Fortunately, a couple careers ago I was a licensed electrician 8^)

Before I broke ground I had the city inspector come and look at the
situation to see what was needed. That starts you out on a good foot
with them - which you want to do 'cause if you get into a beef with
the inpector it isn't like you can go to their competitor.

A permit is very desireable. Here, nowadays, when you sell your house
the buyer's real estate agent pulls all the permits to make sure
everything's up to snuff. And things could get bad too if the buyer
was getting a vet loan and something was discovered unpermitted...

All I needed was an electrical permit ($37 for several outlets, an
outside light and a switch.) If I had wanted an water auto-fill valve
I would have needed a plumbing permit.

The bonehead who built the house didn't put in one outside electrical
outlet. I found an outlet in a room that was on a circuit that didn't
have much on it. This outlet was in an outside wall. I came out of
the back of that outlet (now on the outside of the house) into a
surface mount weatherproof outlet box. I won't go into detail, but I
ran all the wiring underground in rigid metal conduit - not necessary,
but much beefier than PVC - you can't pierce it with a pick and it
makes a super ground.

My only mistake was not putting in a separate GFI for the pump and the
UV. I have the pump & UV on one GFI, and the pond lights on a second
one.

Steve J. Noll | Ventura California (zone 10)
| Glass Block Pond http://www.kissingfrogs.tv