When we walked the house before making an offering the electrical panel in particular stood out. It was an old Federal Pacific electrical panel. The company is no longer in business because its panels were found to be unreliable and dangerous. Finding the panel was of some concern. I knew for safety this would be a priority upgrade to the house out of safety concerns. We hired a home inspector who also verified my concerns. He pulled the cover off to reveal the inside of the panel. There was a large amount of dust buildup on the breakers. One of the breakers had piggyback wiring attached. The next concern was the size of the service feed. It was a 4 AWG. This would be a huge issue. According to the National Electrical Code (NEC), the 4 AWG copper wire amp rating for THHN/THWN-2 at 75 °C is 85 Amps. The entire house had been converted at some point in its history to electric. The service feed simply couldn't handle all of the electrical appliances along with miscellaneous technology devices of a new house.
Electrical Nightmare
We knew there would be a lot of work involved to upgrade our electrical system. This became very apparent one morning when a heavy storm came through and our electrical system went haywire. We were blowing light bulbs when turning on lights, others would glow very dimly, the A/C would not turn on, and the microwave light would come on but would not heat. These were only some of the issues. This continued throughout the day. I would test random 110v outlets and sometimes get 56v and go back later and get over 200v on the same outlet. I went to the breaker box and tested each leg of the incoming service and got 110v on each leg as it should be. I also discovered during this the breaker box was not grounded. Now the electrical had become the foremost priority for repair.
Electrical Issue Discovery
The following weekend I was surveying the service feed from the main line at the back of the property. The line came into the property 60' and landed on the meter on a pole. From there the line went to another pole 80' closer to the house. Next, it hung another 50' across the roof to the improperly installed mast where it entered the house to the breaker box. When the mast was installed it was installed below the eve of the house causing the electric feed to cut into the roof before it entered the mast. Our new roof was getting chewed up by the service feed. I also discovered the neutral wire was cut at the top of the second pole in the yard. That meant we had no return current from the house to the electric grid. This was also the main cause of the odd voltage issues from the previous week.
Local Co-Op
We called the local Co-Op and they rushed a repair crew out within a couple hours. Even though the break was on our side of the meter which meant it was our responsibility, they went up in the bucket and repaired it for us. This nearly resolved the electrical issues we were having. It did not resolve the problem of not having enough amperage to power the house though. When the A/C would come on the entire house would still take a power surge before it stabilized back to normal. Next would be upgrading the electrical panel and service feed.