractor who does this work properly has given them a hundred times.

They are three separate things and only one of them is about competence. Licensed means the state or the city has recognised the qualification behind the work, and requirements differ between Iowa and Illinois and between the cities inside each. Some cities also register contractors directly, on top of whatever the state requires.

Bonded means there is a surety in place that a customer or a city can claim against if the work is left unfinished or not to standard. Insured means liability coverage for damage caused during the work, and workers compensation for the people doing it. The second one matters more than people realise: if an uninsured worker is hurt in your basement, that can land on your homeowner policy.

Ask for all three by name and expect a clear answer. QCA Electric is licensed, bonded and insured in Iowa and Illinois, which is what lets one contractor handle a job on either side of the river without handing it off partway.

The permit should be pulled by the contractor doing the work, and there is a reason to insist on that. A homeowner permit puts the responsibility for the installation on the homeowner, which is exactly where it should not sit when somebody else is holding the tools.

1. The permit is filedBefore the work starts, with the city the property is in. Panel changes, service work, new circuits and anything around water are permitted work everywhere in the Quad Cities.
2. The rough inspectionOn anything opened up, the inspector sees cable, boxes and conduit before they are covered. Nothing gets insulated or boarded until this is signed off.
3. The final inspectionDevices, fixtures and covers are on, circuits are labelled, and the inspector signs the installation off. This is the point at which the work is finished, not the day the tools leave.
4. The records go to youThe permit and inspection record belong with the property. Keep them: a buyer, a lender or an insurer will ask for them eventually, and unpermitted electrical work is a genuine problem at closing.

Fees, forms and which office handles the filing differ from city to city, and they change. Rather than quoting a rule here that might be out of date by the time you read it, the page for your city is where to look for who files and with whom.

A quote that says "upgrade panel" is not a scope, it is a number with a word in front of it. Two quotes for the same job routinely describe different work, and that is usually where the difference between them lives.

• The service or panel size being installed, and whether the meter socket, mast and entrance conductors are included
• How many circuits are being moved, added or replaced, and what happens to conductors that are too short to land
• Whether the permit and both inspections are in the price
• Grounding, bonding and any arc-fault or ground-fault protection the change will require
• What is patched afterwards and to what finish, and what is left for your own decorator
• The warranty on the workmanship, and what is covered by a manufacturer instead

Sometimes the honest answer to a quote request is that nobody can price it yet. If you have just bought a house, if a general home inspection flagged the electrical system in a sentence and moved on, or if a string of small faults has you wondering how much is behind them, an electrical inspection is the cheaper way into the problem. We look only at the electrical system, open the panel, test devices and give you a written list sorted into what has to be corrected now and what is simply a rule that changed after the house was built.

That list is also what turns a vague worry into a plan you can stage, usually with the panel upgrade first because it is what makes everything after it possible. What you should not accept is a price for major work quoted over the phone by someone who has not seen the panel. After more than 35 years here, we would still rather spend an hour looking than guess.