Homes could cost $500 to $1,000 more to build in Casper as the city gets ready to adopt the latest national standards for electrical installation this summer.
The regulations, known as the National Electric Code, exist primarily to prevent fires. They’re set by the National Fire Protection Association, a trade group.
The changes will go before council on June 6 in the form of an amendment to municipal code. It’ll have to receive approval from councilors three times before the changes could become official.
Pat Sweeney, a longtime member of Casper’s business community and former state lawmaker, urged the council to resist the code.
“I know there’s certain things we have to do to come in compliance,” Sweeney said. “It affects insurance ratings and all the rest of it.” But he’s worried about how the rules would affect economic development.
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He pointed to downtown Casper’s First and Center Building, once the Gladstone Hotel, of which he is a former owner. The building, which was built in the 1920s and is currently listed for $600,000, has been for sale for years — in part because it would be so expensive to bring it up to fire code.
The city doesn’t appear to have much choice in the matter. The state will adopt the new standards on July 1, and Wyoming law requires communities to follow suit within a year.
“In order to obtain local enforcement authority, we have to adopt the codes, at a minimum, at the level that the state has adopted them,” City Attorney Eric Nelson said during the meeting. “The risk, generally speaking, is that if we don’t adopt them, then the state of Wyoming can come in and assume enforcement authority, and basically preempt the city of Casper’s ability to regulate our own citizens.”
That said, Nelson offered to explore potential alternatives to adopting the code in full before the amendment’s brought before the council in June.
“Surge protection has doubled and will certainly add cost to new motels and hotels,” Justin Scott, a building inspector for the city of Casper, wrote in an April 28 memo to city staff.
According to the memo, notable updates to the regulations include:
- a new rule requiring motels, dormitory units and sleeping quarters in assisted-living facilities and nursing homes to install surge protectors;
- more rules mandating certain kinds of appliances, in certain situations, to be protected by ground-fault circuit interrupters, a type of circuit breaker;
While Scott threw out $500 to $1,000 as a rough estimate for what the average impact on residential units could be, he stressed that costs would look different for each development.
“It’s hard to put an actual number on this because since there are many factors involved in these types of buildings such as numbers and types of rooms,” the memo stated.
Costs like these are often ultimately absorbed by consumers. However, the exact impact for those who own or rent property is unknown at this point.
The changes come as certain kinds of electrical equipment, including panels, wires and breakers, are in short supply, it added.