Home built in 2011
Electrical panels were manufactured in 2008 based of serial# and stamps.
When filling out the 4 point inspection report is panel age based of the year stamped on the panels or the year the home was built and the panels installed?
Thanks
Whatever answer is most correct, typically. A 2011 home can have NOS items in many categories.
Is this house in a development? Was it in the woods and sat around for 3 years waiting for the homeowner to fund the next step?
Normally, in a house that age, the panel is the same age as the build date on these insurance forms, and in general.
Its not in a development its a custom built high end home.
I determined the age for the report based off the stamped year on the panels. The same way I determine the age of the HVAC based off the year on the serial numbers.
Thanks for the reply I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything.
General Inspection Topics > Special Deals for InterNACHI Inspectors
Did you put 2011 as the build date for the house? If so, the insurance rep or underwriter may be confused.
I put 2011 as that’s the year the home’s build was completed. The permit application dates are from 2009-2010. I can see how it will look confusing with all the different dates.
If that were me, I’d list the panel age as the same age as the house, since you know when it was CO’d with permit data.
That makes sense. I will write it like that next time. Appreciate the suggestions.
Aka… “First placed into service”.
That’s a good question and one that confuses a lot of inspectors. The short answer is to always use the date it was placed in service, not the manufacture date. The manufacture date is only a milestone date. That’s also true of other major system components such as heat pumps and water heaters.
Insurance companies are assessing the risk of imminent failure. That risk is directly related to the amount of time a component is in service.
Every component in a house is manufactured at some time before the house is built and the components are placed into service. You won’t always know when most of the components were manufactured. Even the sub components will have been manufactured before the complete unit was assembled. The time differences vary widely.
Take a furnace or water heater as an example. You can readily identify its final assembly date because that’s the date that appears on the nameplate. However, you don’t know when the individual parts were manufactured. They could have been made many months or even years before the final assembly. No one dates an assembly based on the age of the oldest component.
In the case of an electrical panel, the bus bars, terminal strips, circuit breakers, screws, and other parts might have been made long before the panel was assembled.
Panel box covers are often sold separate from the enclosures. Grounding terminals are sold separately. When either of those components is added, that creates a new date of final assembly, but that new date isn’t used to determine the assembly’s age. It is always the date that the assembled unit is placed into service. The date stamped in the panel should be regarded as nothing more than a milestone date.
Conclusion: from a failure risk point of view, its life begins when it is placed into service.