My inspection was great

Ted was great and very personable. Being this is my first time buying a home, he answered all my questions thoroughly and without hesitation.

D. Flanagan
Middletown, DE

Improper Sump Pump Discharge

I was inspecting a 20yr old house last week and when I entered the home I could smell sewer gases, I thought because the house was vacant for 6 months that it just needed to be aired out. Upon entering the basement I found that the sump pump was dicharged into the main sewer line. This is a big problem for several reasons. 1) The sewer gasses entering the home can make the occupants sick or worse because the gases could contain methan. 2) This is the lowest point so if the sewer line backs up it is heading straight for the sump pump and the the basement floor. It may not back up if there is a back check valve installed, And in this case they did not have one installed. As you see in the picture the home owner removed the clean out cap to allow for the discharge hose, Then they shoved a rag around the discharge pipe to help prevent the odor from entering the home, However that did not work. I was very puzzled by this set up because there is a hole in the foundation wall from the builder to allow for exterior drainage of the sump pump.

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How does a GFCI outlet work?

That outlet is called a ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). It’s there to protect people from electrical shock, so it is completely different from a fuse.

The question on appliance plugs talks about fuses. The idea behind a fuse is to protect a house from an electrical fire. If the hot wire were to accidentally touch the neutral wire for some reason (say, because a mouse chews through the insulation, or someone drives a­ nail through the wire while hanging a picture, or the vacuum cleaner sucks up an outlet cord and cuts it), an incredible amount of current will flow through the circuit and start heating it up like one of the coils in a toaster. The fuse heats up faster than the wire and burns out before the wire can start a fire.

A GFCI is much more subtle. When you look at a normal 120-volt outlet in the United States, there are two vertical slots and then a round hole centered below them. The left slot is slightly larger than the right. The left slot is called “neutral,” the right slot is called “hot” and the hole below them is called “ground.” If an appliance is working properly, all electricity that the appliance uses will flow from hot to neutral. A GFCI monitors the amount of current flowing from hot to neutral. If there is any imbalance, it trips the circuit. It is able to sense a mismatch as small as 4 or 5 milliamps, and it can react as quickly as one-thirtieth of a second.

So let’s say you are outside with your power drill and it is raining. You are standing on the ground, and since the drill is wet there is a path from the hot wire inside the drill through you to ground (see How Power Distribution Grids Work for details on grounding). If electricity flows from hot to ground through you, it could be fatal. The GFCI can sense the current flowing through you because not all of the current is flowing from hot to neutral as it expects — some of it is flowing through you to ground. As soon as the GFCI senses that, it trips the circuit and cuts off the electricity.

“How does a GFCI outlet work?.” 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. 03 August 2009.

A very thorough job…

Thanks Ted! You did a very thorough job and it was a pleasure working with you! Kathy