Omega-H Real Estate Inspection Service is your trusted source for all of your home inspection needs. Owned and operated by Randy Hagemo, a trusted professional who believes that honesty and integrity are the cornerstone of any successful business and that ethical standards are not situational and are not up for interpretation or negotiation. Randy works with home buyers, investors, and sellers like yourself who are looking for information you can trust regarding the condition of the property you are looking to buy or sell. A thorough inspection by Omega-H Inspection Service significantly minimizes the potential for unexpected surprises, expense, and not to mention the frustration that can occur if significant issues are missed. Give me the honor of being your home inspector and I will guarantee you my very best effort to inspect your home with due diligence and to earn your trust and your referrals.

Randy Hagemo - Owner/ Professional Inspector
Omega-H Real Estate Inspection Service
15236 40th Ave N, Plymouth, MN 55446
612-558-0672
rhagemo@hotmail.com
www.omega-hinspections.com

Thoughts for new home buyers
Congratulations on your new home! Now that you have found the right house, maybe it’s time to make some adjustments to make it fit you and your family even better!
There are lots of improvements that may be wise spending on your electrical system. Once your furniture is placed you often find that the lighting may need some work. Perhaps it is too dark in your kitchen, bath or laundry room. Recessed lights can offer added light for dark spots, or fluorescent lights may brighten up dark corners. These are all personal preferences, but also good investments. Improvements like these are not throwing money out the window, but money that is in your home and you will get back in equity! In the meantime, you get to enjoy the light!
If your home is older, it may have fuses. These are way old school! Breakers and service upgrades are also a wise investment. Running to the hardware store in the middle of the night to replace a blown fuse is on the list of things I’m against. We offer a lifetime guarantee on our breaker panels, call for a quote!
Smoke and c/o detectors are not only a good idea for your families safety, but they are required in MN. We offer specials on upgrading these often. Smoke detectors that are more than 8 years old have lost most of all of their effectiveness, and it is recommended to replace them.
There are lots of things you may want to do to personalize your space, and we can help you with any of them! Give us a call, we answer the phone! 763-560-5600

Value!
Cheap is NEVER the most cost effective method of doing anything! When people do electrical repairs or improvements by themselves, or worse, hire an unprofessional contractor, it ALWAYS costs more to get it done right! It has to be done all over again…take it all apart and do it right. We do it right the first time, and that is good value!
What kind of paper towels do you buy? If you spend an extra $ .50, you get twice the effectiveness of the cheap kind. It lasts twice as long, for just a little more of up-front cost. This is like hiring a professional electrical contractor. The upfront cost may be slightly higher but the long term value is way better.
Sometimes people call and ask what we charge per hour. A per hour cost does not tell you what your overall cost will be for your project…people who work by the hour may work slowly! We give you an up-front price, so no matter how long it takes the price does not change! We think this is way fairer for the customer.
Think of buying a car. What I want is the least cost per mile. This would include the gas mileage, repairs, insurance rates and lifetime of the vehicle. Electricity is the same way! If you want a quality job that will last you don’t want an inept person putting in shoddy parts…it won’t last! Use a pro that doesn’t cut important corners! Call Randy’s Electric today at 763-560-5600

I remember the day, walking out of a store at 9 pm with my (way)-better half. My business phone rang, and I answered it like I always do. It was a client that we have worked for 2 or 3 times in the past. She said “Can you come over tomorrow?” I asked her what the hurry was, but yes. She said her best friend was standing in her kitchen with her, and she wanted my client to call right away. Now my curiosity was way up, and I asked what happened. My clients best friend-let’s call her Jane-believed in smoke detectors. She had battery smoke detectors installed everywhere in her house. She tested them religiously, and kept spare batteries in her kitchen. Jane thought she was protected, and was being very responsible. This day proved her wrong. Jane and her husband were sitting in their living room-picture a rambler with a side door by the kitchen with a basement stairway with a door-and the basement door was closed. They always kept the door closed. They were watching TV together, a special time of spousal bonding! Suddenly, someone smelled something! Smoke! They looked around and finally opened the door to the basement-most fires start in the basement. When they did smoke and flames shot up at them! They could then hear the smoke detectors in the basement going off. If they could have heard them earlier, they maybe could have put the fire out, or called the Fire Department, or gotten a few more of their belongings. Jane and her husband grabbed their purse, wallet, shoes and jackets and got out of the house. It was a total loss. The fire was so hot it consumed the house in mere minutes from when it was discovered. This is a true story, that happened right here in the metro area! So-Jane had my client call me and we went over and installed interconnected smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These detectors are wired together so if one senses trouble it sets them all off. In new homes this is code and one is required to be in every bedroom and one outside each bedroom, and one on each level. Just think-if you sleep on the second floor of your house, will you ever hear a smoke detector going off in the basement? In older homes we suggest at least one on each level that are connected together. It doesn’t hurt to bring it up to current code-How much could you lose? What is the value of saving a life or your irreplaceable pictures and heirlooms? It is just a good investment! We can help you decide what is best for your home-give us a call at 763-560-5600 or 952-474-1002.

Rewire-A misunderstood term! To rewire a house is mostly thought of as removing all the wires, switches, plugs, outlets, dimmers, lights and ceiling fans and replacing the wires with new wires. This is not usually the case. To do that in a home would cost from $2000- to $10,000-!! Most of the time the wires that are already there are fine. Sometimes we see the wires at light boxes are old, brittle and the insulation is falling off. This is because heat rises, and people put too big a bulb in the light fixture. Bulbs create heat and the heat eventually dries out the wires in the ceiling box and they become brittle. Replacing light fixtures or fans on these boxes becomes dangerous, and you should call a professional to see if you should replace these wires. 763.560.5600! Outlets also sometimes create heat because of poor connections to the device. When you wire an outlet you can push the wires into the back of the outlet. These push-in connections WILL eventually become loose. Not some of them, ALL OF THEM! This is why we use the screw down connection to connect the wires to the device. Properly done, these will never become loose. This is one place that you can see the difference in electricians. We don’t cut corners at Randy’s Electric! We have a lifetime guarantee on our workmanship, because outlets we install don’t come loose!
Now-rewiring a house! First we make sure everything is safe. If you have places in your electrical system where heat is being created we want to stop that right away! Then we repair broken outlets and switches so that everything is in working order. Then if an outlet is close to water, in an unfinished basement, outside or in a garage we replace them to GFCI. This type of outlet protects people from shocks. The GFCI will sense if the power leaving the outlet is different than the power coming back-a circuit-it will trip off. This device saves over 500 lives a year! Next we add outlets in each room to meet the minimum housing code. This is a city by city code, and they count outlets differently. Minneapolis counts a switch and a light as an outlet, and St. Paul doesn’t. So in a small room you only need 1 outlet, in a room 120 feet square you need two, etc. Some cities have no requirements, but usually that is when they are newer towns, and the homes are mostly newer. We also try to talk to people about the smoke detector situation in their home. Some older homes have no 120 volt smokes-they use only battery. We think this is short-sighted to say the least. In new homes the code is one smoke on each level, one in each bedroom and one outside of each bedroom. They are all interconnected. That means that if one smoke smells trouble, it sets them all off. This will wake everyone in the house and SAVE LIVES! I know of people who had a fire in their basement and battery smokes going off in the basement but couldn’t hear it over the TV. So please interconnect at least one on each level of your home, it is not worth taking a chance with!
There are many things to look at when you talk about updating your electrical system. Please call us at Randy’s Electric and we can help you decide which things are worth doing. 763.560.5600