Electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits

Electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and the newer categories that sit alongside them. This is the half of the record that matters most, for one reason: almost all of this work disappears the week it is finished.

A sewer line is backfilled within hours of being laid. Supply and drain lines vanish into walls and under slabs. Wiring is covered by insulation and drywall. Once that has happened, no inspection of any kind will ever see the work again — not the city’s, and not a private one, because a Texas inspector’s standards of practice expressly exclude anything buried, hidden, latent or concealed. The permit file becomes the only record that will ever exist.

That is why the city’s hold points on trade work are timed the way they are. An underground inspection before the trench closes, a rough or top-out before the walls do, a final at the end. Each one is scheduled for the last moment something is still visible.

It is also why the thin cases stand out so sharply here. A residential air-conditioning changeout draws a single final inspection. So does a water heater. Nothing was concealed by either job, which is the logic — but it means a closed permit on a water heater tells you that an appliance was swapped and looked at once, on the day it was newest, and nothing more than that.

Two further points a buyer should know. Plano lets a homeowner pull a permit on their own homestead, so permitted work is not the same as licensed work. And the code cycle in force when the permit issued is what the work had to meet — not today’s code, and not forever.