Home Rewiring Services
Bay Area's #1 Choice

What Is Home Rewiring and When Does Your House Need It?

Home rewiring is the process of removing outdated or unsafe wiring throughout a house and replacing it with new wiring sized and rated correctly for every circuit it serves. You need it when the existing wiring is knob-and-tube, aluminum branch circuit wiring, or has failed a safety inspection tied to a home sale, insurance renewal, or permit application, and whole house rewiring becomes the right scope once the issue extends beyond one or two rooms.

Types of Rewiring We Handle

Whole house rewiring is not a one-size job — a kitchen circuit needs a different wire gauge than a lighting circuit, a laundry or HVAC circuit needs its own dedicated run, and outdoor and bathroom circuits need GFCI-rated wiring and connections from the start. In older neighborhoods across San Jose, Santa Clara, and Los Gatos, we regularly find knob-and-tube wiring in homes built before 1950 that was never designed to carry today’s appliance and HVAC loads, which is almost always a full, whole-house scope rather than a partial fix.

Signs Your Home Needs Rewiring

Warning signs include breakers that trip repeatedly without a clear cause, warm or discolored outlets and switch plates, a burning smell with no obvious source, and a home inspection report flagging aluminum or knob-and-tube wiring. A home that’s changing hands or being reinsured in cities like Los Altos or Saratoga often surfaces these issues during inspection, even when the homeowner hasn’t noticed a functional problem yet.

Home Rewiring: How the Process Works

Whole house rewiring starts with a room-by-room assessment of every circuit the home needs, mapping wire gauge and type to each one, followed by permitting with the local authority having jurisdiction before any wire is pulled. Once permitted, the work involves fishing new wire through walls and accessible cavities, terminating every connection to the correct device and torque spec, and coordinating drywall patching where access points were needed. The whole project regularly takes 10 days or 2 weeks.

Assessment, Permitting, and Scope Definition

We inspect the home’s existing wiring, panel capacity, and accessible routing paths, then map out which wire type and gauge each circuit requires — 12-gauge for standard 20-amp circuits, 10-gauge or larger for dedicated appliance and HVAC circuits, and GFCI-rated wiring for kitchens, bathrooms, and outdoor runs. Permit and inspection requirements vary by city, and a whole house rewiring project in Sunnyvale may move through the AHJ on a different timeline than one in Milpitas or Mountain View, so we handle that coordination directly rather than leaving it to the homeowner.

What Happens During and After the Rewiring Job

Once permitted, our electricians fish new wire through existing wall cavities and attic or crawlspace access points wherever possible to limit drywall disruption, and open sections of wall only where fishing isn’t feasible. Every connection is terminated with the correct wire nut, torque value, and device rating for that circuit — a detail that matters more on a whole house job than a single-room repair, since one undersized or mismatched connection anywhere in the system can undermine the rest of the rewire.

Home Rewiring Cost in the Bay Area

Whole house rewiring cost depends primarily on the size of the home, the number and type of circuits being replaced, and how much of the wiring is accessible without opening finished walls. A single-story home with a simple layout costs less to rewire than a larger, multi-story home with several circuit types and finished walls throughout. The price range is between $25 000 for a compact 2-bedroom house and $60 000 for bigger houses

Factors That Affect the Final Price

Price is driven by square footage, the number of dedicated circuits required for kitchens, laundry, and HVAC equipment, whether the existing wiring is aluminum requiring CO/ALR-rated devices and anti-oxidant compound or knob-and-tube requiring full removal, and how much of the home’s wiring can be fished through existing cavities versus requiring wall access. Homes in Cupertino and Campbell with finished basements or additions built at different points over the years often have more circuit types and access points to plan around than a straightforward single-story layout in Foster City.

Partial vs. Full Rewiring: Which Do You Actually Need?

A partial rewire can make sense when an isolated issue, like aluminum wiring in a single kitchen circuit, is the only documented problem and the rest of the home’s wiring is sound. Whole house rewiring is the right call when knob-and-tube or aluminum wiring runs throughout the home, or when an inspection has flagged widespread issues rather than a single contained problem, since piecing together partial fixes on an aging system tends to just delay a job that needs to be done comprehensively.

Why Bay Area Homeowners Choose United HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical for Home Rewiring

Homeowners choose us because we plan whole house rewiring projects down to the wire type and connection detail on every circuit, rather than running a single wire gauge through the house and calling it done. We manage permitting, inspection, and drywall coordination as part of the project instead of leaving those pieces to the homeowner.

Licensed, Insured, and Local

Our electricians are trained for residential rewiring work throughout the Bay Area and carry insurance that covers the property while walls are open and wiring is exposed during the project. That coverage matters on a job that, by its nature, involves accessing more of the home’s structure than a typical repair call.

25+ Years Rewiring Bay Area Homes

Our technicians and supervisor spent more than 25 years on electrical and heat pump-related work across San Jose, Palo Alto, Belmont, and the surrounding cities, which includes a steady volume of whole house rewiring projects in homes with knob-and-tube and aluminum wiring. That history means our electricians can generally anticipate the wiring types and circuit complexity of a project from the home’s age and construction era before the walls are even opened.

Upfront Pricing and Same-Day Availability

Every rewiring project is quoted as a flat price once the room-by-room assessment and scope are confirmed, not an open-ended estimate that grows as walls come open. If a connection or component we installed fails within the guarantee period, we return and correct it at no additional labor cost.

Living with knob-and-tube or aluminum wiring, or dealing with a failed inspection tied to a home sale? Call United HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical at (408) 539-6936 for a whole house rewiring assessment anywhere in the Bay Area.