Inspections, North Portland
Electrical Inspections
Two inspections, one visit if you want it: a home electrical inspection that examines the whole system, and a home safety inspection that adds a fire-safety, grounding and alarm check on top.
Chapter 01
Two inspections, and the difference actually matters
A home electrical inspection looks at the system itself, from the main panel out to every outlet and fixture, using modern diagnostic tools rather than a flashlight and a guess. That's the one you want before you buy a house, before you sell one, or when you just want to know what's actually behind the walls of a place you've lived in for years.
A home safety inspection starts from that same base and adds a second layer on top: fire safety measures, grounding, the panel itself, and whether the smoke and CO alarms are actually working, not just present. If you're asking which one you need, that's the honest split: electrical inspection for the system, safety inspection for the system plus the things that keep a fault from becoming a fire.
A vintage switchgear wall inside the Bridgetown Electric shop on N Lombard Street
What we're actually looking for on a St. Johns walkthrough
Much of the housing stock around our own shop on N Lombard Street predates 1950, and that age shows up in specific, findable ways: knob and tube still live in an attic nobody's been up in for years, a panel that was upgraded once decades ago and never again, grounding that stops partway through a remodel. None of that makes a house automatically unsafe or automatically illegal. Older work can be grandfathered rather than needing to be ripped out, but it does mean an inspection on a 1930s St. Johns bungalow finds different things than one on a house built last decade.
We walk the attic, the crawl space where there is one, the panel, and every accessible outlet and fixture, and we tell you plainly what we found. A rough rule worth knowing: an inspection every three years or so catches most of what changes quietly over time, whether that's a connection working loose or an alarm that's aged out.
Chapter 03
What you get, and what happens next
You get a straight account of what we found, room by room and system by system, not a sales pitch dressed up as a report. If something needs attention, we'll tell you what it is and roughly what it involves; if nothing does, we'll tell you that too. We're licensed as electrical contractor 26-887C, bonded and insured, and every visit carries our 1-year workmanship warranty on anything we actually do while we're there.
Call (503) 621-7122 or send a message and we'll get you scheduled. We're a family shop, Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 4 PM, closed weekends, and estimates for any follow-on work are typically available within one to two weeks.
Bridgetown Electric — Licensed, bonded and insured. CCB #103824, electrical contractor 26-887C. Call (503) 621-7122.