# Soft-story retrofits and electrical work: planning the rewire around the ground floor

> How San Francisco's soft-story retrofit program meets old wiring: the ground floor both trades open, what DBI's list shows and how to sequence the rewire.

URL: https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/blog/soft-story-retrofit-and-rewiring/

**In short**

A seismic retrofit opens the same garage ceilings and walls that carry a building's wiring. What DBI's program covers, and how the electrical work fits around it.

**Last updated**

October 30, 2026

San Francisco’s Mandatory Soft Story Program has changed thousands of ground floors across the city, and every one of those ground floors is also where the building’s wiring travels. A retrofit opens garage ceilings, adds shear walls and moves framing; a knob and tube replacement needs exactly those spaces to route new cable up into the flats. [Fog City SF Knob and Tube](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/) manages knob and tube replacement in San Francisco flat buildings, with the electrical work carried out by licensed and insured electrical contractors, and this post explains where the two kinds of work meet.

The seismic work itself belongs to engineers and structural contractors. Nothing here is advice on the retrofit. What follows is about access: how the ground story controls the wiring, and why the cheapest moment to rewire it is while it is open.

## What the program covers

DBI describes the program as covering wood-frame buildings with five or more residential units and two or more stories over a “soft” story, permitted before 1978. Its public property list, published on DataSF and updated weekly, holds 4,958 properties, of which 4,718 are marked work complete with a certificate of final completion issued and 228 are marked non-compliant. The list sorts buildings into tiers, and Tier IV covers buildings with a business or mercantile occupancy on the first story, such as a storefront, and buildings in mapped liquefaction zones.

The buildings cluster where the city’s flats do, including the [Mission District](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/mission-district/). Placed on SF Planning’s analysis neighborhoods, the list shows 622 properties in the Mission, 407 in the Marina, 353 in Russian Hill, 331 in the Outer Richmond and 329 in Haight Ashbury. Most retrofits are finished, so for many owners the question today is what the retrofit left behind: new walls and hardware in the garage, and wiring above them that may or may not have been touched.

## Why the ground story controls the wiring

Where a flat building has a garage or basement, its ceiling is usually the main horizontal route for wiring, and the walls and chases rising from it are the vertical routes into each unit. That is the practical meaning of attic and crawlspace accessibility in a building of flats: the top unit may have an attic or, under a flat roof, none at all, so the ground story often carries the routes that matter. Open joists let an electrician fish cable to each riser without cutting into the living space, which keeps openings in the flats small and patching light; [plaster-wall rewiring](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/plaster-wall-rewiring/) covers the openings that remain.

A retrofit can improve that access or close it off. While the garage ceiling is open and the framing is exposed, runs can be replaced end to end. Once new plywood shear walls and ceiling finishes go up, the same routes have to be reached by opening finished surfaces, and a run buried behind a new structural wall may have to take a longer path. San Francisco’s amendments also treat premises wiring less than 8 feet above a walking surface as subject to physical damage, which governs how cable along a low garage ceiling is protected.

## What the permit record shows

Electrical permits that mention soft-story work exist in the neighborhoods where the program is densest. In DBI’s legacy electrical permit data, descriptions mentioning “soft story” are most frequent in the Marina, with 14, followed by Hayes Valley with 11 and the Mission and Haight Ashbury with 9 each. One knob and tube permit spells out the conflict directly: “remove and relocate wiring and outlets that are in conflict with structural work related to the mandatory soft story retrofit.”

That wording describes the minimum: moving what is in the way. In a building that still has active knob and tube, the runs being moved are often the same runs that would be replaced in a rewire, and relocating old wire through new framing only to replace it later means opening the ground floor twice.

## Sequencing the two jobs

When both kinds of work are planned together, the order follows the inspections. The structural framing goes in first. The electrical rough-in follows while the ceilings and walls are still open, under its own DBI electrical permit, and DBI’s pre-cover inspection has to pass before anything is covered. DBI can order concealed, uninspected work exposed at the owner’s expense, so the close-up of the ground story waits for both sign-offs. Finishes and patching come last.

