What Does It Cost to Rewire an Older Home in North Idaho?

August 20, 2026 · Family-owned electricians in North Idaho

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A full rewire on an older North Idaho home typically runs $8,000 to $25,000, with log cabins and homes with tough access sometimes going higher. Most single-story homes between 1,200 and 2,000 square feet land in the $12,000 to $18,000 range once you include a new panel. That is a wide spread, and the reason for the spread is the actual subject of this post.

What the problem actually looks like

Homes built before the 1970s around Sandpoint, Sagle, Coeur d'Alene, and the lake country often still have some or all of their original wiring. Signs the wiring is original or close to it include two-prong outlets with no ground, a fuse box instead of breakers, cloth-insulated wire in the attic or crawlspace, warm outlet covers, lights that dim when the fridge kicks on, and a panel with a brand name nobody has made in decades. Cabins that were expanded room by room over the years often have a mix of eras, which is its own problem because it means multiple wiring types feeding into the same circuits.

Some homeowners only find out when they try to get insurance. Insurers in Idaho have gotten pickier about aluminum wiring and knob-and-tube in particular, and a rewire quote often starts with a call from an insurance agent rather than a spark or a smell.

Why it happens

Wire insulation degrades with age, especially cloth and early rubber types. It gets brittle, and once it cracks, the copper underneath is exposed to moisture and rodents. Add 60 years of remodels, added circuits, and DIY splices in a crawlspace, and you get a system that was never designed as a whole, just added to piece by piece.

North Idaho adds its own wrinkles. Homes near the lake and in the woods have more rodent activity in attics and crawlspaces, which chews insulation faster than in a dry basement. Cabins that were originally seasonal, then converted to year-round living, often have wiring sized for a few lights and a coffee pot, not for modern loads like heat pumps, electric ranges, and multiple space heaters running through a Sagle winter.

The other driver is simply capacity. A 60-amp or 100-amp fuse panel from the 1960s was fine for the appliances of that era. It is not fine for a modern kitchen, a shop, an EV charger, and a heat pump all on the same property. So a lot of what looks like a wiring problem is really a capacity problem, and the fix is the same either way: new wire, new panel, done right.

What we do about it

A rewire is not one job, it is several, and pricing follows that.

• Service panel replacement: swapping an old fuse box for a modern breaker panel with adequate amperage, usually $1,500 to $4,000 depending on amperage and whether the meter base and service entrance also need work.
• Whole-house rewire: pulling new wire to every outlet, switch, and fixture, generally $3 to $10 per square foot of living space. Cost per square foot goes up in homes with plaster walls, tight crawlspaces, finished basements, or log construction where wire has to be fished through log cavities or run in surface raceway.
• Partial rewire: sometimes only the kitchen, bathrooms, and a few known bad circuits get redone, with the rest left alone for now. This costs less up front but means the home still has a mix of old and new systems.
• Access and finish work: open walls, drywall patching, and paint touch-up. Some electricians handle drywall repair, others hand that part off to a contractor, which changes the total bill.

Access is the single biggest cost swing. A home with an open, walkable crawlspace and unfinished attic is much cheaper to rewire than one with finished ceilings on both floors and no attic access, because in the second case a lot of drywall has to come down and go back up. Log homes and homes with stone or masonry walls are their own category, often requiring surface-mounted conduit or raceway rather than wire hidden in the wall, which changes both the cost and the look of the finished job.

A realistic project sequence is: inspection and load calculation, panel upgrade if needed, then room-by-room rewiring with the power shut off in sections rather than the whole house at once, then final inspection by the county or city electrical inspector. Most whole-house rewires take one to three weeks depending on size and how much drywall repair is involved.

What it costs to ignore

Old wiring does not fail all at once, it fails a circuit at a time, usually at the worst moment. The immediate costs of ignoring it are nuisance ones: breakers that trip constantly, outlets that stop working, appliances that cannot run at the same time without tripping something. The bigger cost is fire risk. Aluminum wiring from the 1960s and 70s and cloth knob-and-tube wiring are both associated with higher fire risk as they age, mainly at connection points where the metal loosens or the insulation has cracked.

There is also a resale cost. Buyers and their inspectors flag old panels and ungrounded wiring immediately, and it becomes a negotiating point or a condition of the loan. Insurance is the other lever, some companies will not write a policy on a home with knob-and-tube or a fuse panel at all, or they will require the rewire before binding coverage. Waiting rarely makes the job cheaper. Labor and material costs have gone up steadily, and an emergency repair after a fault is almost always more expensive than a planned rewire.

Sageland Electric has been doing panel upgrades and full and partial rewires on older homes and cabins across Bonner and Kootenai counties for more than 21 years, and can walk through what a specific home actually needs before any work starts.

FAQ

Can I rewire just part of the house and leave the rest for later?

Yes, and it is common with cabins and older homes on a budget. The usual approach is to prioritize the kitchen, bathrooms, and any circuit with visible damage or a history of tripping, then finish the rest in a later phase.

Do I need a permit for a rewire in North Idaho?

Yes. Electrical permits and inspections are required for rewiring work in Idaho, and the local building department or the state depending on jurisdiction will need to sign off before the walls are closed up.