BEWARE OF HOME WIRING BY UNQUALIFIED PERSONS! Recently I was looking, with my daughter, to buy a home for her in the West Kildonan area, (WINNIPEG) and noticed most of those homes I saw had either knob and tube wiring (ended aprox. 1945) or some had dried out BRITTLE rubber insulation cables, which was also installed during the 50's. Two had a lot of spaghetti looking jumbled up cables connected into a brand new 32 circuit electrical panel (obviously done by a handy person or home owner) but the Hydro meter was still indoors and the service was, one 50 amperes and others 60 amperes. When I lifted up some of the basement ceiling tiles in one of the homes I noticed OPEN WIRING (single wires) to pot lights and other recessed fixtures more or less wired like a stereo in an automobile. Beautiful rec. rooms! The messed up wiring was all hidden and covered up in all cases. Waite a minute! This is not all! The worst is - In the 1st and 2nd floors, ALL those brand new impressive light fixtures all over and brand new impressive gray DECORA type receptacles and switches ALL OVER made the place (to an untrained person) look like it had been all rewired. (The newly beautiful paint job and new carpets all over adds emphasis of perfection on everything through out the home.) Those new receptacles have no GROUND wire and when connected to rubber insulated wires, by means of the handling, the insulation crumbles right off and most of the time the HANDY PERSON just tapes up the bare copper wires inside the plug box which is wrong to do. (Electrical tape is only a short temporary solution and not approved for permanent insulation by any means.)The new fixtures - is the same scenario except when there is knob and tube wiring there is no METAL box to prevent any SPARKS from the improper, usually loose, connections to eventually continue the burning process up the dried out fine wood chips insulation in most attics and also usually aprox. 4 feet around the perimeter of the first floor ceiling areas. Even if there is an electrical metal box, the new light fixtures require 90 degrees rated wiring to be approved for such installation.
Other hidden deficiencies in a home are not as dangerous as an electrical deficiency which, very likely in due time, may cause the home to burn down very quickly. Unfortunately, electrical wiring still works even when installed wrong and that makes the handy person seem like a pro especially when it is all covered up? This is a deception, a false sense of the electrical installation safety to home buyers. Unfortunately, with all home buying bidding wars, the new home buyers have no opportunity of even getting a proper Home Inspection before it is too late? This is going on right now throughout all the older areas in this city. I challenge anyone who contradicts, to any extent, what I am writing here about and this is not, by any means, suggesting self promoting material but only intended for general public information at large.
(I have seen many more older homes since this first writing in March and it is the same all over the city.) Lately I have prevented some homeowners from continuing creating such disasters in their wiring system. They were glad to have met me but others refuse to pay higher prices for professional rewiring and repairs. From my 36 yrs experience, (I, Manuel Correia - Owner of ACTION ELECTRIC ), 90% of home renovations in Winnipeg have the wiring altered, modified, added or repaired, not inspected, completed extremely contrary to CODE COMPLIANCE and extremely dangerous, done by unqualified persons who, some, should be sitting in jail by now if the City had enough resources to oversee these practices. When will the City of Winnipeg or somebody wake up and PREVENT unqualified home owners or their handy people from doing their own wiring or electrical repairs especially with the intention of selling the home?
I am fully qualified, licensed and work in this field but no longer do such repairs or rewiring because the 'handy man' always succeeds in outbidding me, of course! Therefore, in residential work I only do service upgrades or may do work which also involves other professional trades people and therefore, permits are required and all work is inspected, everyone is protected.
A WARNING - See this link: http://www.datatel.ca/download/133_2006.pdf
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