Reasons to Consult: Other Concerns

• You plan to add outlets, or circuits, and you're fuzzy about your options. You could benefit from expert advice in specifying the work—not just the outcome you want but how your contractor will go about it. What common design and installation options are worth considering, and what are the tradeoffs?
• You've bids in hand from electrical contractors. They're a bit confusing. You feel like you need to compare apples and kumquats. Safer Greenbelt can interpret the bids for you, and offer questions you might not have thought to ask about elements that seem unclear or puzzling.
  
• You've had electrical work done; it's finished, working. You were charged for a permit to ensure it was completed legally. Then you learned that Prince George's County doesn't send an electrician out to go over the work. Gee! It seems a mighty good idea to get a qualified* master electrician and inspector out to doublecheck the work, in person, even before the county offers its blessing.
  
• You are making non-electrical changes, and want to make sure the carpentry, or plumbing, or insulation, or other project won't run afoul of some electrical safety requirement.
• You've read an article that mentioned all sorts of new electrical safety equipment. If you were in a brand-new house in Montgomery County, it would be required. Should you consider adding any of these sophisticated and possibly expensive devices to your home? Safer Greenbelt can answer your questions about each in depth: what kind of safety it adds, how and often why it was developed, and any problems people find with it.
• You're considering doing some of your own wiring, and you need to ask someone knowledgeable a bunch of questions. Safer Greenbelt won't take responsibility for your wiring, but will explain most anything you ask about wiring methods and rules, going into as much detail as suits you. This can't take the place of practical training, of course.
• Your wiring is more than 40 years old, and it's been more than 20* years since a qualified** person evaluated your system to see whether anything's getting wonky.
• Children; aging; disability . . . new needs: David's worked with people in these situations, and written about them for the industry. He continues to advocate for people who don't meet the criteria on which standards often focus.
  
  For the pdf of a column about electrical projects serving older adults, ask during your consultation.
  
• You've bought a flipped home. A flip is a property that was bought low and sold high with just enough work done to turn a hefty profit. This usually is done quickly; often, based on observation, it's done at least partly illegally. Safer Greenbelt can root out at least some of the hazards and explain them; advise you about possible remedies.
  
  There's no magical system guaranteed to identify flips. However, you can take two simple steps:
  1. Look up the property owners and sale dates and prices, going back a little ways.
  2. Look up the history of permits—electrical, plumbing, structural, roofing, any trade. While you're on the county's or other permit site, note the status of permits.
  • If the seller has lived there for years and years, they're not a flipper. They may or may not have done quick-and-dirty improvements to help the sale, but wholesale metaphorical whitewashing is unlikely.
  • If the seller is not a long-term occupant, if the asking price, or the price you paid, was a great deal higher than the price paid by the recent purchaser who's now selling it, it may well be that they've put in work to convince people to pay the new price. If the work was more than cosmetic, permits were required, almost certainly. A permit does not guarantee safe, legal work; it means nothing unless the work passes final inspection. If the permits covering work done to upgrade systems have the status "Abandoned," "Expired," or "Open," the work was left in that limbo.