Any electricians by trade? I Need your help!

As others have said there’s kinda of a lot going on there, that’s just what you can see…. Shouldn’t be on your dime..

 

How easy as in how easy would it be for a residential electrician, or how easy it would be for you?

If you want to know how easy it is for you to do it, I would assume you wouldn’t be asking…you would just know.

if you wanted to know how easy it is for an electrician, then what you’re really asking is how expensive it’s going to be…and it will be expensive. It’s usually not cheap anytime you hire skilled trades.

Also what state is the house in question in?

 

I can't tell from the photos, but the white wires from the breaker could be AFCI breakers. These are relatively new (last 10 or 15 years), and I am afraid that if you're going down the path to correct issues, you may need to bring the installation up to code, which means AFCI breakers all around. Some time ago, they were only required in bedroom circuits. Now they are required for all circuits.

 

Yep, and/or GFCI, and/or combo AFCI/GFCI breakers, depending on jurisdiction.

Where things will get really fun is if GFCIs are required in many places .. but the shade-tree volt monkey who installed the current wiring chose to share neutrals across multiple circuits to save cost on wiring. Been there, seen that -- the only answer in such cases is to run entirely new additional wiring runs.

Either the seller hires a licensed electrician to diagnose everything and execute a fix-it plan, or you do.



(I'm not a licensed electrician, BTW -- just a more-advanced shade-tree DIY volt monkey. I have, however, rewired an entire 1940's era 1300 sq ft. single-family house top to bottom. Every switch, outlet, wire run, fixture, and the main panel & subpanels. Pulled city permit for it that passed and was finaled without issue.)

 

The only reason I can think of to share neutrals across multiple circuits is in the instance where you install multi-wire branch circuits. Two hots, from different phases, share a neutral. They must we wired to a two-pole breaker, and the handles must be tied together. I've seen people run a MWBC on a tandem breaker, thereby potentially overloading the neutral...

If you don't know, call the pro.

 

They use to do it on older houses for money savings.
It can be quite common from houses built in the 50s and 60s in some places.

It’s not the end of the world as long as you don’t go grabbing wires assuming they don’t carry electrical potential. That’s how you get shocked.

 

In one case I saw, and this was on a house that had already been updated (circa the late 1980s) with modern romex wire & breakers, there were a couple of 14-ga 3-conductor (+ ground) cables where there where 2 conductors were used for 2 different single-pole breakers, and both shared the 3rd conductor as a single neutral.

I guess the thinking there was it would save cost to use (1) 3-cond cable vs. (2) 2-conductor cables, as well as some wiring space (passing through holes etc) and a little bit of time pulling wire.

 

Yeah, I think as soon as electrician gets in there, they’ll probably find a lot of mistakes.

 

Good luck. Wires that go "sparky" behind drywall because of mis-matched grounds is never a good way to run an ice cream stand.

And just to add fuel to the shared-neutrals is the mixing of aluminum wire and copper wire ... people will leave the aluminum wire (NOT the standard for today!) behind the drywall and only use copper for what was replaced (what MINIMAL length was replaced!). The heating/cooling rates differ and the wires that once touched now fall away from each other, sometimes onto nearby metal surfaces (ZAP!).

 

Have a local electrician give a written quote on fixing everything. Take that to the seller and negotiate.

 

Right right, forgot about the fun possibility that there might be CCA / AlCu wire hiding out in places.. at least the panel breakers look OK, not a Zinsco fire-starter.

 

Josephray70 ... I hope you do not think I enjoy these warnings. You found a house with location/room-layout/room-size/etc and now you find someone (current owner, previous owner) threw a serious Joker-into-the-deck.

Just for self-education, you might want to buy a DIY wiring book from Lowes and read just to learn some of the wiring concerns. You probably will not feel comfortable enough to rewire a house, but at least aluminum-copper junctions and wire-amperage-loads will make more sense.

 

i was an electrician for 14 years, but should also note, i've probably only got about 5-ish full years of romex installations. my area was primarily required all wires to be ran in conduit-- a side effect of a more stringent building code after the great chicago fire.

ok, ok, this thread is dangerously veering off track. it's also why it's important to consult a real electrician instead of someone that stayed in a holiday inn previously.

firstly, the external wire jacket coloring of nm cable has zero official code specification. there exists an almost "gentlemen's agreement" between manufacturers, primarily those being romex, or loomex(canada), to use white for 14 gauge nm cable, yellow for 12 gauge, orange for 10 gauge, and black for 8 gauge and up. recently, they've also added blue, purple, and pink to the jacket colors for 3-wire versions of 14, 12, and 10 gauge 3-wires(specifically because of the additional more common use as multi-wire branch circuits), though i'm out of the game now, and haven't really made a point to see it in use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZP-G4Qo8tg

second, those are standard breakers. specifically, they're Square D QO breakers. some of them look odd due to the angle of the picture, because they have a small clear window that will display red if the breaker is tripped, but that red panel can be visible from odd angles like what the picture is taken from. absolutely nothing in that panel is afci, or gfci. that's the good news.

third, updating to afci is entirely a local code compliance and mortgage company issue. generically speaking, almost no one requires updating to AFCI until major remodeling work is performed. but each city and/or county runs by different codes. for instance, when i got out in 2022, i worked a from northeast illinois to northwest indiana--indiana is a state-wide code enforcement, where illinois allows each and every town to adopt different years of code, with their own addendums. indiana was still running 2017 code, and specifically struck out everything to do with afci's, i was told, due to a really bad early adoption experience when they tried being the first state to add gfci's to their code in teh early '70s, and it bit them hard...

