Hiring a Licensed Electrician in Oakville

Renovations in Oakville run from kitchens in houses built in 1960 or before to finished basements in the newer communities north of Dundas Street. Nearly all of them involve an electrician at some point. Before you hire one, it helps to know what licensed means in Ontario and how the permit is supposed to work.

What Licensed Means in Ontario

In Ontario, electrical work for hire may only be done by a business that holds a licence from the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA). ESA calls such a business a Licensed Electrical Contractor. The electricians who come to your house are employed by that contractor, and ESA's guidance is to hire the licensed business, since an electrician cannot be hired directly.

Each licensed business carries a seven-digit licence number, and ESA advises looking for it on the estimate. Our guide to checking an ESA licence shows how to look any contractor up on ESA's public locator, using our own record as the example. A record tells you whether the licence is valid and which types of work it includes. It is not a rating of the contractor's work.

The Permit and the Inspection

Almost all electrical work in Ontario has to be reported to ESA through a notification of work, which most people call a permit, before it starts. The electrical permit comes from ESA rather than the Town, even when the same renovation also needs a building permit from the Town. When you hire a licensed contractor, the contractor files the notification, and being asked to take it out in your own name is one of the warning signs ESA lists.

On a renovation, the inspector comes at the rough-in stage, while the framing is still open. Once the work passes, ESA sends a Certificate of Acceptance to the one who filed. On our jobs, the permit and its inspection are built into the quoted price.

Insurance and Resale

ESA warns that a home insurance claim traced back to unlicensed work may be denied. It also warns that if an unlicensed contractor is injured on your property, you may be held responsible. When you sell, a buyer or an insurer may ask for the Certificate of Acceptance for past work, so keep it with your house records. Work done with no permit leaves no record, and putting it right later can mean opening up finished walls.

Oakville Homes and Common Renovation Jobs

Oakville's homes come from many eras. In the 2021 census, 19,885 of the town's 73,560 occupied homes, 27.0 percent, were built in 1980 or before. Another 28,165 homes, or 38.3 percent, date from 2001 to 2021.

The Town's heritage conservation districts hold older houses still: the Old Oakville district includes lakeside cottages from the nineteenth century, and the First and Second Street district saw a wave of building in the 1920s and 1930s. In a house of that age, an opened wall may reveal knob and tube wiring, which needs attention before any new circuit is connected to it.

A kitchen renovation usually brings circuits for appliances, receptacles by the sink guarded by a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), and lighting under the cabinets. A basement finish adds lighting, receptacles and circuits for the new rooms. Our lighting and renovation service handles both.

An electric vehicle (EV) charger is another common addition, since a Level 2 unit needs its own 240 volt circuit and a panel with room for it. Our EV charger installation page covers the job, and our article on home EV charging explains the panel question in more detail.