Most would think that a $2.3 million dollar property would be amazing but reality is it's just a $300,000 house on $2 million dollar plot of land. Nothing too special there.
Vancouver is a massive bubble market. Many properties are just speculative investments owned by the Chinese who will never live in these homes. The construction companies are aware of this and know they can take advantage by doing shoddy work and cutting corners.
Scrolled down here to tear ol boy up about his wire statement. Found out I that's already beem taken care of. This house looks like another McBride McMasterpiece.
I agree. larger gauge wire is just going to have less resistance so less voltage drop over distance. only problem would be if the breaker failed and allowed higher amps to travel. so basically if the breaker fails with the higher gauge the appliance connected gets fried but with a lower gauge and the breaker fails the wire in the wall would fry. at least that's what my understanding of it would be.
Matt Nichols pretty much.. and what does this breaker feed? We don’t know. It could feed a small pool shed 500 feet away. We’ve done 2 runs of 250 mcm for a tiny ass house before..
4:48 - "The wire will overload that 40A breaker". I spit my coffee out. Thanks for the lolz! Glad you aren't inspecting anything for me. As many other commentators have already said there is nothing wrong with oversize wire so long as the lugs will accommodate it. May have been a long run and needed the heftier wire due to voltage drop. Also highly doubt that it was #3 AWG. While that is a size in the table, good luck finding any to buy unless you are ordering a whole spool of it from a wire company .
This is why my father told us to either buy an older home that needs work anyway or build the home yourself. He's a retired contractor and in his 30-plus year career, he often said that he saw more problems with new, developer-built homes than he saw with older homes (with the exception of lead, mold and asbestos). According to him, most modern homebuilders have no sense of pride in their work and are only trying to make things look pretty so they can get your money while you'll end up stuck with a house with a multitude of problems.
Yes. Look at the house carefully though. I've seen old houses, and other than the great wood, they may have been screwed with over the years and need work EVERYWHERE, once you get into it. I do design for remodels, and see people buy homes that are NOT what they want and try to remake them, instead of buying a house that already has at least the basics of what they really want. It gives me work anyway.
I’m an insurance adjuster in Chicago and I can’t TELL you how many losses I deal with regarding the washing machine drain line popping out. I really enjoy your videos. Definitely subed!
Hey chief, electrical conductors can always be larger/oversized with zero issues, actually bigger the better, they will never overload the circuit, only incorrectly rated overcurrent protection(breaker) will potentially damage/overload the circuit. Just trying to help/improve your knowledge base, i have several electrical tickets and 26 yrs field experience not just some negative commenting asshat ;).
Your understanding of the electrical code (and basic electrical principles) needs brushing up. The wire presents no load to the breaker. The breaker is protecting the wire, not the other way around. The is you can't have a wire connected to a breaker that will allow more current than the breaker will allow. So for a 40A breaker, you need 8 gauge wire. Minimum, not maximum. The breaker and wire need to be selected in accordance with the expected load (appliance, etc.), and voltage drop. Usually voltage drop can be ignored if the runs are not excessively long. But anyway, the 3 gauge wire connected to the 40A breaker is perfectly fine. There may be a good reason for it, or maybe it's totally unnecessary, but it's not a code violation or a hazard.
He's not a plumber either....nor was the plumbing sub on this one. The flexible gas connector to the tankless water heater without an apparent drip leg should have been flagged by the GC, plumbing sub, CO inspection and I guess the under-employed home inspector. The pre loaded soldered fittings on the supply lines are another big red flag of plumbing competence/INcompetence. While I'm at it....as poorly designed as the concrete stairwell was....the (looks like 4" minimum) floor drain would be sufficient to take the volume of noahs' flood. This douchebag is out of his league but, overall, that house would have been laughed into a 5 or 6 page punchlist here in Chicago....at any price. One more....the ill fitting and closing doors coupled with the drywall issue at the window upper corner would have me making sure that structural spec was followed to the letter on this one. I would not be at all surprised if those 2 doors weren't somewhere above the drywall manifestation. Fail on the build quality and Fail on the anything but exhaustive inspection. He should have to spend a dozen years in the real world field and hundreds of classroom hours before taking a 100 question exam supposedly qualifying him to inspect these homes.
You are wrong about the wire, it can be overzised to compensate for a long run of wire(lower the resistance and make sure that the voltage is within +/- a % of the rated voltage in your country). The other gauge you mentioned would also carry 100 amps but it would overheat and get damaged if it actually were allowed to carry that much, In other words the installed cable gauge can carry more amperage than the fuse will allow for without being damaged and so it is fine. What would be a huge problem is if it was underzised.
Thanks Tom. You have interesting videos. Oversize wire is perfectly OK coming off circuit breakers if the lugs are designed to handle that size of wire. The breaker is there to protect the conductors. What the conductors are connected to on the load side is a different matter. Might be some size issues there.
Good video. Always important to have someone with experience look at a home like this. I remember when my aunt bought a $600,000 brand new home in 1994 and the builder used pine doors.
The cable gauge can be too large, per physics a larger cable will have less resistance for a given load. The weak point, and the fire danger comes when a two small gauge cable has a too large breaker. The number 2 cable, limited by the 40 amp breaker presents no fire danger, providing all connections are made up properly, box large enough, lugs large enough. I agree, that I would not expect a 'something' limited by a 40 amp breaker, and fed by a #2 to have all the sufficient lug sizes, boxes,, etc. There is likely something odd down the line The opposite is not permissible, a 50 amp breaker and a 10 gauge wire,, you reach in immediately and shut it all down, pull the meter if you have to. Good catch on all the rest. The bolted down egress grates are an immediate loss of occupancy. That will kill.
