# Knob and tube replacement in the Richmond District, by house type

> Knob and tube replacement in the Inner and Outer Richmond, Lone Mountain, Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff, planned around which of three house types you own.

URL: https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/richmond-district/

**Permits and inspections**

[SF Department of Building Inspection (DBI)](https://sf.gov/apply-electrical-permit), for the City and County of San Francisco.

Last Updated: October 30, 2026

**Electric utility**

[PG&E](https://www.pge.com/)

**Richmond District & Sea Cliff**

- **94118, 94121** ZIP codes
- **355 across the Inner and Outer Richmond, Presidio Heights, Lone Mountain/USF and Seacliff naming knob and tube, January 2016 to October 2026** Knob and tube permits on record
- **Inner Richmond, Outer Richmond, Lone Mountain, Presidio Heights** Neighborhoods covered

**Why people call**

## What starts a rewire in Richmond District & Sea Cliff

### An 1890s two-flat

An Inner Richmond building from the first wave of development, with a permit for each flat and sometimes a tenant in one.

### A 1930s house over a garage

Toward Ocean Beach, the Sunset's question: is there knob and tube at all, and is the garage ceiling the way in?

### A Sea Cliff house fed underground

Detached houses with underground utilities, where a service upgrade is a bigger job than the rewire.

### A soft-story retrofit next door

Hundreds of Richmond buildings are on DBI's soft-story list, and the retrofit opens the same ground floor the wiring crosses.

The Richmond District does not have one kind of house, and for knob and tube the kind of house matters more than the address. An Inner Richmond two-flat from the 1890s, a 1930s house over a garage near Ocean Beach and a detached Sea Cliff house fed by underground power need three different plans, even though DBI, PG&E and the code are the same for all of them.

[Fog City SF Knob and Tube](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/) manages knob and tube replacement across the Inner and Outer Richmond, Lone Mountain, Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff under San Francisco DBI permits, and the electrical work is carried out by licensed and insured electrical contractors. The first step is the same for every type: a [knob and tube inspection](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/knob-and-tube-inspection/) that tests each circuit and records what it runs on.

## Which Richmond house type do you have?

Most Richmond buildings fall into one of three types, and each points to a different scope. Older Inner Richmond houses and two-flats are the likeliest to have original knob and tube and may need a permit per unit. Tract houses over garages toward Ocean Beach may have little or none. Residence-park houses are detached and sometimes fed underground.

| House type | Where and when | Likely wiring | Permits | Usual way in |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Houses and two-flats | Inner Richmond, 1890s to 1910s | Original knob and tube, often partly replaced | One per dwelling unit | Basement or garage ceiling, then fishing through plaster |
| Tract houses with integral garages | Toward Ocean Beach, 1920s to 1940s | Knob and tube, a mix or later cable | One (R-3) | Garage ceiling under the living floor |
| Detached residence-park houses | Sea Cliff, Jordan Park, West Clay Park, Lincoln Manor, 1906 to 1940 | Varies with the build date | One, except duplexes in Jordan Park | Side and rear walls, basement, attic; service may be underground |

The “likely wiring” column is an inference from building dates, not a finding about any house. Only a circuit-by-circuit test shows what a particular building holds.

## Inner Richmond houses and two-flats

The Richmond was platted by 1870, but houses came later. Planning’s draft residence parks study, which includes a history of the city’s west side, records that development began in the 1880s and 1890s with working-class and middle-class owner-occupants building single-family houses and two-flats, alongside speculative builders putting up rows of nearly identical dwellings; transit lines reaching the Inner Richmond in the 1890s began what it calls the real movement to residential development. Census figures put the Inner Richmond at 59.6% pre-1940, and half of its occupied pre-1940 units, 50.9%, are rented. ZIP 94118 counts an estimated 1,593 owner-occupied pre-1940 homes in buildings of two to four units.

That makes the Inner Richmond’s older stock a flats decision. Each existing dwelling unit takes its own DBI permit, a tenant may live in one of them, and circuits for an upper flat can run through the ceiling of the one below. Where a building of this age has been partly rewired, knob and tube may remain in some rooms and be spliced to later cable in others; one Inner Richmond permit reads simply “disconnect knob and tube and replace with romex wiring.” [Victorian and Edwardian rewiring](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/victorian-edwardian-rewiring/) covers buildings of this age, and the [Haight-Ashbury page](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/haight-ashbury-alamo-square/) covers owner-occupied flats in more depth.

