Here is a good example
of a hidden hazard. This is a main breaker in an electrical panel.
This is
where all of the electricity that comes from the power lines passes
through into your house. This
homeowner had tried for years to get by without maintaining his 100 amp
electrical service. You
can see by these pictures the water damage caused by many years of
moisture getting into his
electrical panel trough the service cable that did not have a drip loop
in it. I think everyone knows
that water and electricity do not mix. We ended up having to change the
whole panel and service
due to it being so corroded and damaged.
This could have been prevented with one of our Home Safety Inspections.
This is an example of a
homeowner who put off upgrading his old 100 amp electrical service to a
200
amp electrical service by installing all kinds of these "twin" breakers.
What he did not know is that
he was causing an electrical imbalance and overload causing one side of
his main breaker to start to
melt. Luckily we caught it in time before a major fire happened. You
can see the electrical burn mark
on the back of this breaker. This would have been found during one of
our Home Safety Inspections.
Do these pictures look
familiar? These are examples of a two-prong outlet that does not have a
ground. What does this mean? Basically if the outlet were to go bad
and wear out, as they all do,
instead of the electricity safely traveling through your house's wiring
it would instead pass through
your body, resulting in burns or even death by electrocution.
You should have us replace these immediately.
I'm positive everyone
has seen something like this in their home at one point or another.
These rat's
nests are actually quite dangerous in the fact that a standard outlet is
not designed to handle the
amount of resistance that is created from this amount of things plugged
into it. In the next grouping
you can see the affects of what could happen.
Bottom line is this. When most houses were built they were built to the
bare minimum standards in
order to keep costs low for the builder. This results in there not
really being sufficient outlets
throughout the home.
When your house was built computers, plasma tv's, dvd players, stereos,
microwaves, window air
conditioners, cell phone charges, cellular phones, etc. May not have
been widely used or even have
existed! Get rid of the rat's nest and have us make your home a safer
place by adding some outlets!
As stated previously-a
build up in resistance caused by overloading an outlet can cause melting
or
even a fire. All of these outlet failures were caused by overloading
them. These potentially
dangerous outlets and GFCIs would have been found during one of our Home
Safety Inspections.
Here are a few examples
of using incorrectly one manufacturer's breakers that were not approved
for use in another manufacturer's panel.
These would have been found and corrected during a Home Safety
Inspection.
This is an example of a
panel that had screw-in fuses instead of circuit breakers like all newer
homes have. As I stated earlier about ages of homes and what they were
wired to power, this
homeowner kept having fuses blow since his wiring was installed at a
time when the electrical
system did not have much of a load requirement. To keep his fuse from
blowing he screwed in a
penny under the fuse so it would no longer blow. You can see by the
picture above what this ended
up doing in the end. Ultimately it would have been cheaper to be
proactive and change the panel
and do an electrical service upgrade long before this ever happened.
