In what order does Franklin issue permits?
Building first, trades second. The City of Franklin’s permit information says the building permit should be the first one obtained for a project and that electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits are issued after it. The building permit doesn’t cover the trade work; contractors licensed in each trade pull their own.
The city’s procedures also say a homeowner may pull the building permit with a notarized Homeowner’s Affidavit, and that an owner without a license may do so for work under $25,000. Above that, a State-licensed contractor must pull it. Working without a permit gets the job stopped, and the city charges double fees when the permit is finally obtained.
Who inspects electrical work in Franklin?
The city. Franklin is on the State’s list of jurisdictions that run their own electrical program, so a State deputy inspector won’t be the one on a job inside city limits. Building and Neighborhood Services is at 109 3rd Avenue South, 615-794-7012.
For a bathroom remodel, that means the city sees the project as a building permit and again as each trade permit. Because we coordinate the electrical and plumbing in-house, both trade permits come from one company instead of two subcontractors working to separate schedules.
The city keeps separate application forms for electrical, low-voltage, plumbing and mechanical work. Low voltage is the one people forget: a new run of landscape lighting on a transformer may call for the low-voltage application rather than the electrical one, so ask before the trench is dug.
That makes Franklin the opposite of Brentwood, its neighbor to the north, where the city issues no electrical permits at all and the State inspects every job.
Did the 2010 flood reach Franklin?
Yes. The University of Tennessee’s account of the May 2010 flood names Franklin, along with Bellevue downstream, among the places the Harpeth River put under water.
Most of the city is younger than that flood. The median house in Franklin was built in 2002, and the city has about 87,000 residents. Houses past twenty years reach the stage where water heaters, toilet internals, faucet cartridges and the first round of outdoor lighting start coming up for replacement. Franklin is about 33 miles from our Hermitage base.