## Tract houses toward Ocean Beach

West of the older blocks, the Richmond changes. SF Planning’s Sunset District context statement, adopted in 2013, records that vast areas of the Sunset and Richmond Districts were built out from the 1920s through the 1940s with tract housing, primarily single-family dwellings with integral garages, and that by 1948 one of the largest Sunset builders had expanded into the Richmond. Census figures put the Outer Richmond at 56.4% pre-1940 and 64.4% pre-1950, with 4,154 owner-occupied single-family homes built before 1940.

These houses date from the end of the knob and tube era, so the question is how much is left rather than how to replace all of it. The garage ceiling under the living floor is usually the way in, and San Francisco’s electrical code treats wiring less than 8 feet above a walking surface as subject to damage, so cable running down a garage wall needs protection. Depending on what the test finds, the scope is a [partial replacement](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/partial-knob-and-tube-replacement/) or a [whole-house rewire](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/whole-house-rewiring/). The [Sunset page](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/sunset-parkside/) treats this house type in detail.

## Sea Cliff, Jordan Park and the residence parks

Four of the eight residence parks in Planning’s draft study are in or beside the Richmond: Jordan Park, West Clay Park, Sea Cliff and Lincoln Manor. The study, dated October 2016 and never adopted, describes detached single-family houses on deed-restricted tracts, except in Jordan Park, which allowed duplexes and some other multi-family buildings. It records that Sea Cliff’s utilities are underground and that its builders placed detached garages at the rear of lots when they could; a 1910 West Clay Park advertisement promised underground telephone and electricity to the curb line; Presidio Terrace’s utilities were also set underground, while Lincoln Manor’s utility poles stand in its internal alleys.

For a rewire alone, none of this changes much: the branch circuits inside a detached house have more route options than an attached one, through side walls, basements and attics. It matters when a [panel and service upgrade](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/electrical-panel-upgrade/) is part of the job. An underground-fed house means PG&E underground work, and underground service with trenching can run past the $10,000 top of the typical San Francisco range for a panel and overhead service upgrade. The [West of Twin Peaks page](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/west-of-twin-peaks/) covers the residence-park decision more fully, and the [panel upgrade vs rewiring guide](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/panel-upgrade-vs-rewiring/) explains why a new panel alone removes no knob and tube.

## Ground floors and the soft-story list

DBI’s soft-story program list includes 331 Outer Richmond properties, 228 in the Inner Richmond, 126 in Presidio Heights and 14 in Seacliff. A retrofit works at the ground floor, the same garage and basement ceilings that carry wiring up into the units above, and electrical permits citing soft-story work appear in both halves of the district over the years, 7 in the Inner Richmond and 5 in the Outer. Where a building is on the list, the walk-through checks whether its retrofit is done, because new runs then go through retrofitted walls, or still ahead, because planning the two together avoids opening the ground floor twice. The [soft-story and rewiring article](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/blog/soft-story-retrofit-and-rewiring/) covers that coordination.

## What the permit record shows in 94118 and 94121

DBI’s records on DataSF include 355 electrical permits naming knob and tube from January 2016 to October 2026 across the Richmond’s neighborhoods: 135 in the Outer Richmond, 81 in Presidio Heights, 65 in the Inner Richmond, 55 in Lone Mountain/USF and 19 in Seacliff. By ZIP, adding PermitSF filings, 94118 has 177 and 94121 has 145. Presidio Heights stands out for its rate, 28.8 of every 1,000 electrical permits, among the highest in the city; a typical description there is “rewire outlets that have knob and tube, bedroom, living room, hallway and bathroom.”

Insurance appears in this record too. California FAIR Plan figures show 100 residential policies in force in 94121 and 94 in 94118 in September 2025. The figures give no reason for any policy, so they say nothing about wiring on their own; the [knob and tube insurance guide](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/knob-and-tube-insurance-california/) covers what underwriters ask, and the [guide to buying a house with knob and tube](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/buying-a-house-with-knob-and-tube/) covers an inspection before closing.

## Starting a Richmond job

The first call asks the questions the table above depends on: when the building was built, how many units it has, who lives in each, whether there is a garage under the living floor, and what prompted the call. The walk-through tests every circuit, checks the garage, basement and attic routes, and notes how the service arrives. The written scope and price list each opening and who closes it, with plaster patching as its own line. Permits are filed per dwelling unit where there is more than one. After the pre-cover and final inspections and the Green Tag, old runs are disconnected at both ends, removed where reachable and otherwise terminated, and each unit gets a written circuit record and a labeled panel directory. For budgets, see the [San Francisco cost guide](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/knob-and-tube-replacement-cost-san-francisco/); other neighborhoods are on the [service areas page](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/).

