Ah good point. On the west coast, I've been thwarted by class of building (and this is reasonable I guess). On the east coast (New England), many cities and to

Ah good point. On the west coast, I've been thwarted by class of building (and this is reasonable I guess). On the east coast (New England), many cities and towns don't even make an exception for owner-occupied, detached SFH buildings. Thou absolutely shalt not. My favorite permitting office experience was in another, shall we say lower-density, part of the country. I wanted to put a subpanel in the barn for a workshop. "Would I need a license for that?" The guy behind the desk asked me how big of a panel I wanted, what size and type of wire I was going to use, distance from the existing service, size of existing service. He was satisfied with my answers and said "Nah. You're good. Give me a call if you want me to swing by and take a look when you're done, but it sounds like you're fine.". I was in and out of there in like three minutes.