The Lake Mary Homeowner’s Electrical Safety Checklist

Most home electrical checklists are generic and written for a national audience. This one is not. It is built around what we actually find in Lake Mary homes: the panel brands that turn up in 1980s and 1990s Seminole County construction, the lanai and pool-deck receptacles that fail Florida’s GFCI rules, the surge protection that stopped working two storm seasons ago without telling anybody, and the questions Florida insurers have started asking at renewal.

What is inside

Section 1 — The panel (7 checks)

• Identifying the four panel brands that should be replaced regardless of symptoms, with what the labels look like
• The heat, smell and sound checks — and which one means stop and call tonight
• Reading your service size, and whether it still fits how you live
• Spotting double-tapped breakers and tandem “cheaters”
• Corrosion on Florida exterior-mounted panels
• Whether your surge protection is alive or has quietly spent itself
• Whether the directory matches reality

Section 2 — Room by room (9 checks)

• Where GFCI protection is required in a Florida home, and the monthly test that takes ten seconds
• AFCI protection: where the code now wants it and what it is actually for
• The warm-outlet and loose-receptacle test
• Bathroom, kitchen, garage, lanai, pool deck and exterior receptacles
• What flickering on one circuit versus the whole house tells you

Section 3 — Outside and the paperwork (5 checks)

• Service mast, weatherhead and meter can — what is Duke Energy’s responsibility and what is yours
• Pool and spa bonding, which Florida inspects hard and which fails often
• Landscape and low-voltage wiring in wet Florida soil
• How to check your property’s permit history before you sell — and before a buyer’s inspector does it for you
• Verifying any contractor’s Florida license in about sixty seconds

Why we give this away

Because most of what is on it, you can check yourself, and a fair number of Lake Mary homes will come back clean. We would rather be the company that told you that than the one that sold you a panel you did not need.

For the items that do need a licensed contractor, you will at least know what you are talking about when you call — ours or anyone else’s. That is a better position for you to be in, and frankly it makes our job easier too.