Final Inspection Readiness Checklist

The scope varies with the jurisdiction and the adopted code edition, but it converges on a small number of areas: conformance to the stamped plan set, conductor sizing and overcurrent protection at the point of connection, grounding and bonding, labeling and placarding, disconnect location and working clearance, and roof attachments and flashing. Where the adopted edition requires rapid shutdown, that is checked too, and storage usually adds its own questions. This checklist walks those areas as separate lists rather than as one, because they fail independently.

They sit at opposite ends of the project. A permit package checklist scores whether a plan set is complete enough to submit for review, before anything is built. This one scores whether an installation that is already built matches the set that was approved, and whether the physical and documentary conditions an inspector examines are in place. One is about a drawing; the other is about a house.

Two reasons dominate, and neither is workmanship. The first is labeling: the requirement is a full label set for the adopted edition, permanently marked and located where the person who needs it will find it, and a correct label that is handwritten or in the wrong place still fails. The second is conformance: the installation is verified against the approved drawings, so a module model substituted for availability or a conduit route changed around an obstruction is a finding regardless of whether the as-built version is better engineering. Both are documentation problems presenting as compliance problems.

Usually not, and that is what makes it the most expensive group on the list. Working clearance is decided by where the equipment was mounted relative to a water heater, a gas meter, a garage shelf or a low ceiling, and none of those move on an afternoon's notice. For residential PV voltages the working figures are three feet of depth from the enclosure front, thirty inches of width or the equipment width if wider, and six and a half feet of headroom, with doors able to open ninety degrees and the space kept clear of storage. Confirm the specific figures against the edition your jurisdiction has adopted. The place to resolve clearance is the site survey.

Often. Many jurisdictions require an in-progress or rough inspection before work is concealed, some separate building from electrical inspections entirely with different inspectors on different days, and ground mounts and storage frequently add further visits. A special inspection may also be a condition of the permit and performed by an approved third party rather than by the jurisdiction. The number and sequence is a jurisdiction-level decision, not a national standard, so confirm it before the crew is on site rather than after.

The permit is issued to a licensed contractor of record, and the inspection is a finding against work performed under that permit. On a subcontracted install the correction and any re-inspection fee ordinarily sit with the installing party under a reasonably drafted subcontract. The contested case is narrower: where the crew built exactly what the approved plan showed and the plan was wrong, that is a design error rather than a workmanship error, and most subcontracts are silent on it. It belongs in the agreement as an explicit allocation.

No. The jurisdiction's sign-off satisfies the jurisdiction. The utility is a separate authority with a separate process, and only its written Permission to Operate permits the system to be energized and export. The sign-off is normally an input the utility requires, and someone has to submit it, because the jurisdiction usually will not forward it. That handoff is where finished systems sit longest.