Test Your Home Maintenance IQ With These Images From the Field

How good is your home maintenance knowledge? It’s time to find out with another round of, “What’s Wrong With This Picture,” the Upon Closer Inspection edition. So put your inspector’s hat on, and see if you can figure out the problem in the images before reading below.

What Is This and Why Is It Wrong?

If you’ve been following Upon Closer Inspection for awhile, you know that we see these squirrelly drains all the time. When people call Uncle Jerry to fix their plumbing instead of a licensed plumber, they often end up with something that looks like the loop-the-loop at the State Fair, rather than a P-trap under the sink, or in this case, like a trombone. Either way, water isn’t coming down that drain with enough force to make all those crazy turns without leaving whatever debris it might be carrying behind, so this is just a clogged drain waiting to happen.

What’s Going on at the Attic Hatch?

That is one crazy limbo stick they’ve got there. If you guessed that PVC pipe shouldn’t be running across the attic opening, you’re correct. If you guessed it’s because of poor construction planning, you’re even more right. This is what happens when everyone isn’t on the same page and following the same plan. Either the attic hatch got cut in the wrong place or that pipe wasn’t originally supposed to be run there, but when things like this happen, the contractors need to adjust, rather than leaving the homeowner with a potentially dangerous situation like this.

So Many Questions …

If you noticed that this gas meter is in concrete with the meter facing the brick wall, you would be spot on. How is the meter going to get read? Additionally, gas meters are not supposed to be installed in concrete in Texas, so this whole thing is a no-no. Not only that but it’s installed out-of-level, which is also prohibited. They also recommend that you paint your gas meter to protect it (which this one is not), and finally, this meter, inexplicably, has a sediment trap, which is not needed on a gas meter. Ten points if you got all that!

What’s Wrong in the Panel Box? Bonus: Should You Fix It Yourself?

We learned about why you shouldn’t double-lug neutral wires a while back, but ICYMI, even double-lugging (placing two neutral wires on the same breaker) can cause overheating. And what we have here is not double, or triple, but OCTUPLE-lugging. Stacking wires on one breaker like this just multiplies the chances of arcing and overheating, which could start a fire or worse.

Should you attempt to fix this yourself? Say it loud for the ones in the back: don’t DIY electrical!

How did you do? To test your home maintenance knowledge with more pictures from the field, you can go here, and here. And when you’re in need of a home inspection, you know who to call!