I saw no reference to sprinklers, saw no stand pipe in the mechanicals room, BC code requires sprinklers in 4 story wood framed structures, Does it currently require them in all now? My take would be, if an egress window is required, speced by height and width, then I would certainly expect them to have access. Those security grates are supposed to be secured from below where the emergency release can only be accessed by the person escaping.
you're right sailor. it's acceptable as long as the cable fits in the lugs at both ends, without cutting off any strands. it would fail inspection if the strands were cut or damaged. oversized wire generally isn't used simply because it costs more.
Hey Pete, There is one situation where I have many times seen over sized wire/ smaller beaker, the deck hot tub. The original, and installed cable size is large, tub heater draw is huge. 15 years later the new hot tub needs half as much. Cable is already in, new tub is only going to draw
That boiler does not come with a combi kit, it is an optional accessory if you don't want to use an indirect fired waterheater. The boilers heat exchanger is not rated for domestic water pressure so if it is connected to the domestic water without a combi kit or indirect fired water heater the boilers heat exchanger could be damaged and should be inspected. Not to mention the pressure safety relief valve the boiler comes with would blow off with full domestic water pressure.....
I gotta say whoever built this place was so sloppy, drywall mud slopped everywhere and even seems to be used as caulking on some spots, the electrical panel is total garbage as well as all the plumbing. Vancouver and the area has become a total joke for houses, all these fly by night companies with one registered guy to get the permits and then hires unqualified workers and pays them cheap
When I watch your videos, I'm always amazed by the shockingly bad workmanship you find. But this one has got to be the worst I've seen, because it's a brand new house, and it's so expensive. How could any developer have so little pride in their product? I have to wonder; how common is it for you to find new homes in this sort of state?
As someone who worked on low voltage cable and data lines at construction sites: the answer is ... that contractors use contractors who use contractors who use contractors. There is very little cohesion in many construction projects and everyone is trying to get the job done for as cheap as possible and move on to the next job. Time management is something everyone sucks at and often people call in their hired help way too late... or the hired help underestimates the project and comes way to late. Then management comes down and they rush the whole thing to 'completion'. Bad construction is very very common.
As a contractor who works for builders, it’s all about making a buck. We’ve walked off more than one job for being asked to do things that aren’t right. Builders only care about money.
As a German watching this I really have to wonder about the cables and pipes. Here all lines are attached to the wall in paralell lines or matching corner angles. There they just seem to be slapped against the wall any way they fit. Is that normal? We also have all cables either poured into concrete, plastered over, or in plastic cable chanels.
As many others have said, having the circuit breaker be the weak link (as it is supposed to be) and not the wire is a plus point. Then the wire is capable of carrying 100A, but the maximum the breaker allows is 40A, the wire is never going to overheat.
there is no code that dictates maximum conductor size as long as it fits the into the terminal/terminates correctly without cutting strands. This is because the maximum current through any conductor is limited to the breaker, not the conductor. And seeing that wires are rated by the temperature resistance at a given load this would further reinforce my statement as a larger conductor would have a higher temperature resistance at a lower amp load than a smaller conductor for the same given load. Also, this wire could easily be run to a sub panel on a second floor, pool pump shed, garage etc. If its going to a garage upsizing the conductor is a good idea if more circuits want to be added later that draw off of the same line from the sub panel.
The breaker *Breaks* the circuit if said circuit draws more than 40 amps. So the wire could be the size of an under sea cable and the breaker would safely break the circuit at 40 amps. Wire size only matters once you cheap out and buy one that's too small.
I dunno about those glass door showers they seem to always leak even when properly installed. Multiple companies in my area stopped installing them because they couldn't get them to stop leaking. (kept getting called back to fix it)
Here's the problem with Vancouver/Burnaby... This house will still sell for 2.3, just not to the buyer who hired Tom. Builders don't need to care about quality, as the building is just a decoration on top of the land, which holds the real value. It's a damn damn shame, and I don't know how it's fixable. I think the only way would be to buy a tear-down and build your home from scratch, maybe hire Tom as a general? Or at least somebody you really trust.
Rob MacKenzie No, hire a contractor, a good one, not a guy that follows around poor contractors and points out their faults. I don't need faults pointed out, I need the job done right the first time.
Hi Tom, I am a General Contractor in Colorado and have a home I reviewed to be an inch and a quarter different in elevation from the north side to the south side. The home is 90 feet long basically. I am currently fixing the issue that the framing contractor is telling me does not exist! Have you ever seen a home that far out in framing? Also the concrete stem walls they were out 4" on elevation in different areas I have parted ways with this contractor and am concerned with the fallout of his work. Can you tell me is this our new normal or is this guy pulling my leg?????
Wow, way to not know what you're talking about when discussing electrical issues. Maybe you could cite the code section that prevents over sizing wire?
It's interesting how a home builder can leave a customer with a defective product for life and there's not much that can be done afterwords. But a car manufacturer has lemon recalls and will replace the defective parts.
That's why it's stupid to buy a new home. If you want a new home, you should build one yourself with your own general contractor and your owns inspector who can monitor the building process from ground up.
The fire safety issue I saw was at the back of the washer/dryer. The flexible aluminum vent hose is banned in many jurisdictions. Should be flexible SOLID aluminum. A good fire inside this hose would quickly melt the hose and spread the fire.