but other towns in illinois were on 2020 code, which are pretty thorough on AFCI additions. many are still on older codes, but then add addendums for AFCI protection. each and every area is different.

if there's no changes to the house, there's really no reason to update to AFCI breakers. and more importantly, with the QO panel, if any breakers share a neutral wire, they would need to be entirely re-wired to allow for AFCI protection-- when i left, that was a huge impending question mark in the industry of how to deal with that... siemens is currently the only brand that makes a 2-pole AFCI breaker, which would require a panel change, and can come with a different set of requirements, but then that's also going far off the scope of this thread...

lastly, current code only requires AFCI protection anywhere that GFCI protection isn't. there's also some currently still some issues with 'stacking' AFCI breakers with GFCI's, and the sensing elements interfering and causing one or the other to trip sporadically.

lets go through this picture by picture.

picture 1, 2, 3. the code in question here requires romex to be protected from damage. specifically, they're supposed to run through the joists, at least 1-1/2" to the bottom of the drilled holes. the idea is to prevent standard 1-1/4" drywall screws from being driven up into the wire.

the proper way to fix this is tons of junction boxes, and replacing the wire section from the panel to the junction box with an appropriately ran wire up in the joists. but that's going to be really expensive.

the faster/cheaper way is to build a soffit to protect the wires back to the panel. less than ideal, but it can be made to meet code.

frankly, it just plain sloppy workmanship to leave a job like that. there might even be enough extra on many of those wires to pull them back and route them properly.

picture 4, the electrical plugs with 2 wires ran down the wall. there's 1 absolute issue, and 2 potential issues here.
1--the absolute. code requires that romex is protected running exposed and vertically down a wall like that. conduit is required-- either metal or pvc is acceptable.
2--the potential. there's a white and a yellow wire dropping down to it-- this depends entirely on the age of the wires used. yellow is indicative of a 12gauge wire. the white could be a 14 gauge, or it could be an old 12 gauge wire. if it's older 12 gauge, it needs to have a ground conductor-- some don't. if it's 14 gauge, it could be improperly wired-- in laymens terms, that could indicate that the circuit is connected to the wrong-size breaker.
3. next potential. in a non-finished basement, that should be GFCI protected. either the outlet needs to be changed, or there could be a gfci up stream from it that can control it, and meet code requirements. not enough info here to determine this.

picture 5 is very much the same-- the wire needs to be protected coming down the wall by some sort of conduit.

picture 6--the panel. it just shows sloppy work. there's not enough detail to make out all what's going on, and much of it would really need to be traced out to verify what does what before making major blanket statements.

the second 2-pole breaker on the clearly-pictured right hand side is actually wired correctly, but not identified correctly. there's a notation in the code that allows for 220v loads to use the white as a current carrying conductor, but requires it to be colored black to identify it as a current-carrying conductor.

the white wire 3rd from the bottom, i can't make out enough detail on it. but [speculation] it looks like someone hooked something up backwards and just ran with it.

picture 7. that's, um, just plain scary. that needs an electrician to look at how it's specifically wired, and why it's wired that way. absolutely none of that looks correct, but i can't comment on the how/where/why without getting hands on it.

picture 8, the neutrals/grounds connected together.
i'm actually surprised he caught that one. it's a very common mistake, but he is correct that neutrals and grounds need to be separated. this just takes attaching a ground bar in the panel, and relocating the grounds.

though i'm definitely curious in why there's so many tiny 2-space add-on panels. it might be in your best interest to consider getting a price instead of consolidating those to a single larger 6-space sub panel...



ok, all of that said, the very first call you should be making is to your lender person. FHA has very specific requirements to what they'll allow, and what they won't, which will require the seller to repair. there's no reason to start making demands if the lender is going to already be making those demands.

personally, i don't particularly trust people in general. in this case, remember that the seller's main interest is to unburden themselves from the house, and collect as much money as possible in the process. other than personal morals, most people in this situation will attempt to contract the cheapest licensed contractor they can locate. which doesn't ensure a quality job by any means.

if you have the option, my personal preference would instead to be to try to get quotes from your own trusted electrical contractors, and as long as the lender isn't requiring the repairs, seek to deduct at least the quoted repair cost from the purchase price, and perform the work post-purchase by your own contractor, to ensure it's done correctly. it also wouldn't be a bad idea to ask for 10% more than the quoted amount... but just know that some of those issues could easily end up costing more than the quote you're given depending on 'how deep the rabbit hole goes', so i would seek a deduction commensurate with that. or if they're not willing to deal given the situation with the market and too many people offering above asking price, you might also need to be prepared to walk away as well.

 

When I installed the extra circuit in my basement to split the whole-basement-lighting into front/back-lighting ... I pondered long on how looking at codes and planning to be "safe". I definitely did NOT want to be like the joker who left this rat's next. Turns out the original electrician left a problem ... as I recall a breaker for something (the doorbell?) needed a double-ground breaker instead of a shared-ground breaker ... more than $5 but less than the electrician will charge to re-route those dozens of wires through grounded junction boxes (I installed a few of those, takes time to repeat the simple steps for each box). Parts (boxes, wire, conduit) will be not cheap, and the person(s) will be busy for hours or days.

 

Thanks for all the info and advice. Unfortunately this is my issue now because FHA did not flag any of this. But I am having an electrician come in and fix everything.

 

Michigan