I feel I just read through comments about 3-4 months ago that was pretty close to this same topic but I could not re find it. Do these SEC’s look like they were overheated or does it look like the a-o paste cooked. 95% of me believes it’s just the a-o paste over heated because the insulation looks good to me yet. Am I on the right track here with my thoughts?
That appears to be a type of aluminum corrosion possibly due to something in the air. If you look at the bare neutral you can see it also appears to be corroded several inches from the termination. Were there any chemicals or other potentially corrosive materials stored in the area? The copper conductors look okay. It certainly needs to be repaired.
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The house was empty, I thought realtor told me maybe been empty right around 4 months. Robert the air appeared damp, yes I did notice the neutral had spots of that white substance on it almost as if it’s the same substance on the front of the panel.
Off the subject of the panel but still trying to stay on the same subject about the house having that damp feeling, these were backside pictures of kitchen upper cabinet doors.
Oh also this was an open crawlspace off of basement about 12ft away from panel. Not sure exactly what that white looking moldy stuff was covering the soil.
They have handheld tools to measure humidity (hygrometer), but there’s nothing wrong with describing it with your senses.
Including your eyes! That is exactly what you suspect it is.
The floor structure in the crawl, also suffering from long term elevated humidity. That looks like WDO
Nice zoom in there underneath the kitchen floor! I got this tool but I was trying to move along a little quicker and stick more to the bare minimum SOP including with using my tools. 1000sf 2.5hrs. I added the comfort levels on the back so I wouldn’t have forgot, now those numbers are stuck in my head.
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I do not consider 30-50 moist or humid. 55+ gets my attention because that is when mold can grow. Unless humidity is lower outside than inside, then questions should be forming in your mind.
Next. Slow down on the big things like moisture issues. Speed up on things with less consequence.
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I agree. The EPA recommends below 60% to be safe.
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If I remember right, I think what I wrote was supposed to tell me RH 30-50% is ideal and anything over that I need to look for signs of moisture. And that Dew point is ideal between 40-60% but I think I wrote dry meaning ideal from excessive moisture.
It’s hard for me to not stop and overlook the minimal repair items because that’s what I practically do all day with my repair business. Checking out door and bifold door operations, reveals, hardware. Checking out toilets and water levels and tank parts. Cabinet door functions, Ceiling and wall repairs. And I don’t want to ever skip a receptacle test, and it drives me nuts if I can’t figure out what a switch leads to which drives me nuts looking for a switched outlet because it’s usually where they break the copper tab off now I’m checking upper and lower plug ins. But you’re right I need to reverse what I’m doing and spend more time on the more critical things. I think I’m getting there for timing though, I still change my process after every real or practice inspection. I had the opportunity to do a practice inspection on half of a duplex today that was empty that I had repair work to do inside.
I had a work order to replace a baseboard heat thermostat, I was sent over specifically for this. Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve caught this during a home inspection because I have decided to phase out the thermal imaging gun until I get faster at what I need to do according to the SOP. I would hope I would’ve felt it using the control knob but I don’t know if I would’ve really put my hands around the housing part, but you know what I will be checking for that stuff now. It took maybe 10 minutes for the thermostat to hit 150’.
150° is what i think you meant. Were you able to figure out what was going on?
Dew point is a temperature. Not a percentage range.
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Thanks for clearing that up for me, BRIAN. I have not used that tool much at all maybe tested it three or four different times on different homes. On my tool, the relative humidity percentage never changes, it’s just the temperature whether I switch it to dewpoint or not. I just did some research to make more sense of the dewpoint and relative humidity readings. Good thing you guys drill me on this information others I will just go on thinking I got it figured out. I did not realize I did not understand it as well as I thought I did.
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The wire nuts were a little loose so I took the connections apart redid them and the body of the thermostat still heated up afterwards. I picked up a thermostat for $35, I plan on getting over there tomorrow to replace it. I did not visibly see anything wrong with wiring so I will start with a new thermostat and see if the old one was just defected.
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