The first thing I would want to know is... to what are those conductors going? Is it an oven, dryer, or the HVAC? It IS a tied breaker, so we can assume its a 220v appliance. If anything, if it's oversized in the gauge, it could be a nuisance. If the appliance is rated at a higher amperage than the breaker, it could keep tripping. Call a qualified electrical contractor to sort it out.
Some of these problems may have come later, like the cracking drywall and roof vents. But how does a contractor install a door that doesn't close and walk away from it as is?
Darius Patel the wood trim should have been left to acclimate in the basement. I bet a dry wood frame was brought in, installed right away and tested, but after a few days of absorbing basement humidity, the wood frame swelled.
For electrical, the wire must be sized at a minimum of what the breaker and end use is rated for. If you can fit a #2 wire on a 20 amp you can over size the wire. You cannot undersize the wire. If you want a nice house that will last a long time and quality, you use #12 for all your outlets and lighting.
when buying a house stay away from indoor sewage ejector pump or whats called a e-1 system here in minnesota.sewage leaving the house should never depend on electricity or hardware to make it to the street and unfortunatley greedy contractors sell entire neighborhoods set up this way and in 10 years when pumps quit working you have basement full of poop.mound systems are ok because pumps are outside and usually have to have a compliance inspection in trench or mound area.
I really don't think the county inspectors look at wires in the panel or anything like that! I'm sold on getting an independent inspector, but it'll drive the contractors crazy.
I was more thinking of ice cycles hanging off the lights from condensation. Those pipe vents are installed wrong from my roofing point of view. We always cut a U shape around them. I don't care if it takes a few shingles to get those cuts right. Snow likes to build up behind those pipes. The pressure on washing machine drains is a lot more than most people think. I hate faucets and plumbing fixtures. I now buy the cheapest plastic sink fixtures. I have new faucets for when I sell. 240$ vs 24$. When I had to replace an expensive faucet already. My solution was to buy 2 one to use and one for when I sell.
Where do you find these houses? As someone who works for a custom builder I don't understand how people can sleep at night knowing they have left that kind of work behind for someone to pay that much money for! It gives us all a bad name
4:58 Any electricians here? Could you tell me what is bad about having an oversized wire? Isn't the idea that the breaker would trip before any of the wire could melt.
Get an Electrician to inspect the breakers. No fire hazard using thicker Wiring on lower Amp Breakers. Using THINNER wires? NO-NO. They will burn out in your WALLS.
Tom Munro should subcontract the electrical inspection and perhaps the mechanical inspection also and deal with just the structural integrity, landscaping and drainage and asthestics.
I'll be honest, I had no idea you could hire a home inspector when looking to buy. I'm looking into getting a home in the near future, but am very ill-educated on all of this.
Wow surprising all these things in new homes, don't know why anyone would buy a home without a thorough inspection, even multiple independent inspectors. No problem with that higher gauge cabling. The breaker is never to protect the appliances, it's to protect the wire. Higher gauge is ok, lower gauge isn't. It the breaker fails first that's fine, it's in an explosion-resistant box. If the wire fails first it burns your house down. The 'correctly' sized wires should never have enough resistance to prevent a breaker from tripping, because it's the breaker's job to protect the wire before it starts overloading. How to prevent a breaker from being over 80% load is to carefully plan receptacles and other loads on a circuit such that there's enough breakers to carry all the expected loads in the home.
Don't walk, but run away from this house. After being bitten (inspector found missing shut off to the toilet and I found too many to count after living in it for a while), what is seen is only the tip of the iceberg, as if they didn't know or care on those, what else was there?
Very good and presented well Tom. Makes ya think on how did the architect come up that? Way too many piss/shit houses going up in speedy fashion. It's pretty sad how a person can tell if an East Indian built there home. They just have no concept of how water or electricity works. They install on our houses what they don't have in their country. Every house they touch has deficiencies, some just burn to the ground from electrical issues.
On top of your obvious mistake on the upsized wire, I have looked many times and I can not see where the hot water heater is also heating the floors. The floor heating pipes are to the right of the heater. There is only a small plastic supply line running behind the heater. This looks like a supply to fill and flush the closed system. In addition it appears to have a backflow preventer on it already.... There would be 2 more hoses on the bottom of it if it was used for the floor as well, a supply and a return. These are capped on the non combi version. The much bigger issue is all that copper hanging there barely supported on the wall, and that pipe across the floor that is easy to step on, only supported by the connection to the heater. You missed this . Plus that drywall taping looks like stevie wonder did it with his feet. Houses don't shrink. they can settle, but they don't shrink. Since you put out videos about others mistakes, I would think you would be more careful with what you say....
True, However the lengthwise component of the shrinkage is 0.1-0.2%of total length. The radial and tangential(thicknesses) of the board shrink 3-5% and 6-10%. Boards get wider and narrower but not longer and shorter. The walls will get thicker and thinner but their height and width shouldn't change much at all. On an 8' span, the max shrinkage will be 3/16" over the length. On the 4" side, the shrink is max 0.1"-0.2" depending on species and grain orientation. These numbers are green "as cut" to "oven dry" ranges. The wood put into the house is going to be much drier and more uniform, so the dimensional changes will be smaller with humidity variance. www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrinkage/ These numbers are not even close tho the crack sizes in the video. That house settled, it didn't shrink.
Yooo Props to you, I respect that, because Food, Water, and *SHELTER* is what you need in life to live, and if your shelter is bad, *ESPECIALLY* if you had spent as much as the house was "worth"... FFS... I mean really, of all things, your shower should not vomit *_GRAVEL_* and the tub should not break the spout... :/
I find these videos very interesting and informative. I have two questions : what causes the bathtub to not drain the water and would caulking the shower be an adequate solution for the leaking?
