There are 3 questions you should be able to answer before you buy or sell a home.
When you meet with a Realtor about listing your home, he or she should ask you about your current electrical system. You don’t need to get an electrician out to the house to answer several basic questions that every realtor needs to know about your home so they can adequately market the property to prospective buyers.
1. Where is the fuse box? (Otherwise known as the main panel or breaker box)
This is simply the box where all the wires are connected to either fuses (houses built before the 1960’2 that have not had an electrical wiring upgrade) or breakers. This is why they are known as fuse boxes and breaker boxes. If you don’t know where it is you need to find it. I’d love to tell you where it is always located but it can be anywhere, including outside.
FYI: The old fuses are just a way to protect the home system from power surges by “blowing out” the connection and have to be replaced. Breakers do just that. They break the connection and you just have to flip the switch to reconnect the source current coming from the power plant to your home system.
2. Does your home have 220 volt service?
If your home is rather new, it most likely will have this service. If you have a breaker box, you can check to see if there is two – 110 volt breakers tied together (double switched) to a laundry room or garage. This is normally where you will find a 220 volt plug, which is bigger than a standard 110. You will see the difference.
Most modern dryers cannot run without a 220 volt service nor can air-conditioners. However, there are exceptions so make sure to check. If you find that you do not have 220 volt service, it is possible to upgrade any house from 110 to 220 but for this you will need to hire a licensed electrician. This is not a job for the do-it-yourselfer.
The last important question is:
3. Are your plugs (outlets) grounded?
This is pretty easy to determine. Look at a plug and see if it has three holes per place to plug something in. If you can’t tell, try plugging in a cord with a three-pronged plug on the end. If it plugs in, it’s grounded, if it won’t, it’s not grounded. Basically, a grounded plug reduces the chance of electrical shocks, which is escaping current.
Because of building codes these days, it would be surprising for newer homes not to have grounded plugs and or GFI (ground fault interrupter) plugs. (GFI are the plugs you will find in the kitchen and bath with the little buttons on them that say “test” and “reset”. They give you even more protection for current escape around areas that are prone to get wet since water is a great conductor of electric current.)
However, if you live in an older home you may only have 2 holed outlets. Your electrical system is not grounded and does not have protection from excess current. You can upgrade these systems. Just know going in that it requires opening up walls and running new wires, etc. and can be costly and time consuming. In other words, it’s a lot of work. If you are already planning to renovate, that is a great time to upgrade to a grounded electrical system.
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