I may have ticked off the listing agent for the condo I inspected yesterday. Built in 1974, all electric meters and the shutoff for each unit is inside a locked room of the garage. This room is not identified as an Electrical Room, and no residents have access, even if they know what’s inside.
The meters and shutoffs were labelled at one time, but stickers have fallen off, so you kind of have to guess which meter and shutoff go to which unit. All equipment is Zinsco brand.
Inside the unit, the panel - subpanel - is Zinsco. Besides calling for the HOA to ID and label the Electrical Room and the equipment, plus clean out the crap blocking the meters and shutoffs, I also called for a licensed electrician to look at the
Been thru the same this year a few times.
I wouldn’t mention any adverse conditions to the mains that are on condo controlled property.
The paint contamination makes it a slam dunk, no matter what panel brand, it’s got to go.
Paint contamination observed in interior of electric panel. Safety hazard, fire hazard, and maintenance concern. Paint can interfere with proper connections between electric components or proper operation of circuit breakers, creating conditions where proper grounding and electrical
connections are not present, possibly causing brown-outs, arcing, and fires.
Paint can also cause the wire insulation to deteriorate.
No approved method exists for cleaning contaminants from panel
interiors or components such as bus or terminal bars, circuit breakers or fuses.
The panel and/or components inside may need replacing.
Recommend further evaluation by licensed electrician.
I agree with others, Paint over spray, single strand aluminum, plus being that the panel is a Zinsco are all good calls. Also it’s hard to tell, but if the green wires are grounds, which I would say they are, they should be on isolated bus that’s bonded to the panel be being the distribution panel should be wired as a sub-panel.
Also IMO you made the right call as far as lack of identification and the lack of access to the disconnects. Whenever I run across this I add a note in the report stating that I was unable to identify which disconnect was for this unit and recommend that the client make inquiry with current owner.
I’m not so much concerned about the meters, but the only way to shut all power off to the condo unit is to get access to the locked room and guess which shutoff is for that particular unit. The meter is not my concern. And I doubt anything will be done, however, the buyer-my client-was the one who asked me if there was a main shutoff inside the condo unit.
FWIW, he’s paying over $400K for this waterfront condo…
yea but the neutral and ground feeders and are tied together at the neutral bar and still tied to the panel tied to conduit, so you could get neutral current on the conduit. If I’m not mistaken it’s 4 wires ran to the subpanel and there is only one bus bar for neutrals/grounds.
While I figure the circuits are grounded through the conduit (I checked the outlets) but it looks like if nothing else, ground and neutrals are mixed. There is no buss for grounds. Regardless, I’m recommending it to an electrician anyway.