Caulking would not be an adequate solution. What should have been done is to have the threshold slope in towards the inside of the shower, thus water would go towards the drain. Even if you caulk now, you will have water buildup on the threshold at he glass and mold will occur.
The fact that gravel back washed into the bath tub indicates that the drain line is full of debris. Probably doesn't help that some contractor probably washed thinset or grout down the line. I also suspect that the drain is not sloped correctly. This is a brand new build. There should be absolutely nothing in the drain lines to wash back. That one problem alone is a massive issue. Hopefully that is not a basement bathroom.
Tom Munro, Inspector Hahaha. Found ya! I was the guy that took her to ICBC for ya... entertaining to see the 2+ mill houses being built like a shanty! No pride in ones work anymore!
Hi Tom. Great video. One question. Do you ever inspect properties that are well built and have no issues? Or does pretty much every property you inspect have issues of one sort or another??
joedell71 He wouldn't make any money if he didn't find deficiencies in every property he looks at. Thats one of the problems I found with his videos, if he can't find something wrong, he'll make something up.
Along with the previous comment, you don't appear to know a whole lot about electricity. You can always use a larger wire on a smaller breaker but not the other way around. That's what the breaker is for. I can use 15 amp breaker on 12/2 wire, but I cannot use a 20 amp breaker on 14/2 wire. The circuit draw should never be higher than the breaker. If it is, the breaker "breaks" the circuit and stops the minimum size of wire from melting. What you should be more concerned with is that they didn't use de-ox on an aluminum wire, and that is a fire hazard.
Ugg this bothered me so much watching a professional say that a heavier gauge wire is a fire hazard. Only a basic understanding of ohms law and electricity is needed to see that.
Uhhhhhhhhh........ What the hell are you talking about with the #3 wire being a fire hazard for a 40A breaker, because "it can overload that breaker, as it can carry as many as 100A"??? No, the wire is RATED for 100A, but ANY wire can carry a huge current, albeit briefly. Wire should be over-sized, NOT undersized. Wire doesn't "overload a breaker".... if the current exceeds the breaker's capacity, the breaker cuts the power...
I was interested until you said the larger gauge wire will overload the breaker. You might know more than me about a lot of things but that is definitely not how electricity works. You can run 0 gauge wire into a 1 amp fuse for a device rated below 1 amp and that fuse will never be overloaded by "too large of a wire"
Tom I think all your credibility went out when you said that about the electrical wire theoretically you would be right that the wire could allow more current, however if the breaker fries at that point the gauge of the wire isn't going to make a difference. It's like saying you're on a boat and it's sinking and it's on fire either way your screwed. How to gather up some of your credibility is to put a note there saying you misunderstood something and that it offers no risk to upsize wire to the breaker.
Most would think that a $2.3 million dollar property would be amazing but reality is it's just a $300,000 house on $2 million dollar plot of land. Nothing too special there.
Welcome to Vancouver! Or San Francisco/San Jose...
I'm in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) so I've seen it.
Vancouver is a massive bubble market. Many properties are just speculative investments owned by the Chinese who will never live in these homes. The construction companies are aware of this and know they can take advantage by doing shoddy work and cutting corners.
I expect better build quality from a 300,000 dollar house.
Brandon Francey 2.1M worth of Location Location Location and 200K worth of house.
Scrolled down here to tear ol boy up about his wire statement. Found out I that's already beem taken care of. This house looks like another McBride McMasterpiece.
If the wires fused at 40a it only allows that to draw 40amps. Wire could be oversized to compensate for voltage loss over a long distance.
yes
It's a home so "long" distances aren't a problem. But, correct gauge wire is the solution.
bo0tsy1 you’ve never wired big houses.
I agree. larger gauge wire is just going to have less resistance so less voltage drop over distance. only problem would be if the breaker failed and allowed higher amps to travel. so basically if the breaker fails with the higher gauge the appliance connected gets fried but with a lower gauge and the breaker fails the wire in the wall would fry. at least that's what my understanding of it would be.
Matt Nichols pretty much.. and what does this breaker feed? We don’t know. It could feed a small pool shed 500 feet away. We’ve done 2 runs of 250 mcm for a tiny ass house before..
4:48 - "The wire will overload that 40A breaker". I spit my coffee out. Thanks for the lolz! Glad you aren't inspecting anything for me. As many other commentators have already said there is nothing wrong with oversize wire so long as the lugs will accommodate it. May have been a long run and needed the heftier wire due to voltage drop. Also highly doubt that it was #3 AWG. While that is a size in the table, good luck finding any to buy unless you are ordering a whole spool of it from a wire company .
This is why my father told us to either buy an older home that needs work anyway or build the home yourself. He's a retired contractor and in his 30-plus year career, he often said that he saw more problems with new, developer-built homes than he saw with older homes (with the exception of lead, mold and asbestos). According to him, most modern homebuilders have no sense of pride in their work and are only trying to make things look pretty so they can get your money while you'll end up stuck with a house with a multitude of problems.
Yes. Look at the house carefully though. I've seen old houses, and other than the great wood, they may have been screwed with over the years and need work EVERYWHERE, once you get into it. I do design for remodels, and see people buy homes that are NOT what they want and try to remake them, instead of buying a house that already has at least the basics of what they really want. It gives me work anyway.
I’m an insurance adjuster in Chicago and I can’t TELL you how many losses I deal with regarding the washing machine drain line popping out. I really enjoy your videos. Definitely subed!
