by PN Schiavone

Created on: October 20, 2008

It is truly surprising to me when I do a home inspection without any electrical deficiencies. New construction, older homes, it does not seem to matter. I usually find at least one electrical problem in almost all of my home inspections. Following is a list of some of the most popular ones that are found. First is my favorite, the GFCI outlet does not trip when tested. The rest are in no particular order. Double tapped electrical circuits in the electrical panel, improper wire size, improperly sized circuit breakers, improper fuse size, reverse polarity, open grounds just to name a few. Most of the above problems can be avoided. The home owner needs to know what the potential problems may be so they can ask the right questions of installers that do work at their house. If you choose to work on electrical yourself it would be imperative that you had all the proper information. I will go over the above problems and their solutions.

Anyone living in a newer house, less than 20 years old, has probably had an experience with Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter type of outlet. This is the type of outlet that is safer to use around water because it shorts out at very small amounts of current leakage. This outlet compares the amps through the hot wire versus the amps exiting through the neutral wire. A regular outlet does not detect this. You can keep the outlets in good shape by hitting the test button every 3 months. This helps keep the mechanism from fusing. A tester could also be bought in any hardware store for as little as five dollars.

Reverse polarities and open grounds are usually the result of do it yourselfers. Reverse polarity refers to the direction that the electricity is flowing. Simply put the wires are connected backwards. Remember just because it is a simple mistake to correct does not mean that it is not dangerous. In the worse case scenario it is possible for some appliances to have their housings become live in the event of a malfunction. The rule for reverse polarities is black wire attaches to the brass screw while the white wire attaches to the silver screw. Open grounds refers to the fact that any electricity that is lost in the system should flow safely into the ground. This is usually accomplished by adding a grounding wire that is connected to a grounding post or a buried water pipe. Houses built before 1960 generally have no grounded plugs. As people upgrade their houses they generally added grounded plugs. Adding a grounding plug to an ungrounded

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