480sparky said:
Just a thought.... even if everything taken out of a house appears to be correct and up to code, there would be no way to know the true history of the installation from the beginning.
It's quire possible the Smith's had the house built, and Joe Sparky put 60watt bulbs in the fixture as per the instructions. Then the Smiths thought the bulbs were too dim, so they replaced them with 100s. This resulted in the damage to the wires.
But years later, the Smiths sold the house to the Jones's, who had an electrician come in and correct all the problems, replacing the 100w bulbs with 60s being one of them.
Now, along comes a team of 'Champions' in thier quest for a soon-to-be-demolished home, who find a light fixture marked '60-watt maximum', and lo and behold, there's 60-watt bulbs in them. How do they quantify the insulation damage without knowing the truth?
Very good thought, kind of like buying a used car.
Here in CA we changed many codes after the last big earthquake, now the only way we'll know if they work is to have another big earthquake, but even after the last one we had some newer houses that had sever damage and yet a house from the 1940's, with one of the few basements in town, was virturally undamaged.
We would have houses right next door to each other with the chimmneys right next to each other and one would have bricks blown out of it and the other wouldn't even have a crack. The best we could come up with was one was put up on monday and the other was put up on Tuesday or the wind was blowing when one was put up or to much sand was put in the mix, who knows why it failed or didn't fail.
It would be interesting if you could do a test like they are doing for the grounding, just build a house and let it sit, turn the lights on and off at regular intervals, you could test all sorts of things, life of plumbing fixtures, siding, roof material, etc.