Hey chief, electrical conductors can always be larger/oversized with zero issues, actually bigger the better, they will never overload the circuit, only incorrectly rated overcurrent protection(breaker) will potentially damage/overload the circuit. Just trying to help/improve your knowledge base, i have several electrical tickets and 26 yrs field experience not just some negative commenting asshat ;).
Your understanding of the electrical code (and basic electrical principles) needs brushing up. The wire presents no load to the breaker. The breaker is protecting the wire, not the other way around. The is you can't have a wire connected to a breaker that will allow more current than the breaker will allow. So for a 40A breaker, you need 8 gauge wire. Minimum, not maximum. The breaker and wire need to be selected in accordance with the expected load (appliance, etc.), and voltage drop. Usually voltage drop can be ignored if the runs are not excessively long. But anyway, the 3 gauge wire connected to the 40A breaker is perfectly fine. There may be a good reason for it, or maybe it's totally unnecessary, but it's not a code violation or a hazard.
I'm flat amazed..... Just think what's behind the walls.
bubble gum, elmers glue, and staples.
Probably studs
The framing or structure of the building has to be inspected by law before it can be finished/drywalled
'that wire will overload that breaker'. That's when we learned you weren't an electrician and have someone else do your home electrical inspections.
I'm a Plumber and I knew that.
Lol I'm hoping he was just confused. If the situation was reversed, big breaker with smaller wire, then you'd have a problem.
He's not a plumber either....nor was the plumbing sub on this one. The flexible gas connector to the tankless water heater without an apparent drip leg should have been flagged by the GC, plumbing sub, CO inspection and I guess the under-employed home inspector. The pre loaded soldered fittings on the supply lines are another big red flag of plumbing competence/INcompetence. While I'm at it....as poorly designed as the concrete stairwell was....the (looks like 4" minimum) floor drain would be sufficient to take the volume of noahs' flood. This douchebag is out of his league but, overall, that house would have been laughed into a 5 or 6 page punchlist here in Chicago....at any price.
One more....the ill fitting and closing doors coupled with the drywall issue at the window upper corner would have me making sure that structural spec was followed to the letter on this one. I would not be at all surprised if those 2 doors weren't somewhere above the drywall manifestation.
Fail on the build quality and Fail on the anything but exhaustive inspection. He should have to spend a dozen years in the real world field and hundreds of classroom hours before taking a 100 question exam supposedly qualifying him to inspect these homes.
You are wrong about the wire, it can be overzised to compensate for a long run of wire(lower the resistance and make sure that the voltage is within +/- a % of the rated voltage in your country).
The other gauge you mentioned would also carry 100 amps but it would overheat and get damaged if it actually were allowed to carry that much, In other words the installed cable gauge can carry more amperage than the fuse will allow for without being damaged and so it is fine.
What would be a huge problem is if it was underzised.
This makes me nervous building a new home.
Thanks Tom. You have interesting videos.
Oversize wire is perfectly OK coming off circuit breakers if the lugs are designed to handle that size of wire. The breaker is there to protect the conductors. What the conductors are connected to on the load side is a different matter. Might be some size issues there.
just to make it clear, the breaker protects itself. the wire will not "overload the breaker"
Good video. Always important to have someone with experience look at a home like this. I remember when my aunt bought a $600,000 brand new home in 1994 and the builder used pine doors.
A Realtor wouldn't list that dump for more than $80,000 in Kansas City
OMG who built that mechanical room? Dr Seuss? for 2.3 million it better look like the star ship enterprise.
The cable gauge can be too large, per physics a larger cable will have less resistance for a given load. The weak point, and the fire danger comes when a two small gauge cable has a too large breaker. The number 2 cable, limited by the 40 amp breaker presents no fire danger, providing all connections are made up properly, box large enough, lugs large enough. I agree, that I would not expect a 'something' limited by a 40 amp breaker, and fed by a #2 to have all the sufficient lug sizes, boxes,, etc. There is likely something odd down the line The opposite is not permissible, a 50 amp breaker and a 10 gauge wire,, you reach in immediately and shut it all down, pull the meter if you have to.
Good catch on all the rest. The bolted down egress grates are an immediate loss of occupancy. That will kill.
The building is sprinklered and therefore a egress window is not required in the sleeping rooms.
I saw no reference to sprinklers, saw no stand pipe in the mechanicals room, BC code requires sprinklers in 4 story wood framed structures, Does it currently require them in all now? My take would be, if an egress window is required, speced by height and width, then I would certainly expect them to have access. Those security grates are supposed to be secured from below where the emergency release can only be accessed by the person escaping.
you're right sailor. it's acceptable as long as the cable fits in the lugs at both ends, without cutting off any strands. it would fail inspection if the strands were cut or damaged. oversized wire generally isn't used simply because it costs more.
Hey Pete,
There is one situation where I have many times seen over sized wire/ smaller beaker, the deck hot tub. The original, and installed cable size is large, tub heater draw is huge. 15 years later the new hot tub needs half as much. Cable is already in, new tub is only going to draw
Sailor376also saw your comment on the hot tub scenario, have run into this a number of times. Good call. Was hoping someone would make this point
Oversized wire is in absolutely no way a hazard.
Damm I'm convinced. Tomarrow I am moving to vancouver and buying a home and having you inspect it.
I would fly this guy across Canada if buying a new home, home inspectors have a bad name, but he is thorough.
That boiler does not come with a combi kit, it is an optional accessory if you don't want to use an indirect fired waterheater. The boilers heat exchanger is not rated for domestic water pressure so if it is connected to the domestic water without a combi kit or indirect fired water heater the boilers heat exchanger could be damaged and should be inspected. Not to mention the pressure safety relief valve the boiler comes with would blow off with full domestic water pressure.....