The electrical plan starts with a test of every circuit, as in a [knob and tube inspection](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/knob-and-tube-inspection/), so the owner knows which runs crossing the ground story are original and which units they feed. Each existing dwelling unit needs its own electrical permit, with separate permits for common areas, which the [permit guide](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/san-francisco-electrical-permit/) covers. Residents lose power only in scheduled, announced windows, the approach described in [apartment building rewiring](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/apartment-building-rewiring/) and in the guide to [living at home during a rewire](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/living-at-home-during-rewiring/). Because these buildings were built before 1979, DBI presumes lead paint, and openings follow lead-safe practice under the [lead and asbestos guide](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/lead-and-asbestos-during-rewiring/).

## Storefront buildings and Tier IV

Tier IV is where the program and mixed-use buildings meet. Of the Mission’s 622 soft-story properties, 232 are Tier IV; in the Marina, 151 of 407. In a building with a shop on the ground floor, the storefront ceiling is the route into the flats, and San Francisco does not permit nonmetallic sheathed cable in nonresidential spaces, so the storefront’s replacement wiring runs in metal-clad cable or raceway. [Commercial knob and tube replacement](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/commercial-knob-and-tube-replacement/) explains how those buildings are permitted and scheduled.

## Costs and who pays

Retrofit costs are outside this post. On the electrical side, the public figures are DBI’s per-unit permit fees, $305 to $740 per dwelling unit for residential wiring, plus the wiring itself, priced after testing. For rented buildings, the Rent Board’s capital improvement rules treat seismic work required by law differently from other improvements: 100% of its cost may be passed through to tenants, regardless of the number of units. Whether any electrical work done alongside it counts the same way is a Rent Board question for each building, covered in the [rental property rewiring guide](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/rewiring-a-rental-property-san-francisco/).

If your building is retrofitted already, the useful step is a test of what still runs through the ground story. If the retrofit is still ahead, the electrical scope can be written before the walls go up. Call (628) 296-7628, or read [what a knob and tube replacement looks like in a flat](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/blog/what-a-knob-and-tube-replacement-looks-like-in-a-flat/) for the steps from start to finish.

**Questions**

## Questions about this post

### Does a soft-story retrofit require the wiring to be replaced?

No. The retrofit is structural work, and replacing wiring is a separate electrical scope with its own permit. What the retrofit does is open and then close the ground story, where many buildings carry the runs that feed the units above. Wiring that conflicts with new shear walls or framing has to be moved, and old runs reached through those openings can be replaced at the same time.

### Should the electrical work happen before or after the seismic retrofit?

Planned together, the rough-in usually fits between the structural framing and the close-up of the walls and ceilings. New runs through the ground story need DBI's pre-cover inspection before anything is covered, so the electrical permit and inspections are scheduled inside the retrofit's sequence rather than after it.

### How do I know whether my building is on San Francisco's soft-story list?

DBI publishes its soft-story property list on DataSF, with each property's status and tier, and updates it weekly. The program covers wood-frame buildings of five or more residential units with two or more stories over a soft story. A building that is not on the list can still have the same garage-level access questions for a rewire.

**Related service**

## Apartment building rewiring

### Apartment building rewiring

Knob and tube replaced unit by unit or building-wide, with a permit for each dwelling unit and power-off windows announced to residents.

**Read next**

## Keep reading

- [Decision GuideWhat does rewiring a rental property in San Francisco involve?The landlord's side of a knob and tube job: permits unit by unit, working around tenants, the Rent Board's relocation rules and what a capital improvement petition can and cannot do.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/rewiring-a-rental-property-san-francisco/)
- [Decision GuideCan you live in a house while rewiring is under way?How an occupied rewire is sequenced, what a day without power in some rooms looks like, and when it is better to be somewhere else.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/living-at-home-during-rewiring/)
- [LearnHow does a San Francisco electrical permit work for rewiring?Who can file, what DBI charges, what each inspection checks, and why a Green Tag on its own does not prove the knob and tube is gone.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/san-francisco-electrical-permit/)
- [LearnHow to replace knob and tube wiring: what the work involvesThe order a replacement runs in, from the first circuit test to the Green Tag, what goes in the walls instead, and what to do to get the house ready.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/knob-and-tube-replacement-process/)
- [Illustrative WalkthroughWhat a knob and tube replacement looks like in a San Francisco flat: an illustrative walkthroughAn illustrative example, not a record of a completed job: how a typical replacement in a stacked two-flat building runs from start to finish.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/blog/what-a-knob-and-tube-replacement-looks-like-in-a-flat/)