Choosing a contractor
How to Choose an Electrician in Charleston, SC
Eight checks, all of which you can make yourself before signing anything.
Eight checks, all of which you can make yourself before signing anything.
Electrical is one of the three residential specialties South Carolina licenses by examination rather than by registration, and it is also one of the eight mechanical subclassifications issued by the Contractor’s Licensing Board. Above ten thousand dollars of construction, the Contractor’s Licensing Board licence is the one required.
The search is at verify.llronline.com. Note that verify.llr.sc.gov, which a great many articles link to, has no DNS record at all — if a lookup has failed for you before, that is probably why. Check the licence is active and that the name on it matches the name going on the contract.
Panel changes, service upgrades, new circuits and rewiring are permitted and inspected work across both our markets, and the permit is pulled by the licensed electrical contractor performing it, in their own name.
A building official is required to refuse to issue a permit without evidence of licensure or an exemption. Replacing a light fitting or a receptacle generally is not permitted work.
A forwarded PDF proves nothing about whether the policy is still in force. Ask the agent to send it, and ask whether workers’ compensation covers everyone who will be on your property.
Electrical is the trade where an uninsured mistake is a fire rather than a leak, which is a good reason not to take this one on trust.
An electrical scope should name the circuits, the device counts, the panel make and the protection being fitted. It should also say whether bringing associated circuits up to current code is included, because opening a circuit frequently obliges it.
The line most often left ambiguous is who patches and paints afterwards. On a rewire in a finished house, that is a substantial part of the real cost.
Before adding a car charger, a heat pump water heater or a shop circuit, "the panel looks fine" and "the panel has capacity for this" are different statements, and only the second one answers the question.
A contractor who will not do the calculation is asking you to carry the risk of the answer.
The rating matters less than how the business behaved when something went wrong. A calm, specific reply to a bad review tells you more than fifty five-star ratings.
For electrical, look for how they handled work that failed an inspection — that is the review that tells you whether the permit is treated as a formality.
State regulation splits a single solar installation across three: the roof mounting may only be done by a licensed residential builder, a registered specialty contractor with the roofer classification, or a general contractor with a roofing classification; the wiring and connections only by a residential builder, a licensed residential electrician, or a mechanical contractor with the electrical classification; and any structural upgrade to the roof only by a builder, a registered carpenter, or a general contractor with a building or structural framing classification.
One company can hold several. Very few hold all of them, and the question is worth asking before a deposit.
In the older parts of the region, ask specifically what they found rather than what they assume. Mid-century housing here is frequently safe and simply insufficient, which is a different job from unsafe.
Southeastern Renovation is a general contractor, SC licence CLG.127339, and you can check that at the link above rather than taking our word for it. It is not an electrical licence: electrical work is performed by a licensed electrical subcontractor who pulls the electrical permit in their own name. On the jobs where the licensing splits — solar above all — what we hold is the sequence between the trades. Scopes are written before prices.