Homeowner's insurance routinely covers preventable disasters. Did you leave a candle on or a heater plugged in and start a fire? Did you not cut down a tree that was looking unhealthy and it fell on your home? These are all situations where your insurance would pay a claim. The cases where they would not pay a claim are more along the lines of "deliberate arson".
You may well need to certify that work is permitted in order to get an insurance policy.
Relevant reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/doe...
They allow them to change sockets and light switches. Anything requiring a city inspector is literally the same thing as getting a licensed electrician. Municipalities have a lot more insurance than an electrician does, often unwritten by the same reinsurers as the electricians.
> But second and maybe more importantly how would you ever be able to get insurance on an older house. There may have been dozens of different electricians and homeowners that did work over the years. Who would the insurance company go after if a problem occurred.
The insurance company goes bankrupt and the state bails out the homeowner. That's why we have electrical contractor surety bonds.
Do you have any evidence to point to where someone changes a dishwasher or some other small electrical project, and later insurance denies a claim?
I can imagine scenarios of gross negligence (wires run all over exposed, gas leaks, etc. etc.), but if we are talking small mistakes by homeowner during a un-permitted DIY project, I have a very very hard time believing insurance is going to scour the rubble to investigate...like literally how to you prove that!?
Like someone else said - when you buy a house you don't know how the electrical wiring was done and by whom. Paperwork is required only for the things I mentioned above - new circuits added after the house was built mostly. And even then someone would need to prove that it was done after construction.
So even if the insurance company wanted to deny a claim due to a DIY fitted socket....I think they would struggle, as there's absolutely nothing forbidding me from installing one, and most importantly - my contract with the insurance company doesn't forbid me from doing so.
Electricians have liability insurance provided by an organization specializing in policies for practicing tradesmen. If an insurance company fails to disqualify a homeowner's policy and pays out, it will then go after the electrician and his insurance to recoup their losses. Residential electrical fires are extremely preventable so insurance companies almost universally refuse to insure homes with DIY electrical work because the homeowner is the one liable.