Newfoundland’s Ultimate Electrical FAQ & Homeowner Guide

• An electrical panel upgrade involves replacing only the breaker box inside your home (often moving from old fuses to modern breakers, or upgrading an old, faulty 100-amp panel to a newer, safer 100-amp panel).

• A service upgrade is much more comprehensive; it involves replacing the exterior wiring, the electrical meter base, the weather mast connecting your home to the Newfoundland Power or NL Hydro grid, and the internal panel to bring a higher total amperage (usually upgrading from 100 amps to 200 amps) into the house.

• Modern heat pumps and electric heating systems draw massive amounts of continuous power and require dedicated 240-volt circuits. Older homes in NL with 100-amp panels physically lack the total load capacity to power a heat pump alongside an electric range, a hot water boiler, and a dryer. Adding a heat pump to a fully loaded 100-amp system will fatally overload the panel, causing the main breaker to trip constantly and creating a severe fire hazard. Furthermore, upgrading to a 200-amp service is a mandatory requirement to qualify for most provincial takeCHARGE electrification rebates.

• To qualify for provincial takeCHARGE rebates (which often cover electrical service upgrades from 100-amp to 200-amp when switching from oil heat to electric), the work must be completed by a certified, licensed electrical contractor like Vinland Electrical. DIY installations or unpermitted work will immediately disqualify you from receiving rebate funds. We ensure your electrical upgrades are fully code-compliant and provide the official, detailed invoices you need to seamlessly claim your money back.

• In most cases, a standard 100-amp panel does not have the capacity to support a high-speed 40-amp or 50-amp Level 2 EV charger without overloading the system. However, you have two code-compliant options:

1. A 200-Amp Service Upgrade: The best long-term solution to future-proof your home.

2. An EV Energy Management System (like a DCC-9): Vinland Electrical can install a smart load-shedding device. It reads your home's total power consumption in real-time. If you turn on your stove and dryer, the device temporarily pauses your EV charger to prevent a panel overload, and automatically resumes charging your car when the household appliances are turned off.

Service NL will immediately fail inspections for several common, dangerous defects that violate the Canadian Electrical Code (CEC). In older Newfoundland homes, these frequently include:

• Bootlegging a Ground: Installing modern three-prong outlets on older two-wire circuits without an actual ground wire.

• Knob-and-Tube Hazards: Dangerous live knob-and-tube wiring remnants improperly or illegally spliced into modern Romex circuits.

• Overcrowded Panels: Utilizing "double-tapped" breakers (jamming two wires into a breaker designed for only one) because the panel is out of physical space.

• Improper Breaker Sizing: Putting a 20-amp breaker on 14-gauge wire, which violates local codes and turns the wire inside your walls into a dangerous heating element before the breaker can trip.

• Missing Safety Devices: A failure to install mandatory Arc-Fault Circuit Interrupters (AFCIs) in bedrooms, or Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCIs) within 1.5 meters of water sources.

• Yes. Under provincial law, any structural electrical work—such as moving outlets, adding new circuits, upgrading panels, or wiring a basement renovation—requires an official electrical permit and must be performed by a certified electrical contractor. Simply swapping a light bulb or a cosmetic switch plate does not require a permit. When you hire Vinland Electrical, we pull all necessary permits on your behalf and coordinate the final safety inspections with Service NL so you have official, legal documentation that your home is 100% up to code

• Today, almost all major home insurance companies in NL will refuse to issue a new policy—or will cancel an existing one—if a home has active knob and tube wiring. K&T wiring lacks a vital ground wire, and the 100-year-old rubber insulation is usually brittle and crumbling, leaving bare live wires exposed inside your walls. If you are purchasing a heritage home in downtown St. John's, Vinland Electrical provides complete, safe K&T removal and full-home rewiring to ensure your property is insurable.

Not necessarily. While aluminum wiring expands and contracts differently than copper (a process called "cold creep" that leads to loose connections and arcing fires), a full rewire isn't your only option. Vinland Electrical specializes in Aluminum Wiring Rejuvenation (Pigtailing). We safely splice a small piece of copper wire to the end of the aluminum wire at every single switch, outlet, and junction box using specialized, code-compliant AL/CU connectors and anti-oxidant paste. This mitigates the fire hazard and satisfies home insurance providers at a fraction of the cost of a full house rewire.

To prepare for extreme Atlantic winter weather, high winds, and ice storms, you must protect both your electronics and your heating system. First, you should install a whole-home surge protector directly at your main panel to protect sensitive electronics and expensive heat pump motors from massive grid surges when Newfoundland Power restores the grid after an outage. Additionally, Vinland Electrical can install a manual transfer switch and a dedicated generator panel, allowing you to safely connect a portable backup generator to run your heat, fridge, and essential lights during a prolonged blackout without dangerously back-feeding power into the utility grid.

A GenerLink is a highly popular, specialized collar device installed directly behind your home's exterior electrical meter by a licensed electrician (in coordination with the utility company). It allows you to plug a portable generator directly into your home without needing a separate sub-panel wired inside your basement. When the power goes out, the GenerLink automatically disconnects your house from the grid (preventing deadly back-feeding). You simply plug in your generator, turn it on, and then use your existing main breaker panel to select which circuits you want to run.

This highly illegal practice is called "backfeeding". If you plug a generator into a wall outlet without a proper transfer switch or GenerLink isolating your home from the grid, your generator will send unregulated power backwards out of your house, up the utility pole, and into the local power grid. The transformer on the street will amplify your generator's power to thousands of volts, which can instantly electrocute and kill utility line workers who are trying to repair the outage.

Absolutely not! A tripping breaker is a safety mechanism doing exactly what it was designed to do: stop a fire. It trips because the circuit is overloaded (too many heavy appliances running at once), there is a short circuit, or there is a ground fault. Replacing a 15-amp breaker with a 20-amp breaker on a wire only rated for 15 amps will allow the wire inside your wall to overheat, melt its insulation, and cause a devastating house fire. You must call a licensed electrician to diagnose the fault or run a new, dedicated wire to handle the larger load.

This is a classic symptom of an overloaded circuit. Most standard household circuits in older homes are 15 amps. A modern microwave or a space heater can draw up to 12.5 amps all by itself. If you have lights, a TV, and a space heater running on the same circuit, the total power draw exceeds 15 amps, and the breaker trips to cut the power before the wires overheat. If this happens frequently, Vinland Electrical will need to run a new, dedicated appliance circuit from your panel directly to that heavy-use appliance.

Yes! Upgrading to smart thermostats is an excellent way to lower your winter electricity bills. However, electric baseboard heaters run on line-voltage (120V or 240V), meaning you cannot use low-voltage smart thermostats like Nest or standard Ecobee models. You need a line-voltage smart thermostat, such as Mysa (which is proudly designed right here in Newfoundland!). Because you are dealing with high voltage, we highly recommend having our licensed electricians perform the installation to ensure it is wired safely and correctly.

Both are modern safety devices required by the Canadian Electrical Code to protect your home:

• GFCI (Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupter): Protects you from deadly electrical shocks. They are required anywhere electricity is near water (kitchens, bathrooms, outdoors). If the device detects electricity escaping the circuit (like dropping a hair dryer in water), it shuts the power off in milliseconds.

• AFCI (Arc-Fault Circuit Interrupter): Protects your home from electrical fires. Required in bedrooms and living areas, these breakers detect dangerous electrical "arcing" or sparking behind your walls (usually caused by damaged wires or loose connections) and shut the power down before a fire can ignite.