Today I’m doing a home inspection with my favourite home inspector, Tom Krick, who’s going to go through what to expect and what to look for in an electrical panel.

The standard home electrical panel, shown above, is a 200 amp. Every electrical panel is going to be 240 or 220 volts depending on your transformer, but amperage is really what you want to check for. It will actually say right on your breaker what your amperage rating is.

The first thing you want to do is check to make sure everything is properly grounded and bonded and that there is no double tapping on any of your breakers. Double tapping occurs when two circuits are running to one breaker, so make sure they are all separated.

In the main panel they ran out of room for expansions, so they added what is called a subpanel. The subpanel is the smaller panel directly to the left of the main panel in the video. Adding a subpanel is a perfectly fine option, but unlike the main panel, it shouldn’t be bonded.

The subpanel featured is not up to code. It would be easy to bring it up to code by putting another breaker in and putting another connector on to run the wiring through. The white wiring running from the subpanel to the light in the basement is called BX wiring, which is common and allowed up to five feet. Anything longer than that should be in conduit. The BX wiring in this home needs to be removed and rewired properly using conduit.

Because of the age of this home, they were allowed to mount the panel right on the concrete, but concrete holds moisture and causes panel boxes to rust. Codes have changed and mounting panels directly onto concrete is no longer allowed. Today’s code would require a piece of plywood or wood be built away from the concrete wall in order to mount the electrical panel.

They also have the service feed in a spot which allows cold air to enter the panel. Your house is warm and moisture is present, so condensation is created when the warm and cold air mix inside the panel. You can see by looking at the cover of the electrical panel that condensation is present, as the cover has a couple spots of rust.

If you have any other questions for Tom, you can reach him at 630-632-7051. As always, if you have any real estate-related questions, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you!