Electrical Guides From the Field
Marc Reeves · June 29, 2026
Last fall, I climbed onto a client’s roof in Portland and immediately understood his problem. Three massive Douglas firs cast a shadow across the left half of his array from about 10 a.m. onward. He’d had a string inverter system installed two years prior. His energy bills were barely budging. The installer had done nothing … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 28, 2026
Surge damage prevention is one of those topics I bring up on almost every home inspection I do — and almost every homeowner looks at me like I’m overselling them something. Then I show them the fried circuit board inside their HVAC control unit, or the dead smart TV that stopped working two weeks after … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 27, 2026
Last spring I walked through a house where a single lightning strike had taken out the refrigerator, both garage door openers, the smart thermostat, and a brand-new 65-inch TV — all in one shot. The homeowner had point-of-use surge strips on the TV and the computer. None of it mattered. That’s the reality of transient … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 26, 2026
Last spring, I inspected a house in suburban Ohio where the homeowner had spent nearly $4,000 replacing a refrigerator, a smart TV, and a whole-home HVAC control board — all fried in a single lightning strike. When I opened the panel, there was no whole-home surge protection anywhere. There was, however, a $12 power strip … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 25, 2026
Last spring, I inspected a home where a single lightning strike had taken out the refrigerator, two smart TVs, a gaming console, and the homeowner’s home office computer. Total loss: roughly $6,800 in electronics. Every room had power strips. Some even had strips labeled “surge protector” right on the box. None of it mattered. That’s … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 24, 2026
The first time I opened an electrical panel on my own — not as an apprentice standing beside my mentor, but solo, on a job, with a homeowner watching — my hands were steadier than I expected. That steadiness didn’t come from bravado. It came from understanding exactly what I was looking at. That’s the … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 23, 2026
Every spring, I get at least a dozen calls from homeowners who’ve made the same mistake: they bought a bag of landscape lights, shoved the stakes into the ground, and ended up with half the lights flickering or completely dead by August. The problem is almost never the lights themselves. It’s the wiring. If you’re … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 22, 2026
A few years back, I got a call from a homeowner in a panic. His outdoor GFCI outlet had tripped and wouldn’t reset. When I showed up, I found a standard flip-lid cover — the kind that only protects an empty outlet — with a phone charger cord snaking out from underneath it. Water had … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 21, 2026
I want to tell you about the day I nearly grabbed a live wire because my non-contact voltage tester said it was dead. I was pulling out an old double-pole breaker in a residential panel — a job I’d done hundreds of times. My tester showed no voltage. I reached in. Something felt wrong, so … Read more
Marc Reeves · June 20, 2026
Here’s something I hear at least twice a month: “Marc, I just want to know if this outlet is live before I touch it.” That’s it. That’s the whole ask. I didn’t own a proper non-contact voltage tester for way too long, and in that gap I made some genuinely dumb decisions around live wires … Read more