Read enough of them and you notice that every electrical inspection report contains the same list. Different states, different decades, different builders, and still the same findings.
Almost nobody fails an inspection because of something exotic. The dramatic findings, the melted bus bar or the extension cord buried in a wall, are rare. What fills report after report is a short list of the same ordinary things, most of them created by a small decision somebody made years ago and never wrote down.
This is that list. Twenty two findings, grouped the way an inspector walks through a house: the panel first, then the grounding, then the wiring, then the outlets. For each one you get what it is, why it matters, the article of the National Electrical Code it comes from, and a rough cost so you know whether you are looking at a coffee or a weekend.
Before you compare anything to the code. The NEC is a model code. Every state, and sometimes every county, decides which edition it adopts, so the 2017, 2020, 2023 and 2026 editions are all in force somewhere right now. On top of that, an existing installation is normally judged by the code that applied when it was built. Something that reads as a violation today may have been perfectly correct in 1978. The current code comes into play when a circuit is replaced, extended or altered.
The panel and the breakers
Roughly half of every report is written standing in front of an open panel. This is also where the cheapest corrections hide.
Two wires under one breaker terminal
Somebody needed one more circuit and pushed a second wire under a screw that was listed for one. A few breaker models are made to take two conductors, most are not. The second wire slowly works loose, and a loose connection is what heats up. The fix is a pigtail or an extra breaker, not a firmer screwdriver.
Breaker too large for the wire it protects
A circuit kept tripping, so a 15 amp breaker became a 20. The wire never grew with it. The breaker now protects itself instead of the cable, and the cable is the part that overheats inside the wall where nobody can see it.
Neutrals and grounds joined in a subpanel
They belong together at exactly one place: the service equipment. Anywhere downstream the neutral bar has to float, otherwise normal return current starts traveling on metal that is only there for safety, including the enclosure and the pipework.
No usable circuit directory
The label says “lights”. Which lights, in which room, on which floor? A directory has to be specific enough that a stranger can kill the right circuit in the dark. It is the cheapest correction on this entire list and one of the most commonly written up.
Open knockouts in the panel enclosure
Every unused hole in the cabinet must be closed. An open knockout is a finger sized route to live parts, and it lets rodents into the one box in the house where they can do the most damage.
Cables entering the panel without connectors
Cables pulled through a bare hole, or three cables stuffed through one connector rated for a single cable. The sheath gets cut by the sharp edge of the knockout and the strain lands on the terminations instead of on the clamp.
No working space in front of the panel
Thirty inches wide, thirty six inches deep, six feet six inches high, and it has to stay clear. Shelving, a freezer or a stack of paint tins in that space is a finding, and it is the only one on this list you can correct yourself in ten minutes.
Panel in a place it is not allowed to be
Clothes closets and bathrooms are out. Panels behind a hinged door, above a stairwell or buried in a finished cupboard turn up regularly in older remodels, usually because the room was built around the panel afterwards.
A panel brand with a known failure history
Federal Pacific Stab Lok and Zinsco panels are not a code violation on paper, and yet they generate more recommendations to replace than anything else in this guide. The issue is breakers that do not reliably open on a fault. If you have one, that is the finding to deal with first.
Grounding and bonding
The part of the installation nobody sees, nobody measures and everybody assumes is fine.
One ground rod, no measurement
A single rod is only acceptable if it has been measured at 25 ohms or less. Without a measured value on paper, a second rod is required. Almost nobody measures, so almost nobody has the paperwork.
Grounding electrode conductor damaged or disconnected
The conductor from the panel to the rod or to the water pipe gets cut by a landscaper, left unprotected along a wall, or clamped to a pipe that was replaced with plastic ten years ago. Connection at the water pipe has to be within the first five feet of entry.
Metal water and gas piping not bonded
Metal pipework that could become energized has to be tied back to the electrical system. It is often correct on day one and broken later, the moment a section of copper is replaced with plastic and the bond is never carried across.
Three prong outlets on a two wire circuit
Someone replaced the old two slot outlets with modern ones, so everything now looks grounded and nothing is. Where no ground exists, the outlet has to be a GFCI and it has to carry the label “No Equipment Ground”. A tester with three lights finds this in seconds.
Wiring and connections
Everything here comes down to one rule: connections stay in a box, and the box stays reachable.
Junction boxes buried behind finish
Plastered over, tiled in, drywalled across or hidden behind a fixed cabinet. Every splice has to stay accessible without demolition, because a connection you cannot reach is a connection nobody will ever check again.
Splices made outside a box
Wire nuts and tape hanging in the crawl space or lying on attic insulation. A box is what contains the heat and the arc when a connection eventually fails, and it is the difference between a dead circuit and a fire.
Too many conductors in the box
Boxes have a calculated capacity, and each conductor, clamp and device counts toward it. An overfilled box means damaged insulation while you push the device back in, which is exactly where the fault will start later.
Cable bored too close to the edge of the framing
Less than one and a quarter inches from the face of a stud or joist and the cable needs a steel nail plate. Without it, the next person hanging a shelf finds the wire for you.
Cable unsupported or unprotected in basements and attics
NM cable has to be fastened within twelve inches of a box and roughly every four and a half feet after that, and it needs protection where it runs across the face of framing in an unfinished basement. Draped over pipes and stapled to nothing is the everyday version of this finding.
Receptacles and wet areas
This is where the code has moved fastest, so this is where older houses collect the most findings.
GFCI protection missing where water is near
Kitchens, bathrooms, garages, basements, laundry areas, outdoors, and within six feet of any sink. This is the single most common finding in American housing, and also the one that most directly prevents a fatal shock. A GFCI works even on a circuit with no ground.
AFCI protection missing or removed
Arc fault breakers cover the living areas and their scope has grown with every edition. The common finding is not that they were never fitted, it is that one nuisance trip too many led somebody to swap the breaker for an ordinary one.
Outdoor outlets with the wrong cover
A simple flip lid only protects the outlet when nothing is plugged in, which is never the case with the outlet you actually use. Damp and wet locations need a cover that stays closed with a cord in place, on a box rated for the location.
Missing tamper resistant outlets and cover plates
Replacement outlets in a dwelling have to be tamper resistant, and every box needs a plate. Open boxes behind furniture and in closets are written up constantly, and they take about a minute each to fix.
What to do with your own report
Read your report twice. The first time, ignore everything except the findings that involve water, heat or a panel brand from the list above. Those are the ones that protect people. The second time, sort what is left by what it costs, because a surprising share of the remaining list is labeling, cover plates and clearing a space, all of which you can do yourself in an afternoon.
Then get one licensed electrician to quote the whole list at once rather than item by item. Most of these corrections happen inside the same panel, and paying a call out fee four times for four small findings is how a two hundred dollar afternoon turns into a thousand.
On the cost ranges in this guide. They are typical United States ranges including labor, based on national cost data for 2026, and they exclude permits and any drywall repair. Rates vary widely by region and by how easy the panel is to reach. Treat them as an order of magnitude, not a quote.
Free download
The same list as a printable walkthrough
One page, in the order an inspector uses it, with a box to tick beside every finding. Take it round your own house before anyone else does.
Download the checklist
Who writes this
FIXMIRO is written by Rahmouni, an industrial engineer who spent fifteen years inspecting electrical installations and seven inspecting gas. What you read here is what he used to explain to homeowners while standing at their panel, written out properly.
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