todays inspection dec 16 2009

well here we go this is the first!
how about we start with some background
My name is mike, I have been providing professional Home Inspections for the last 13 years, as far as credentials, I am what is referred to as a Registered Home Inspector as well as a National Certificate Holder. The inspections that I will speak of will have been preformed any where from Durham region north to Huntsville east to Peterborough and west to Lake Simcoe. My intent is to simply open the door to my day to day experinces, findings, confortations, and good times alike.
Todays inspection took me to Port Perry, the home was about 30 years old with some of the typical 30 year old concerns, ( never problems, only concerns). An interesting idiosyncasy of this era of housing is the electrical service. Flash back to the mid 70's, come on you remember disco, bell bottoms, base board heaters and fuse boxes. The latter two will be the topic for today due to the fact that in this particular duplex we have BB heat and a 200 amp CEB (candian electric box) fuse panel. Fuse boxes on there own can be of some concern due to the fact that the "bakelite"guts ( the blackfuse blocks ) are now becoming very brittle, cracking and breaking causeing contat hazards for any one that may be attempting to replace a blown fuse. The 200 amp CEB panels, however have some special concerns. The style of construction on this type of panel utillizes a metal bus bar that is very suseptable to over heating if the panel should be over fused. The end result being the bar warps and can arc out on the actual tub or box resulting in fires. that sucks.
This would typically require ( maybe a fire truck) a new service panel at the tune of between 900 to 1400 dollars (ouch) but wait the good news is if you need to do this Federal Pioneer actually makes an insert that can be put inside the old tub. An electrican would rip out the guts and a bank of breaker can, in most cases bolt right in. The beauty of this is that there will be no wall damage and the cost is less than half of a new system, you gotta like that. My client did.
Other than that we had a bad GFCI outside, which seems to be the rules that all houses have to have at least one, yes your house too. Up in the attic checking the fire seperation (remember this is a duplex) all was in tact but again as typical the range hood and the bath fan both vent into the attic. We also, are still working with 1970's insulation levels, about R20. The eco inspection should deal with that short comeing very nicely, R 50 here we come.
Hey thanks for tagging along, hope to see you on the next inspection adventure ( bet you won't sleep tonight with anticipation
m