California Will Require Cities to Offer Remote Water Heater Inspections

You replace a water heater on a Tuesday. The work takes a few hours. Then you burn half a Thursday sitting at home waiting on an inspector who might show up at 9:15 or might show up at 2:40.

That waiting window is the part of the job most Salinas homeowners never see coming. A new state law is aimed squarely at it.

AB 1738, the Remote Virtual Inspection Act, was signed on September 18, 2026 and is now Chapter 271 of the Statutes of 2026. Below is what it actually covers, what it leaves alone, and why the date on your calendar matters more than the headline.

What the California Remote Inspection Water Heater Permit Law Actually Says

AB 1738 requires almost every California city to let a homeowner or a contractor ask for a remote inspection instead of waiting for a van. The request has to be honored at no greater cost or delay than an in person inspection.

The covered work is small and common:

• Heat pump water heaters
• Heat pump HVAC
• Reroofs
• Rooftop solar at 15 kilowatts or less with battery storage
• Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors

Because the inspection can run over a video call on a smartphone, scheduling gets much tighter. As Canary Media reported on the bill, a county building official described the goal plainly: a plumber might install a water heater in the morning and book the inspection for that afternoon.

The money behind it is not small either. That same reporting puts the cost of inspection red tape at $600 to $1,000 added to a single heat pump, solar, or battery project, an expense that gets passed on to the customer.

Here is the catch. Per Houseberry’s summary of the September 2026 housing bills, AB 1738 does not bind your city until January 1, 2028. Nothing about your permit process in Salinas changes tomorrow.

Heat Pump Water Heaters Are Covered. A Standard Tank Swap Is Not.

This is the part that gets lost in the headlines, and it matters for most people reading this.

The law names heat pump water heaters. That is the electric unit with a compressor on top that pulls heat out of the garage air. It is not the 40 or 50 gallon gas tank sitting in most Salinas garages right now.

So if your gas tank fails next spring and you replace it with another gas tank, AB 1738 does nothing for you. Your inspection stays on the regular schedule.

If you switch to a heat pump unit, you land inside the covered list, starting in 2028. That is a real factor worth weighing alongside the other ones:

• Space. Heat pump units are taller and need air volume around them, which rules out some tight interior closets.
• Electrical. Many older Salinas homes need a dedicated circuit added.
• Rebates. Local rebate programs have their own deadlines and rule changes that move independently of state law.
• Noise and cooling. They run like a small fridge and cool the room they sit in.

If you are already thinking about that switch, our breakdown of what a heat pump water heater actually involves walks through the sizing and electrical questions first. And if you are still deciding whether the old unit is worth saving at all, start with repair or replace.

The Permit Itself Is Not Going Away

Remote inspection changes how the final step happens. It does not remove the step, and it does not remove the permit.

In Salinas, a water heater changeout still requires a residential plumbing replacement permit through City of Salinas Community Development. That has been true for years and stays true after 2028.

A few things that are easy to mix up:

• The permit fee is separate from the inspection. Video inspection does not waive the fee.
• A licensed contractor still does the work. Gas and water connections on a water heater are not a homeowner project in California.
• The energy code still applies. The 2025 Building Energy Efficiency Standards take effect January 1, 2026, two full years before AB 1738 binds cities. You can read the standards directly from the California Energy Commission.

We file and manage the permit in house on water heater jobs, which is a habit built over 35 plus years of doing this in the same city. Plenty of homeowners find out the hard way that a unit installed without a permit becomes a problem at resale, not at installation. Our full explainer on why the permit matters in Salinas covers what happens when one was never pulled.

What AB 1738 Covers and What It Skips

A quick reference for the water heater projects Salinas homeowners actually run into.

The Timeline, Start to Finish

Three dates control what actually happens to your water heater project between now and 2028.

Who Feels This First: Landlords, Managers, and Rental Operators

For a homeowner, an inspection window is an annoying half day. For someone managing units, it is a scheduling problem that repeats.

Property managers and landlords are a steady share of the calls we take, and the friction is almost always the same three things:

• Getting a tenant to be home during a window nobody can pin down
• Coordinating access when the owner lives out of the area
• Getting clean documentation for the file after the work closes out

A video inspection that can be booked the same afternoon solves a lot of that. A tech on site can run the call while still at the property, and the job closes out before anyone leaves.

Short-term rental operators in the Salinas and Monterey corridor have an even tighter version of the problem. A turnover window is measured in hours, and a unit with no hot water cannot take a guest. Compressing the inspection step from days to hours is worth real money to that group.

None of this arrives until 2028. But if you are planning capital replacements across a portfolio, it is a reason to think about sequencing heat pump conversions after the deadline rather than before.

Frequently Asked Questions About the New Remote Inspection Law