Preparing Your House for Sale
When preparing a house for sale, one of the top thing’s inspectors look at is the electrical system. The electrical system is one of the most important aspects on an inspection because it could make or break a home sale. In our experience, here are some of the most common things that pop-up on electrical inspections. Please note: these issues require a licensed electrician for addressing and fixing the problems. (Stay safe, we don’t want you to experience a home electrical incident)
GFCI Outlets. A common electrical inspection issue is not having GFCI plugs near wet locations or water sources (i.e. kitchens, baths, garage, basement). All homes should have GFCI protection near water sources. This is a safety issue when using electrical appliances near wet locations. Not having GFCI plugs is dangerous with high potential for electrical incidents. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) explains the GFCI shuts off power as quickly as 1/40 of a second to attempt to prevent incidents from occurring.
Electrical Panel: Double-tapping. This is when there are 2 circuits in the house on one breaker. This is not acceptable for code and can cause an overload on that breaker. The breaker should trip and there would be power loss to those circuits. To correct this issue, we add a breaker and remove the double-tapped circuit.
Electrical Panel: Under sized breaker/Oversized breaker. This is when the breaker is either greater than the wire size for a circuit, or breaker is undersized for a circuit. In either case this can cause wire damage such as heating up of the circuit. Breakers and wire’s in the panel should be sized properly always.
Electrical Panel: Grounding. Inspectors always check homes for properly grounded electrical panels. It is not uncommon to run into ungrounded homes when they are older. In order to fix an ungrounded house a person needs a qualified electrician to install proper grounding equipment to make the home safe. Another grounding issue is grounding the water supply properly too. This requires a qualified electrician also.
All Home Outlets. Inspectors always check outlets throughout the house. It is not uncommon to have ungrounded plugs in a house. All plugs should be properly grounded.
Residential Electrical Inspection
For your convenience, here is a short video of an electrical inspection by one of our electricians.
Request an Electrician
If you are preparing your house for sale and need electrical service completed, contact us at In The Light Electrical, LLC at P# 913.944.9940. You can also request electrical service online. Want to know what customers think of In The Light Electrical, LLC? Check out our reviews on Facebook and Google. You can also view our customer recommendations on Nextdoor.