The electrical system of a home is often a greatly underrated, underappreciated, and under cared for part of any home. As long as it’s working, why worry? However, your electrical system can very easily cause big problems if it hasn’t been cared for. Buying a home is a big investment, and you shouldn’t leave anything to chance. Depending on what your home inspection says when you get it back, it’s never a bad idea to ask for a licensed electrician to come out and do an electrical system inspection prior to committing to the purchase so that you know exactly what you’re getting. Consider the following reasons you definitely want to ask for an electrical system inspection before committing to a home purchase in Longview.

It’s important to have a circuit breaker panel inspected regularly, including when you’re looking to buy a home. The circuit breaker panel is a critical safety feature for any home electrical system. Your electrician will check to make sure it’s in working order, that there are no recalls on it, and that there is plenty of power in order to power all the appliances and more. Making sure this critical element of the home is working properly is the most important part of an electrical system inspection.

When you have an electrical inspection completed on a prospective home to buy, you’ll get a good sense of what the current state of the electrical system looks like. This will give you a good idea if you will have to invest in the electrical system in the future and when that may need to happen.

Your electrician can help you figure out if you’re making a good investment from that side of the home buying experience. Electrical problems can quickly add up to large sums of money if you end up having to replace much of the wiring, outlets, and lighting fixtures in order to improve the house and reduce any chance of an electrical fire. Understanding what the electrical risks are will help you know if the house will be worth the money or not.

Often times, when you buy an older home, you may be considering adding a dishwasher, upgrading the washer and dryer, or opting to either add or upgrade the air conditioning system. These are all great ideas to add value to your home, however, an upgrade can quickly turn into a much larger project when you need to install a new electric panel or upgrade the wiring because it can’t currently support your home improvement projects.

New rules will soon be in place to govern fossil fuel usage and cut carbon pollution coming from America's power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the plan last year, and it is expected to be finalized this summer. Most of the rules have to do with the generation of electricity, so it might not be obvious that the plan would have implications for the average consumer. As it turns out, the EPA plan could make a big difference in homeowners' utility bills – hopefully a positive one.

Reduction in Energy Bills

While many people fear that new clean energy rules will cause the retail price of electricity to skyrocket, experts are predicting otherwise. According to an analysis by the National Resources Defense Council, low and fixed-income households should actually see their utility bills fall by an average of 8 percent. In total, the group suggests that consumers could save as much as $37.4 billion on their electricity bills by 2020.

Why such a rosy picture? As the nation switches to more sustainable energy sources like wind, the costs of production will fall. Furthermore, since the fuel price for wind and solar is zero, consumers will be shielded from volatile prices of coal and natural gas, which can make electricity bills vary widely. What's more, the Clean Power Plan will promote investment in household energy efficiency to encourage families to reduce their own consumption.

A Boost to the Economy

Some think tanks are also predicting a boost to the economy as we transition to a cleaner energy grid, with jobs available to build and maintain the emerging infrastructure. People will be needed to work on windmills and solar installations, for example.

"The most important takeaway from our analysis is that, after accounting for the various ways in which the Clean Power Plan puts upward and downward pressure on employment, we find a net increase in jobs,” Industrial Economics Principal Jason Price said to UtilityDrive.com, forecasting a net gain of 74,000 jobs in 2020 and as many as 273,000 jobs by 2040.

Health and Climate Concerns

There should also be ancillary benefits to the EPA plan. Cutting down on fossil fuel emissions means less pollution in the air near ground level, too, so people should suffer from fewer related health problems. NRDC predicts that the change will prevent up to 6,600 premature deaths, 150,000 asthma attacks in children and 3,300 heart attacks.

In addition, the less carbon the nation burns, the less we accelerate climate change, which is poised to cause unpredictable but inevitably expensive disruptions in familiar weather patterns.

All in all, nobody knows for sure what will happen with the new EPA rules, since they haven't been finalized yet. However, if the experts' predictions are anywhere close to reality, Americans will be able to celebrate cheaper and more environmentally-friendly energy in the not-too-distant future.