Miswired kitchen by "remodelers"

[jeff48356]

I was working on some wiring in a house in Westland today where everything was a total hack job. I was rewiring all the basement lights to their own circuit, and noticed that the kitchen had been remodeled by a bunch of hacks, and they only have one legal SABC. It's probably the original, no doubt. The other circuit powers all of the countertop receptacles, the garbage disposal, the gas range, and a set of recessed lights above the countertop. All on one 15A circuit! Not even 20A. The house is being sold (formerly a rental), and the owners need to get it up to par so it can be sold.

Have any of you ever seen work like this in a kitchen? This is why kitchen remodelers should not be allowed to do their own electrical work. I've actually been called to houses to fix screw-ups like this.

 

[peter d]

I see it all the time, and get paid to fix it.

 

[Knuckle Dragger]

I see it all the time, and get paid to fix it.

:thumbsup:

 

[Coppersmith]

If non-electricians did a good job, people wouldn't need us. We would all go broke.

 

[ptonsparky]

I agree, with all three.

 

[K8MHZ]

I see it all the time and the owners do not have to get anything up to par to sell the house. That is their option, not a requirement to sell. Usually things like this are used as tools for price negotiation.

As an seller, why in the world would I want to sink money into changing circuits around when everything worked just fine the way it is now wired? If the circuits were overloaded to the point of tripping OCPD's, that would be different, but it is rarely the case.

 

[480sparky]

I gave up caring about what others do years ago. I only care if you want to pay me to fix it.

 

[growler]

Have any of you ever seen work like this in a kitchen? This is why kitchen remodelers should not be allowed to do their own electrical work. I've actually been called to houses to fix screw-ups like this.

A few years ago I go to a house that's that had a large amount of remodeling to include a complete kitchen remodel. The house has just been sold and the new owners were moving in.

The home inspector that inspected the house left a note on the inspection report that there was a hazardous situation under the kitchen and that part of the house was a crawl space that was very hard to get to.

They had completely rewired the kitchen and that was not the problem. What they did was pull all the old circuits out and leave them in the dirt of the crawl space (live connections to include the old range circuit ). It took a little time to identify and remove old circuits from the panel and clear up some space for future work they were planning on doing. The circuits were old two wire cloth cover cables and were useless. I think I removed 4-5 120V and 1 240V circuit and cleared quite a bit of space in the panel. I also had to redo the ground that was no longer connected due to new plastic plumbing.

This is the type of thing I really hate to find in older homes. They didn't even wire nut or tape the ends of those live connections that were in the dirt. Someone could have gotten hurt or even killed.

 

[LarryFine]

This is the type of thing I really hate to find in older homes. They didn't even wire nut or tape the ends of those live connections that were in the dirt. Someone could have gotten hurt or even killed.

 

[jeff48356]

I see it all the time and the owners do not have to get anything up to par to sell the house. That is their option, not a requirement to sell.

That's true in Livonia and Plymouth, but not in most other cities (Westland, Garden City, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, to name a few). The latter ones require city inspections upon sale, and I was fixing things that would obviously have been cited by the inspector. Now that everything is up to code as far as a pre-sale inspection, the owner is ready to schedule it.