The nec electrical code says you can use a larger wire than needed but not smaller. Small gage on that breaker is overkill but safe
I gotta say whoever built this place was so sloppy, drywall mud slopped everywhere and even seems to be used as caulking on some spots, the electrical panel is total garbage as well as all the plumbing. Vancouver and the area has become a total joke for houses, all these fly by night companies with one registered guy to get the permits and then hires unqualified workers and pays them cheap
All your points are good but you do not understand how eletrical works
Then again you are a cat in glasses. Are you any better, Mr. Miau?
If a cat in glasses knows oversized wire isn't a fire hazard, certainly Mr. Ace Inspector should know.
wowcolors You don’t know how English works,
You all can blow me.
Was thinking the same thing when he said "40 Amps of POWER" at 5:00...amps is a unit of current.
this video is mostly helpful. probably need to get a buddy with you for these though, a buddy with more knowledge on a few different things.
Very informative.
Good job!! 👍
When I watch your videos, I'm always amazed by the shockingly bad workmanship you find. But this one has got to be the worst I've seen, because it's a brand new house, and it's so expensive. How could any developer have so little pride in their product? I have to wonder; how common is it for you to find new homes in this sort of state?
Every house you touch here is worth at least 1-2 million.. building non stop one after another all year
That's just property values
As someone who worked on low voltage cable and data lines at construction sites: the answer is ... that contractors use contractors who use contractors who use contractors. There is very little cohesion in many construction projects and everyone is trying to get the job done for as cheap as possible and move on to the next job.
Time management is something everyone sucks at and often people call in their hired help way too late... or the hired help underestimates the project and comes way to late.
Then management comes down and they rush the whole thing to 'completion'.
Bad construction is very very common.
As a contractor who works for builders, it’s all about making a buck. We’ve walked off more than one job for being asked to do things that aren’t right. Builders only care about money.
As a German watching this I really have to wonder about the cables and pipes. Here all lines are attached to the wall in paralell lines or matching corner angles. There they just seem to be slapped against the wall any way they fit. Is that normal? We also have all cables either poured into concrete, plastered over, or in plastic cable chanels.
Hey, my washing machine drain hose is also connected with a zip tie...that I installed myself...in a house build in the 70s worth ~$140K
As many others have said, having the circuit breaker be the weak link (as it is supposed to be) and not the wire is a plus point.
Then the wire is capable of carrying 100A, but the maximum the breaker allows is 40A, the wire is never going to overheat.
How does an oversized wire overload a breaker? Larger wire equals less resistance and longer possible run
there is no code that dictates maximum conductor size as long as it fits the into the terminal/terminates correctly without cutting strands. This is because the maximum current through any conductor is limited to the breaker, not the conductor. And seeing that wires are rated by the temperature resistance at a given load this would further reinforce my statement as a larger conductor would have a higher temperature resistance at a lower amp load than a smaller conductor for the same given load.
Also, this wire could easily be run to a sub panel on a second floor, pool pump shed, garage etc. If its going to a garage upsizing the conductor is a good idea if more circuits want to be added later that draw off of the same line from the sub panel.
That was money well spent by the buyer for that home on the inspection!
The breaker *Breaks* the circuit if said circuit draws more than 40 amps. So the wire could be the size of an under sea cable and the breaker would safely break the circuit at 40 amps. Wire size only matters once you cheap out and buy one that's too small.
Wouldn't sloping the slabs towards the grass damage and shift the soil?
I dunno about those glass door showers they seem to always leak even when properly installed. Multiple companies in my area stopped installing them because they couldn't get them to stop leaking. (kept getting called back to fix it)
You should post the name of the builder. You saved that buyer a headache.
I'm curious what an as is price would be on this house taking into consideration all the issues found compared to it's original 2.3 million.
Here's the problem with Vancouver/Burnaby... This house will still sell for 2.3, just not to the buyer who hired Tom.
Builders don't need to care about quality, as the building is just a decoration on top of the land, which holds the real value.
It's a damn damn shame, and I don't know how it's fixable. I think the only way would be to buy a tear-down and build your home from scratch, maybe hire Tom as a general? Or at least somebody you really trust.
Rob MacKenzie No, hire a contractor, a good one, not a guy that follows around poor contractors and points out their faults. I don't need faults pointed out, I need the job done right the first time.
if that deck is cantilevered over a beam the joist hangers are supposed to be installed upside down to prevent it from lifting.
Hi Tom, I am a General Contractor in Colorado and have a home I reviewed to be an inch and a quarter different in elevation from the north side to the south side.
The home is 90 feet long basically.
I am currently fixing the issue that the framing contractor is telling me does not exist!
Have you ever seen a home that far out in framing?
Also the concrete stem walls they were out 4" on elevation in different areas
I have parted ways with this contractor and am concerned with the fallout of his work. Can you tell me is this our new normal or is this guy pulling my leg?????
Do they not have building inspectors in Canada??
Thicker wire is never a problem electrically. It costs more and can be difficult to set up, but electrically: the thicker, the better.
Wow, way to not know what you're talking about when discussing electrical issues.
Maybe you could cite the code section that prevents over sizing wire?
This is true.
It's interesting how a home builder can leave a customer with a defective product for life and there's not much that can be done afterwords. But a car manufacturer has lemon recalls and will replace the defective parts.
How long have been studying, learning all this stuff?
That's why it's stupid to buy a new home. If you want a new home, you should build one yourself with your own general contractor and your owns inspector who can monitor the building process from ground up.