**Services**

## Services in Richmond District & Sea Cliff

- [Knob and tube inspectionEvery circuit traced and tested, live runs separated from dead ones, and findings that say plainly what was tested and what was only seen.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/knob-and-tube-inspection/)
- [Whole-house rewiringEvery old branch circuit replaced, new circuits added where the house needs them, and the panel sized for the load.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/whole-house-rewiring/)
- [Partial knob and tube replacementThe circuits still running on knob and tube replaced from the panel out, with a written record of exactly what remains.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/partial-knob-and-tube-replacement/)
- [Victorian and Edwardian rewiringKnob and tube replaced in pre-1906 Victorians and post-fire Edwardian flats, routed around ornament and stacked units.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/victorian-edwardian-rewiring/)
- [Electrical panel upgradeA fuse box or undersized panel replaced, the service resized when the load calculation calls for it, and PG&E's side coordinated.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/electrical-panel-upgrade/)

**Coverage**

## Neighborhoods and coverage

- Inner Richmond
- Outer Richmond
- Lone Mountain
- Presidio Heights
- Sea Cliff
- Jordan Park
- Lincoln Manor

1. 1. Alameda
2. 2. Berkeley & Albany
3. 3. Haight-Ashbury, Castro & Noe Valley
4. 4. Mission District & Bernal Heights
5. 5. Oakland
6. 6. Piedmont
7. 7. Richmond District & Sea Cliff
8. 8. Sunset, Parkside & Excelsior
9. 9. West of Twin Peaks

**Questions**

## Richmond District & Sea Cliff: questions

### How can I tell which kind of Richmond house I have?

Start with the build date and the front. An Inner Richmond house or two-flat from the 1890s to the 1910s is the older type, and two front doors usually mean two dwelling units. A stucco house from the 1920s to 1940s over a street-level garage is the tract type. A detached house in Sea Cliff, Jordan Park, West Clay Park or Lincoln Manor is a residence-park house.

### Is an Outer Richmond house over a garage wired like a Sunset house?

Often, yes. SF Planning's Sunset context statement records that vast areas of the Sunset and Richmond were built out from the 1920s through the 1940s with single-family tract houses with integral garages. Those houses date from the end of the knob and tube era, so they may have it, have some of it or have none, and the garage ceiling is usually the way in.

### Are Sea Cliff houses fed by underground power?

Planning's draft residence parks study says Sea Cliff's utilities are underground, as they are in West Clay Park and Presidio Terrace, while Lincoln Manor's poles stand in its internal alleys. That matters only when a rewire includes a service upgrade, which then means PG&E underground work. The service for any one house is confirmed with PG&E per address.

### Does rewiring an Inner Richmond two-flat cost more than a single Richmond house?

There is no separate published range for flats. The typical San Francisco range of $20,000 to $50,000 or more covers the electrical scope of a single-family home. A two-flat needs a DBI permit for each unit, $740 apiece when a unit's rewire counts more than 40 outlets and devices, and each unit is scoped and priced from its own walk-through.

### Does the Richmond have a historic district that affects rewiring?

No Article 10 landmark district turned up in Planning's historic districts layer for the Richmond. The residence parks there are described in a Planning study that remains a draft, so it sets no rules. Interior rewiring needs no historic review in any case, and any exterior service change is confirmed with Planning per address.

**Read next**

## Guides for this area

- [LearnHow to identify knob and tube wiringWhat the porcelain, the wires and the splices look like, where to look in a San Francisco house without touching anything, and which clues mislead.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/how-to-identify-knob-and-tube/)
- [Decision GuideCan you insure a house with knob and tube in California?Getting a carrier to accept the house and getting anyone to pay for the work are separate questions. This guide takes them one at a time.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/knob-and-tube-insurance-california/)
- [Decision GuideShould you buy a house with knob and tube wiring?Plenty of San Francisco buyers do. The ones who come out ahead settle insurance, test the wiring and price the work before their contingencies run out.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/buying-a-house-with-knob-and-tube/)
- [Decision GuideDoes a new panel remove knob and tube wiring?A panel and the branch circuits it feeds are two different parts of the system. Here is what each upgrade changes, and why the order matters.](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/guide/panel-upgrade-vs-rewiring/)

**Nearby**

## Nearby service areas

- [Sunset, Parkside & ExcelsiorSF Department of Building Inspection (DBI) permits, PG&E service](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/sunset-parkside/)
- [Haight-Ashbury, Castro & Noe ValleySF Department of Building Inspection (DBI) permits, PG&E service](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/haight-ashbury-alamo-square/)
- [West of Twin PeaksSF Department of Building Inspection (DBI) permits, PG&E service](https://fogcitysfknobandtube.com/service-areas/west-of-twin-peaks/)