Home Owner Items To Check For Before Listing Or Selling Your Home

There are some good reasons to have your home inspected before you consider putting your home on the market. There are certain items and materials to check for? These issues will get written up in the home inspection report no matter what.

So until a home inspection is done most home owners are not aware of these (below listed) issues or problems until they notified by the home inspectors. In most cases these items of concern are not known by the home owner, and these items can be delay the sale of the home.

There are a few items to check for in your existing home that can help you avoid any delays when going to sell your existing home. First is checking for is making sure that the home inspector is : (certified & licensed - insured) to preform this critical home inspection.

Having a qualified home inspector checking all of this is critical before you list your home to help you identify any concerns beforehand to avoid any issues with your home sale can save you a lot of time and frustrations by having them corrected beforehand.

Electrical Issues; Federal Pacific Electrical Panels

Federal Pacific Electrical Panels, these electric panels were manufactured from the 1950's to the early 1980's. The issues with these main electrical panels are the circuit breakers. The breakers have a serious problem and they may not trip-out when overloaded, which is the job of the breaker.

Next, is the huge safety issues; if the circuit breaker handle is successfully tripped it may not de-energize the circuit! Next, this design used the so called "Stablock" breaker design, which is faulty, and it often leads to arcing against the circuit breaker contact points to the bus bars and then over-heats which can cause fire.

Although these electrical panels were never officially recalled by the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the home inspector is always looking for these types of faulty electrical panels that need to be changed out by qualified electricians as they are serious safety issue.

Consolidated Furnaces

Consolidated furnace manufactured roughly just under 200,000 of these types of furnaces from around 1980 to the mid 1990's under many different brand names (mainly Premier/Consolidated brands). These are a known fire hazard and have been responsible for numerous residential fires in homes in California CA.

All consolidated furnaces can be recognized by the steel control rods installed above the burners and are usually installed horizontally in attics or crawl spaces.

Aluminum Electrical (AL) Wire

Mainly used in housing from the mid 1960's to the early 1970's, aluminum wiring can be a potential fire hazard. The problem is due to expansion and contraction of the wire connection point to the electrical device that can cause arcing and overheating at these same connections points, which can cause or lead to fire. Even after the AL alloy was altered in the aluminum wiring around the 1970's it was still problematic.

However, aluminum wiring is permitted and used for certain applications, such as residential feeder service entrance wiring and 240V amperage circuits. If the home inspector finds that AL or aluminum wiring is used it will be noted on the inspection report as a Safety issue and would need to be corrected before the sale.

Defective (ABS) Plumbing

Manufactured by Polaris, Gable, Centaur, Apache, and Phoenix from around 1984 to 1990, this rigid, black pipe is used to drain your sinks, tubs, showers, washers, etc. Plain and simple these brands are known to be faulty and prone to leakage. Found mainly throughout the state of California these pipes may be found in other states as well. Home Inspectors are always looking for these types of problem plumbing.

Polybutylene Plumbing Lines (PB)

These PB plastic water supply lines that range from grayish to blue in color which were manufactured around the 1970's and have been used in homes to supply water through the 1980's and 90's. The issue with this type of water piping is that it's known to fail due to the chemicals in tap water which deteriorate and harden the fittings causing leakage in side walls or other areas of the home causing damage.

Replacement costs of this type of water supply lines can be in the thousands of dollars. Your home inspector will notify you of these types of water supply piping if found. Recommendations would be to have a licensed plumber investigate the water piping to verify further.

If you are planning to put your home on the sales market for sale you may want to find out if it has any of the above listed concerns. Addressing these issues before the home is in contact can save you a lot of trouble.

If you are unsure if these concerns exist in your home, hire a good detailed home inspector and a plumber to help identify any other plumbing issues? Home inspectors can identify the most common plumbing issues and will give you recommendations on what steps need to be taken to correct these issues.