Brian C well maby because not all of us are made of money?
Inb4 2mill comment
Flexing windows and structure of a large door span, door frames going out of square... That house is settling, and so is any potential buyer.
That tub at the end, although gorgeous was a huge fail on the builders part lmao
I’m guessing they hired Jose to build this house
what about the dryer vent
The fire safety issue I saw was at the back of the washer/dryer. The flexible aluminum vent hose is banned in many jurisdictions. Should be flexible SOLID aluminum. A good fire inside this hose would quickly melt the hose and spread the fire.
What about that dryer vent?
Tom you need to take an electrical class. The wire is fine.
The first thing I would want to know is... to what are those conductors going? Is it an oven, dryer, or the HVAC? It IS a tied breaker, so we can assume its a 220v appliance. If anything, if it's oversized in the gauge, it could be a nuisance. If the appliance is rated at a higher amperage than the breaker, it could keep tripping. Call a qualified electrical contractor to sort it out.
Not an electrician, but how will the wire overload anything?
you are good!
You look like a Bond Villain with that turtle neck on. Good to see you up on that roof.
Some of these problems may have come later, like the cracking drywall and roof vents. But how does a contractor install a door that doesn't close and walk away from it as is?
The cracking drywall and the doors not closing could all be part of the same problem of the house shifting or swelling of wood.
Darius Patel the wood trim should have been left to acclimate in the basement. I bet a dry wood frame was brought in, installed right away and tested, but after a few days of absorbing basement humidity, the wood frame swelled.
is this normal in america? the only homes i've seen in this state (like the walls cracking..) are 100 years old
For electrical, the wire must be sized at a minimum of what the breaker and end use is rated for. If you can fit a #2 wire on a 20 amp you can over size the wire. You cannot undersize the wire. If you want a nice house that will last a long time and quality, you use #12 for all your outlets and lighting.
when buying a house stay away from indoor sewage ejector pump or whats called a e-1 system here in minnesota.sewage leaving the house should never depend on electricity or hardware to make it to the street and unfortunatley greedy contractors sell entire neighborhoods set up this way and in 10 years when pumps quit working you have basement full of poop.mound systems are ok because pumps are outside and usually have to have a compliance inspection in trench or mound area.
Wow. Those bathrooms!
I really don't think the county inspectors look at wires in the panel or anything like that! I'm sold on getting an independent inspector, but it'll drive the contractors crazy.
I was more thinking of ice cycles hanging off the lights from condensation. Those pipe vents are installed wrong from my roofing point of view. We always cut a U shape around them. I don't care if it takes a few shingles to get those cuts right. Snow likes to build up behind those pipes. The pressure on washing machine drains is a lot more than most people think. I hate faucets and plumbing fixtures. I now buy the cheapest plastic sink fixtures. I have new faucets for when I sell. 240$ vs 24$. When I had to replace an expensive faucet already. My solution was to buy 2 one to use and one for when I sell.
Where do you find these houses? As someone who works for a custom builder I don't understand how people can sleep at night knowing they have left that kind of work behind for someone to pay that much money for! It gives us all a bad name
4:58 Any electricians here? Could you tell me what is bad about having an oversized wire? Isn't the idea that the breaker would trip before any of the wire could melt.
Why you trying to stop water from getting on the stairs when it rains it's auto matcily gets wet
Nice showing. Homes in the US looks flashy on the outside.... guess that's about it! Anything can look mint 10 feet away.
Get an Electrician to inspect the breakers. No fire hazard using thicker Wiring on lower Amp Breakers. Using THINNER wires? NO-NO. They will burn out in your WALLS.
Tom Munro should subcontract the electrical inspection and perhaps the mechanical inspection also and deal with just the structural integrity, landscaping and drainage and asthestics.
I'll be honest, I had no idea you could hire a home inspector when looking to buy. I'm looking into getting a home in the near future, but am very ill-educated on all of this.
you are the best
Wow surprising all these things in new homes, don't know why anyone would buy a home without a thorough inspection, even multiple independent inspectors.
No problem with that higher gauge cabling. The breaker is never to protect the appliances, it's to protect the wire. Higher gauge is ok, lower gauge isn't. It the breaker fails first that's fine, it's in an explosion-resistant box. If the wire fails first it burns your house down.
The 'correctly' sized wires should never have enough resistance to prevent a breaker from tripping, because it's the breaker's job to protect the wire before it starts overloading. How to prevent a breaker from being over 80% load is to carefully plan receptacles and other loads on a circuit such that there's enough breakers to carry all the expected loads in the home.
Do you guys not have to grout between the rings of manholes/basins over there? Half my job was grouting those up here lol.
I dont see how thick wires are a fire hazard. The breaker is going to trip before the wire burns up...
4:54 listen to what he just said "A 3 awg wire will overload that 40 amp breaker". I'm now assuming everything he is saying is coming out of his ass.
Don't walk, but run away from this house. After being bitten (inspector found missing shut off to the toilet and I found too many to count after living in it for a while), what is seen is only the tip of the iceberg, as if they didn't know or care on those, what else was there?
bro if i'm paying 2.3 million for a house, best believe i'm getting it build from scratch
Wish you lived in the US Tom!!
Very good and presented well Tom. Makes ya think on how did the architect come up that? Way too many piss/shit houses going up in speedy fashion. It's pretty sad how a person can tell if an East Indian built there home. They just have no concept of how water or electricity works. They install on our houses what they don't have in their country. Every house they touch has deficiencies, some just burn to the ground from electrical issues.
