Electrician in Forest Grove, OR — Historic Homes, 1970s Houses and New Builds

One home in nine predates 1940, the 1970s are the peak building decade, and 44% of houses went up since 1990 — three kinds of electrical work in one town.

Forest Grove has an older core than most of the towns we serve. 1,030 of its 9,094 homes, 11.3%, were built before 1940, and the city keeps three residential historic districts near downtown and Pacific University: Walker-Naylor, Clark and Painter's Woods; Painter's Woods alone spans houses built from 1880 to 1948. Knob-and-tube and ungrounded outlets are still possible in houses that age. Tualatin Valley Hwy (OR 8) is the road we come in on from Hillsboro.

The busiest building decade was the 1970s: 1,586 homes, 17.4%. Anything wired from 1965 through 1973 may have aluminum branch circuits. Since 1990 about 4,000 more homes have gone up; their wiring is modern, and the work there is about room for new loads like a car charger, a heat pump or a hot tub. Whatever the decade, we don't assume how a house was wired; we look at the panel and a few outlets before we quote. Two things differ from Portland: the power company is the city's own utility, not PGE, and electrical inspections come from Washington County.