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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
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    1

    Question Building Inspection, Electrical Concerns

    My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: North Carolina

    I have been renting a house for a couple years now, my landlord works for the Housing Authority in my town. The house was built in the seventies and the wiring has been doing some strange things. An outlet had a cell phone charger and a cable signal booster plugged into it. I didn't think that was an excessive load, but the power went out one wall of the house tonight. We checked the breaker box and none of the breakers were tripped. A foul smell was coming from the outlet in question, and we discovered that the outlet was melted, the wires were half fused together and broken off, and the insulation on the wire was melted. This is actually the second time this has happened, an outlet in another room did this once last year. I'm afraid there is a deeper issue with the wiring of the house that may result in a house fire if something isn't fixed soon. When I told my Landlord about the last occurrence he didn't think it was a big deal, he just replaced the outlet.

    Here is my paranoid concern, but I'd like to do some checking to put my mind at ease. I am actually afraid the house was never inspected by a building inspector, and isn't really safe as far as the wires go. Because my landlord works for the city housing authority he may have some way of pushing the legal inspection through the system. This may not be the case, but I would like the house to be safe to live in. I don't feel like it's safe now, and I want to find a legal way I can either insist my landlord have the wiring inspected or brought up to code before I call him (and he just replaces the outlet again). At the least, I'd like to find a way to verify that the house was inspected and verify that it does in fact meet city building codes.

    I have heard that if a house is not up to building codes or was never inspected, some compensation may be due, or paying rent may be suspended until it is back up to code. Any information about this would be most useful. I would like to live in a safe house. If I can get some rent refunded, reduced, or suspended in the mean time, it would be a real bonus.

    Thanks for your help.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
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    Default Re: Building Inspection, Electrical Concerns

    You are free to go down to city hall and look up the records on the property, to determine if the electrical was inspected. I expect that you'll find out that it was, as obviously a certificate of occupancy was issued for the property.

    You are also free to ask whatever unit of local government is responsible for inspecting rental housing to perform an inspection, and see what they turn out. In the alternative, or if they can't or won't help you, if you want to hire an electrician to investigate whether there are any problems with the wiring it's your money.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
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    1,995

    Default Re: Building Inspection, Electrical Concerns

    You might want to check if the wiring used in the house is "aluminium", as it sounds like problems I heard about from around that time.

    http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/516.pdf

    The way I heard about it, most of the houses involved were inspected and properly approved, but the problem did not surface till years later, as resistance built up in the wiring. In that case, it is unlikely that you are due any compensation.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
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    19,901

    Default Re: Building Inspection, Electrical Concerns

    While aluminum (especially when mated to copper or receptacles inappropriately) is problematic, so can poorly made copper to copper connections. The breaker is designed to trip before excessive heat is dissipated in properly made connections and intact wiring. Unfortunately, a bad connection can heat up substantially (that is why all connections are required to be encased in boxes) and the reason for the newer Arc Fault breakers.

    There's not likely any code deficiency other than a poorly made connection.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
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    1,995

    Default Re: Building Inspection, Electrical Concerns

    Quote Quoting flyingron
    View Post
    While aluminum (especially when mated to copper or receptacles inappropriately) is problematic, so can poorly made copper to copper connections. The breaker is designed to trip before excessive heat is dissipated in properly made connections and intact wiring. Unfortunately, a bad connection can heat up substantially (that is why all connections are required to be encased in boxes) and the reason for the newer Arc Fault breakers.

    There's not likely any code deficiency other than a poorly made connection.
    I agree with you here, and the age of the house is I believe also a factor.

    Now that you mentioned it, I owned a rental, built in 57, and back around 2002, we had some similar problems, the outlets appear hot. We started checking it when we had to replace the service entrance after tenants complained when heavy trucks rumble down the street, the electricity goes off. Someone had to go to the main fuse box, bang on it hard, and the service would go back on.

    Got some electricians coming by to take a look, and it was found that insides of the main box was 90% rotted away. From what I'm told, this restricted the current going to the apartments, heating up the wires. But the wiring was also too old, and I couldn't afford to redo the entrance, bring it up to code from a 100 amp main to a 200 amp main with 2 phase running to new electric meters, AND ALSO rewire three rental units. It'll run me some big money, so instead of rewirng the whole house in addition to the service entrance, I ran a new circuit to the kitchen for appliances, and another one to the master bedrooms to AC's, and told the tenants to hook the appliances to the new circuits. All the old outlets are to be used for lighter stuff like lamps, and low power stuff.

    And I couldn't get around putting all this in without pulling a permit, and getting an inspection done.

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