A short time ago the condo corporation sent all of the owners a notice that we needed to provide the ESA certificate that all wiring in our homes was up-to-date. The reason is that the units were built when aluminum wiring was allowed and the insurance company wanted proof that all pig-tailed wiring was up to code.
I found an electrician who did aluminum and copper wiring to do an initial inspection. He confirmed that we had the mix and the two switches he checked were not wired correctly. He also inspected our breaker box and pointed out that all 24 breakers are full and 5 had two lines coming out. I had him come in to do the full inspection and to swap out the box with one large enough for what we have and allow for future expansion. We also were in agreement that a full house surge protector would be a great idea.
Day 1
Breaker pulled shutting down the house. Not a problem as we have three UPS and a large battery backup. I could run the router keeping our internet up and running and I could work using the corporate laptop. The laptop could last 4 hours before I would hook it up to battery backup and the router used two of the three UPS. The upgrade didn't take as long as he planned in the worst case scenario. He estimated 4-6 hours and after 3 we had power back.
Day 2
The electrician focused on all of the plugs, switches and junction boxes. The whole house has 100 items for him to check. He found one burnt wire in the bathroom as it appeared someone not an electrician wired new lights and did not correctly pig-tail aluminum and copper. Before the fix the lights would on the rare occasion would flicker and I thought it was the light bulb and replace it.
For the rest of the house almost half of the switches, outlets and junction boxes were copper so that part went quickly. The rest were aluminum to copper pig-tails. Out of the 100 items he found 39 problems. Some of the boxes when he opened up the marrettes fell out and the live wires were almost touching the box! For 4 of the boxes the bottom screw broke the part of the box it would fasten too. He is coming back in April or May to do full box replacements. Definitely someone not an electrician did that.
Day 3
Today is the last day for inspection and changes. We have a number of ceiling lamps and fans. We wanted all of the fans pulled out and replaced with flush mount light fixtures. This appeared to have been a good choice as the fans were not properly wired. One actually fell apart when we pulled it down and one was using the wrong type of screw to fasten it to the plate and we don't know why it hadn't fallen down.
After
All of the work was inspected and the ESA issued their certificate. A copy of the certificate will be posted on the breaker box so that when we sell the buyers will see that all electrical work was done to code.
Next time we look to buy a home we will be asking to see the ESA certificate.
The full project was expensive, but worth it. House wiring is to code, we have full house surge protection and if we need to run a new line it will have its own circuit.
