A couple of answers. Normally, if a driven ground rod is present it’s in the general area of where the service entrance cable enters the home (normally, there are always exceptions). In those cases its looking for the copper wire running to the ground and disappearing in the 6" of mulch etc… Second, from reading your emails, I would urge you to find an inspector to shadow/ride along with. You need to be comfortable doing the work, with the correct PPE and be able to evaluate situations as you go. There’s lots of things which could be impacted if the planets align the wrong way or if systems are old. (ie shutting off running HVAC by a breaker trip is not the optimal way to shut down a system) as well as other reasons for other systems.
Only twice did I not remove the panel cover. One was a rusted panel box in a Crawlspace under the home over a large puddle of water. The second was obstructed by a door frame, requiring the door frame to be removed to remove the cover. Be careful when removing and replacing the panel screws. The other day I put a panel screw in and it touched a damaged wire causing it to arc the 30 amp circuit it was connected to. Therefore don’t thread the screws in with your bare hands… Covers need to be removed. I found one double tap and 6 triple tapped circuits in that panel.
Excellent, Martin!..we all took time to study for home inspections…you’ll get comfortable, too.
When I first got into home inspections back when, I though it would a breeze because I had been a state licensed contractor/builder for so many years…Wrong!
It did help, of course, but I learned so much that I didn’t realize that I needed to know to be a quality home inspector that it surprised me.
My original sticker said “Keep this panel door closed…or open. It’s your call. Nobody really gives a shit”.
But that particular sticker got bad reviews.
An electrician friend of mine was thankful for his safety glasses. He opened up a box that then exploded. Loose bus. Things shifted as he pulled the pane. Short. BOOM.
He looked like a raccoon photo negative with his glasses off. All kinds a crap blown into his face.
I wear glasses for vision correction. I’m “covered”.
There are plenty of inexperienced folk that ask plumbers “why do you wear gloves” all the time. Then, apparently, there are some HIs that ask why do you need PPE to open an electrical panel LOL Humans are amazing creatures, indeed
