I would like to start off by stating the obvious. For a majority of us, our home is the biggest purchase we ever make. It is absolutely, extremely important to have your potential home inspected by a reputable and trained professional! This is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to purchasing a new home!
One of our specialties is doing Electrical System Assessments on older homes, and through out the years of working in the construction industry we have come across more issues then we would care to imagine. We always recommend that every home gets a home inspection, BUT any home built pre 1975 we recommend going a step further and hiring a Electrical Professional that specializes in assessing the systems of older homes. (Pre – 1990 we recommend hiring a plumber as well)
In fact, a majority of Home Insurance companies require this service after you have already purchased the home and before they will give you your insurance.
A common assessment standard we are seeing across the insurance industry is;
1) Less than 100-amp service
2) Knob and Tube Wiring
3) Aluminum Wiring
Usually if a home meets one of the three criteria, we are dispatched to do further safety assessment and make suggestions. The problem with this three-question process is that we are missing out on the actual issues that are leading to fires in older homes. That is, DIY or unlicensed/ improper electrical work.
It is very rare to find a home these days that does not have a secondary basement suite or renovations done. The ugly truth is, a large percentage of these renovations are done without proper inspections and by unqualified workers. Yes, they may have a 100-amp service, yes they may have all copper wiring, but the fact is; the fire risk in a home that has undergone an improper renovation is much higher than a home with original knob and tube wiring, gone untouched for the last 100 years.
We prefer to assess the risk using a different metric, Age of home. We are finding that homes built prior to 1975-80 are all requiring safety assessments. A majority of these homes have fire, shock and life safety issues. By using age of home as the standard for assessment, we now cover;
· Aluminum Wiring (1965-1975)
· Knob and Tube (Pre-1950’s)
· Minimum Service Ampacity (Pre- 1972’s)
· Renovations and alterations (Majority of older homes contained unfinished basements and have now been converted to secondary suites)
· DIY
· Ungrounded Circuits (Pre 1962 except Bathroom Razor Receptacle)
· Electrical Deterioration (wear and tear on equipment and rodent damage)
· Usable Lifespan of Equipment (Manufacturers recommended life span of a breaker panel is 30 years)
· Overlooked issues by Home Inspectors (One of the biggest culprits we hear)
One of the biggest things we uncover while doing our assessments is the use of NMD1 type cable. It is essentially knob and tube wiring but in a jacket and ungrounded. This type of cable came out in 1950 and was used everywhere until 1958 and was totally removed from use in 1962 when NMD3 became more popular. This type of wiring is far more dangerous then Knob and Tube systems as it was the first to use splicing rather then soldered connections. Rodents love to eat NMD1 type cable and by having the hot and neutral wires side by side in a jacket allows for a much higher chance of short circuit, arcing and fire as there is no space between conductors and no ground wire.
A majority of homes we assess, we are called out because of a 60 amp service, but end up finding that the home has Knob and Tube wiring, has had multiple unlicensed and un permitted renovations done over the years and is not nearly the dream home the buyer expected.
Another option that sellers may want to take is by having their home pre-inspected before placing it on the market. We are often called in to do repairs on older homes to remove many of these issues so that the future buyer can buy with confidence in knowing that the previous owner took care of the home and is not trying to hide anything. If a buyer comes across a home that has already had this pre-inspection, we still strongly recommend hiring their own inspector to examine the report and look for anything that may be missing or covered up.