On top of your obvious mistake on the upsized wire, I have looked many times and I can not see where the hot water heater is also heating the floors. The floor heating pipes are to the right of the heater. There is only a small plastic supply line running behind the heater. This looks like a supply to fill and flush the closed system. In addition it appears to have a backflow preventer on it already.... There would be 2 more hoses on the bottom of it if it was used for the floor as well, a supply and a return. These are capped on the non combi version.
The much bigger issue is all that copper hanging there barely supported on the wall, and that pipe across the floor that is easy to step on, only supported by the connection to the heater. You missed this .
Plus that drywall taping looks like stevie wonder did it with his feet.
Houses don't shrink. they can settle, but they don't shrink.
Since you put out videos about others mistakes, I would think you would be more careful with what you say....
Notso Fresh Depending on the initial moisture content, standard structural framing can see considerable shrink/swell. This is a fact.
True, However the lengthwise component of the shrinkage is 0.1-0.2%of total length. The radial and tangential(thicknesses) of the board shrink 3-5% and 6-10%. Boards get wider and narrower but not longer and shorter. The walls will get thicker and thinner but their height and width shouldn't change much at all.
On an 8' span, the max shrinkage will be 3/16" over the length. On the 4" side, the shrink is max 0.1"-0.2" depending on species and grain orientation. These numbers are green "as cut" to "oven dry" ranges. The wood put into the house is going to be much drier and more uniform, so the dimensional changes will be smaller with humidity variance.
www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrinkage/
These numbers are not even close tho the crack sizes in the video. That house settled, it didn't shrink.
Yooo Props to you, I respect that, because Food, Water, and *SHELTER* is what you need in life to live, and if your shelter is bad, *ESPECIALLY* if you had spent as much as the house was "worth"... FFS... I mean really, of all things, your shower should not vomit *_GRAVEL_* and the tub should not break the spout... :/
I find these videos very interesting and informative. I have two questions : what causes the bathtub to not drain the water and would caulking the shower be an adequate solution for the leaking?
Caulking would not be an adequate solution. What should have been done is to have the threshold slope in towards the inside of the shower, thus water would go towards the drain. Even if you caulk now, you will have water buildup on the threshold at he glass and mold will occur.
The fact that gravel back washed into the bath tub indicates that the drain line is full of debris. Probably doesn't help that some contractor probably washed thinset or grout down the line. I also suspect that the drain is not sloped correctly. This is a brand new build. There should be absolutely nothing in the drain lines to wash back. That one problem alone is a massive issue. Hopefully that is not a basement bathroom.
6:38 A square toilet seat? What madness is this?!
MultiGG2 Canada
What??? I think square assed people should have a comfortable spot to s(h)it.
The wire will overload the breaker? Lol!
Who's paying 2.3 mill for this? I saw enough at the front door to say no.
I don't even care about this stuff, but it's making me mad how many mistakes this house has..
Hey Tom.... curious - did you have an accident where you got hit while riding a motorcycle a couple years back?
Yes I did.
Tom Munro, Inspector
Hahaha. Found ya! I was the guy that took her to ICBC for ya... entertaining to see the 2+ mill houses being built like a shanty! No pride in ones work anymore!
Hi Tom. Great video. One question. Do you ever inspect properties that are well built and have no issues? Or does pretty much every property you inspect have issues of one sort or another??
joedell71 He wouldn't make any money if he didn't find deficiencies in every property he looks at. Thats one of the problems I found with his videos, if he can't find something wrong, he'll make something up.
what homeowner walks through this then says they want it???? there is very obvious problems in the house you don't even need a inspector for
A 2.3 million dollar house with doors that don't line up and cracked drywall from "settling" More and worse problems lurk unseen just waiting......
Along with the previous comment, you don't appear to know a whole lot about electricity. You can always use a larger wire on a smaller breaker but not the other way around. That's what the breaker is for. I can use 15 amp breaker on 12/2 wire, but I cannot use a 20 amp breaker on 14/2 wire. The circuit draw should never be higher than the breaker. If it is, the breaker "breaks" the circuit and stops the minimum size of wire from melting. What you should be more concerned with is that they didn't use de-ox on an aluminum wire, and that is a fire hazard.
And I thought my 1650 house was a bit beaten by time and negligence
Ugg this bothered me so much watching a professional say that a heavier gauge wire is a fire hazard. Only a basic understanding of ohms law and electricity is needed to see that.
Uhhhhhhhhh........ What the hell are you talking about with the #3 wire being a fire hazard for a 40A breaker, because "it can overload that breaker, as it can carry as many as 100A"??? No, the wire is RATED for 100A, but ANY wire can carry a huge current, albeit briefly. Wire should be over-sized, NOT undersized. Wire doesn't "overload a breaker".... if the current exceeds the breaker's capacity, the breaker cuts the power...
I was interested until you said the larger gauge wire will overload the breaker. You might know more than me about a lot of things but that is definitely not how electricity works. You can run 0 gauge wire into a 1 amp fuse for a device rated below 1 amp and that fuse will never be overloaded by "too large of a wire"
Oversized wire is perfectly fine.
Tom I think all your credibility went out when you said that about the electrical wire theoretically you would be right that the wire could allow more current, however if the breaker fries at that point the gauge of the wire isn't going to make a difference. It's like saying you're on a boat and it's sinking and it's on fire either way your screwed. How to gather up some of your credibility is to put a note there saying you misunderstood something and that it offers no risk to upsize wire to the breaker.
I'm a giant piece of shit, so I doubt I'll be buying a home anytime soon, but if I do, you better believe I'll get it inspected.