I would like to discuss Home Inspectors, not to be confused with town wiring inspectors, and their role in making you, the home buyer, feel secure that a “professional” has inspected the house’s wiring you’re interested in purchasing.
Often times, I have been called into one of these homes where a Home Inspector recently had “inspected” and passed the wiring. After a very short walk-through of readily accessible spaces such as the basement and attic, I am shocked to see clear and present dangerous electrical situations and also disgusted for lack of a better term that one of these Home Inspectors has giving the green light to the prospective buyers.
These Home Inspectors are hired to do their jobs as they have been trained and it is this training that the homeowners, possibly even YOU, rely on ! What they miss or perhaps choose to omit in their reports may cost you thousands of dollars to repair or more devastating, a fire.
Here’s one picture below of an electrical disaster that a Home Inspector overlooked and in this case did cost the customer nearly $6,000 to fix as it meant removing this non-grounded wiring and rewiring of this lighting circuit.
To describe what you’re seeing: There are a number of violations here but to focus on the most serious–this was existing original non-grounded wiring from the 1940’s approx. era and at one point someone had decided to extend newer wiring from these wires and chose to not use the required junction boxes. These wire splices were done very poorly and just taped with electrical tape. Poor splicing leads to arcing and that arcing leads to heat and then fire. Worse considering there are no junction boxes and these splices are adjacent to combustible materials as you can see in this picture. This one circuit had about 8 or so of these splices. This customer was very unhappy when he learned of his Home Inspector missing this very evident electrical violation.
Would you feel secure living here and knowing THIS was in your attic??
In closing, hire a licensed and insured electrician to do ANY inspections of your prospective home’s wiring !