During our home inspections, we always have to be on our toes. We never know what dangerous situations we're going to come across.
Below are 3 photos taken from 3 different homes of their main electric panels.
The first photo was of a brand new 5,000 s.f. home. I was performing my inspection amongst about 15-20 sub-contractors all rushing to complete the build prior to closing. Imagine my surprise when I lifted off the main panel cover to find that 1 of the screws had gone partially through the sheathing of one of the main service entrance cables which was running 200 amps!!! Whoever initially put that on probably came to within a half of a turn of the screw from being killed!
The second photo is unfortunately one of many instances we've ran across over the years where some knucklehead Do-It-Yourselfer uses sharp-tip screws. Notice how close the screw came from going through the sheathing of this larger gauge wire?!
The 3rd photo was taken from a house built in 2004. The original Electrician did a nice clean job. The only mistake he made was he didn't push the 12 gauge CU wire back far enough past a plastic brace. When the screw went in, the wire couldn't move and thus the arc. The scary thing was this had been like this since the house had been built. That screw had been pushing or digging into the sheathing on that wire for 10 years. At any time, that could have arced and caught the house on fire! "Lucky" for me, I was the sucker that took the cover off, didn't touch any wires, and put it back into place when it arced. If that wasn't enough stress, I immediately contacted the Listing Agent and got reemed out on how incompetent I must be and that they were going to sue me. She didn't care at all about my safety or the house potentially catching on fire. It was amazing how nasty a human being could be! During the inspection, I had an Electrician show up. He checked the connections & fixed the damage making it safe. I wasn't going to leave the house and risk it catching on fire even though the listing agent didn't seem to care. I've had the pleasure of working with some really awesome listing agents over the years, but this one I'm pretty certain had horns, a pointy tail, and carried a 3-pronged red fork;-)
For more "fun" situations we run across, go to www.omaha-home-inspection.com
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