Good morning I’m Patrick with Re/Max Heritage and thank you for joining us for the next installment on the inspection series with A-Action Realty Inspection Group and Brian Murphy. Good morning Brian and thank you for joining me. In our last segment we talked about structural portion of the report, today we are going to talk about the electrical. Brian what are some of the most important things that you can point out about the electrical segment of the inspection report.
Well with is being the next section of the property inspection report and we cover a lot of things on electrical a lot of people don’t think much about their electrical. They just walk in the house and flip on a switch and the light comes on and so there are a lots of important things about the electrical system that should really be addressed. With home inspectors being regulated by the Texas Real Estate Commission we are required to call things out whether it’s as built or not. So there’s things that we add to the property inspection report whether the house is 60 years old, 100 years old or built last week. And we talk about things like ARC fault circuit interrupters or the default circuit interrupters and proper bonding of the electrical system. We address all the electrical system from where it enters the home through the panels and all the way down to all the outlets, switches and fixtures.
Okay perfect. And what are the… you were talking about the standards from the past and what they are now. One of those things would be the GFI switches, you have to call out even though when the house was built it was the standard.
Correct. So what we do is we just bring it to the consumers’ awareness or bring it to their attention that there are new safety devices out there. They don’t necessarily have to ask the seller to install but the home inspector is required to let them know that they may or may not be in these certain locations. So like ground fault circuit interrupters they’re required to be in all of the wet, damp areas. So it’s all exterior, all garage, all kitchen counter tops, all bathrooms, around wet bars and those type of locations.
Great information, What would you say is the hottest topic right now?
Right now the hottest topic is grounding and bonding of the corrugated stainless steel tubing but also known as CSST. I have a sample for us today. So this is a gas distribution system that started to be installed around 2000. Between 2000 and 2009 they were bonded or some people call it grounded. Just like the old galvanized gas lines as well. They started finding that there are problems with indirect or direct lighting strikes near the home, that this fails sometimes, it gets pin holes in it and you get small pin hole gas leaks in them. So since 2009 they started requiring the bonding or extra bonding to help load the lower the potential. So if you are aware that you have this type of gas lines in your home, prior to 2009 it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have it further evaluated to make sure that they’re properly grounded or properly bonded back to the electrical system to help lower the potential of in home leaks occurring with indirect lighting strikes.
I think it would be nice to get some help checking out my electrical system. I would like to get some help from a contractor and get my home inspected. I think it would be hard for me to detect a mess up in my wiring.
Hi my name is Debbie Gormley and I work for A-Action Realty Inspection Services. I read your comment and would like to help. Please call our office at 972-572-4500 and we will be happy to set up a specialty inspection or give you a referral for an electrical contractor. Once we speak with you, we will be able to determine which option will work best for you.