We live in a small city in western Kentucky. The house in question is just under 1200 square feet, three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms. Built in 1962, it had had the same owner since 1967, and was in amazing shape.
One first thing we noticed though was that the electrical outlets were ungrounded, two prong. We did find a few grounded outlets, here and there (in the storage room, laundry room, and bathroom).
We had an inspection, as well as having an electrician come to give an estimate of what needed to be done. The day we initially looked at the house, the storage room door was unlocked, and we were able to look at the breaker box. Breakers, not fuses, which was a good sign. Unfortunately, the day of the inspection, that door had been locked and no one had the key.
I was not present the day of the inspection, though my boyfriend was. As I understand it, the house has cloth wrapped wire and it all needs to be replaced. The only other issue regarding the electrical was that the above ground wire stretching from the back of the house, across the back yard to the garage was a hazard and should be put underground.
We were quoted nearly $10,000 for the work, with an additional $2000 to upgrade to 200amp if we wanted to. Everyone else we asked said that estimate seemed really high. At this point, we were prepared to drop out of the deal, because the house was already at the top of our budget, and the extra expense would just be too much to deal with (we'd have to lower our down payment and rework the loan and make our house payments bigger).
Upon hearing that we wanted to drop out, the response of the seller was "We think we can get a lower estimate. We will take care of getting it fixed, if you stay in the original deal." That seemed like the best possible news.
But now my boyfriend is worried that they will do the bare minimum, which certainly won't include upgrading to 200amp. He's worried we will have problems in the future at 100amp.
The house uses gas for heat and hot water. Electrical for central air, stove, refrigerator, washer, dryer. We will have 2-3 computers and at least 1 TV (plus internet router, Playstation) running at any given time. The appliances were included in the sale, and are slightly old. Over time they will be replaced with energy efficient ones. Should boyfriend be worried?
Submitted August 31, 2015 at 09:51PM by Sapphires13 http://ift.tt/1FcvPrH HomeImprovement
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