With life being lived on the internet, electricity is now as important as food and shelter. We bought our house going on eight years ago. The former owner claimed to be an electrician and, based on his mail that we’re still receiving, has his own electrical business. First-time buyers, we didn’t know to be skeptical. It didn’t help that the home inspector we’d hired bowed out a week in advance of closing and we had to hire someone with no recommendation on the fly. He said nothing about the electrical box (and many other flaws that should’ve been spotted and reported). We started having some electrical issues soon after moving in. We found a local electrician (not the former owner) who was friendly and once saved us by returning to the house as night was falling and hooking up the power so we could have heat (this was in a November).
Before picture
When the power went out completely in April, and the electric company said there were no issues on their end, we decided we’d better have the whole system checked out. We hired from a larger, regional company. These guys were good. After being here for only half an hour they’d found the problem, and it was a big one. The mast, or conduit, on the side of the house hadn’t been properly installed. Water had been seeping into the breaker box and several of the breakers had rusted. The repair cost was mighty, but it would be done correctly. This led to a chilly April day without heat, but they did supply a line that let us work by powering the router, and kept the fridge cold. They were here for ten hours. For the first time since moving in, we have an uncompromised electrical system.
What makes all of this so strange is that we had been trusting of the seller that he knew what he was doing electrically. As laypeople, we had no way to assess this, and the inspector apparently didn’t as well. The good electricians (the most recent) suggested that our former electrician was afraid to tell us the real cost of doing the job right, and had decided to cut corners. He may have been acting out of kindness. Or he may not have been able to see the problem from a larger view. So we’re poorer, but wiser. And we have power. As long as the electric company can be trusted to keep up its end of the deal, we shouldn’t run into internet access problems. And that’s life itself.
