Most houses here come from one of two building waves, the 1970s or the 1990s, and each wave brings its own panel questions.
Two decades built most of the city. The 1990s are the peak at 30.0% of its 11,303 homes, about 3,390 houses, and the 1970s follow at 22.6%, about 2,550. Almost nothing came before: only 1.7% of homes predate 1960 and just 97 predate 1940, so knob-and-tube is not the local question. I-5 runs through the city.
Kitchens and laundry rooms from the first wave were planned around far fewer appliances than a household runs today, and anything finished between 1965 and 1973 went up while aluminum branch circuits were in use. The second wave has sound modern wiring, yet builders often filled every slot in a panel sized before anyone expected a heat pump or a car plugged in overnight. So in either kind of house we usually start at the panel, and the permit is ours to pull.