What happens if I do electrical work without a permit in New Brunswick?

Doing electrical work without a TSANB permit in New Brunswick can result in fines, insurance claim denials, problems selling your home, and most importantly, serious safety hazards from uninspected work. The consequences compound over time and often surface at the worst possible moment.

Fines and enforcement. TSANB has the authority to issue orders to comply and fines for unpermitted electrical work in New Brunswick. If an inspector discovers unpermitted work — during a routine inspection, a renovation permit for adjacent work, or a complaint — they can require you to have the work exposed for inspection, which may mean opening up finished walls and ceilings. The cost of exposing, inspecting, and repairing unpermitted work is almost always more than doing it properly in the first place.

Insurance implications are the biggest financial risk. This is where unpermitted work really hurts. If you have a fire or electrical incident, your insurance company's investigator will determine the cause. If the fire is traced to unpermitted electrical work — a DIY panel modification, an improperly wired circuit, or a junction box hidden behind drywall — your insurance company can deny the entire claim. We're talking about the difference between a covered loss and paying $200,000+ out of pocket to rebuild your home. Insurance companies in New Brunswick are increasingly thorough about investigating electrical fires, and unpermitted work is one of the first things they look for.

Selling your home becomes complicated. When you sell, the buyer's home inspector will examine the electrical panel and visible wiring. Unpermitted work is often obvious to a trained eye — amateur wire runs, non-standard connections, missing junction box covers, and mismatched breakers all raise red flags. In New Brunswick's real estate market, buyers can (and do) request that all electrical work be brought up to code as a condition of sale. This means paying an electrician to assess, repair, and permit the work retroactively — often at 2 to 3 times what it would have cost to do it right originally, because the electrician may need to open walls to trace and verify the work.

The safety risk is the most serious consequence. Electrical code exists because improperly installed wiring kills people and burns down homes. Common DIY electrical mistakes include using the wrong wire gauge for the breaker size (causes wire overheating), not securing cables properly (causes damage over time), missing ground connections (eliminates shock protection), improper junction boxes (hidden connections that can arc and ignite), and overloading circuits beyond their rated capacity.

What requires a TSANB permit in New Brunswick. Any new circuit, any panel work, any new outlet or switch on a new circuit, EV charger installation, generator installation, hot tub wiring, rewiring, and essentially anything beyond replacing an existing outlet, switch, or light fixture with the same type in the same location.

If you already have unpermitted work. The best course of action is to hire a TSANB-licensed electrician to assess the work, make any corrections needed, and pull a retroactive permit. Yes, it costs money, but it's far less than the potential consequences of leaving it. Most electricians in New Brunswick handle this regularly and can work with TSANB to get existing work inspected and approved.

---

Find a Electrical Contractor

New Brunswick Electrical connects you with experienced contractors through the https://newbrunswickconstructionnetwork.com:

• A&S Electric Ltd. ✓
• BCB Electric ✓
• Blue Energy Ltd ✓