Electrical Corrections On Home Inspection List

  • Posted by Joshua Peterson
  • in Safety

ELECTRICAL CORRECTIONS ON HOME INSPECTION LIST

Peterson Electric can deal with the results of an electrical inspection, when you are in the process of selling your home.

BEWARE TIPS ON HOME INSPECTORS

Beware, the home inspectors have no Colorado State Licensing through DORA, Department of Regulatory Agencies. They are not licensed as an electrical or plumber or any other tradesmen. This means that the knowledge is limited and incorrect inspections reports can happen. It would benefit you to hire a professional licensed & insured electrician to investigate the inspection requests. At times we can investigate and either disregard the inspector’s requests, if incorrect items about codes or changes to the home or we can repair the necessary items that need to be repaired. 

EXAMPLE OF INSPECTOR’S WRONG INSPECTION REPORT

At a customer’s house, we discovered that the inspector had made some drastic errors. The report asked for the current panel, which he called a FPE Panel, when indeed the panel was a Zinsco. The Zinsco has not lost its U.L. listing. FPE, Federal Pacific Electric, was never allowed there U.L. listing from our knowledge. You will know a FPE panel by the red breakers. It is pretty common to see. When we saw the customer’s panel, we verified the panel as a Zinsco. From our knowledge, you don’t have to change the panel, unless we saw a “hot spot”. Older panels can other panels can still be working fine. A service change of this nature could be around $3,500.00.

The other wrong thing listed on the customer’s report was reverse polarity issue in the family room. We looked in the dining, living and family room and found nothing of the sort.

The inspector also said there was aluminum throughout the whole home on all the branch circuits. We found no branch circuits that were aluminum, except for the feeder, which is normal to feed the panel. If we would have to aluminum copper splice this home it would have been about $2,000.00.

It saved them quite of bit of money to have myself and another professional contractor, with Miracle Electric in Fort Collins to come out and verify what the inspector reported. Both of us our sending in our professional letterheads and license stating that this work does not need to be done. Bottom line, I think that saved them right around $6,000.00 for the work at least with everything that they were asking us to do. It ended up costing them $150.00 and a letter.

Please call us to have us help you with your inspection report.