"Professionals"

kaiser715

kaiser715

Doing hard time
Joined
Jun 1, 2006
Location
7, Pocket, NC
Added a new outlet in the kitchen today. Our house was built in 2002, and was wired by a fairly competent electrician.

Got up under the house, working on getting everything hooked up. Saw one piece of insulation had dropped down. Got closer, found a 14ga romex, about 15' long, coiled up, between the insulation and subfloor. One end coming down from inside an exterior wall, the other end just clipped off.

Yep, it was hot.

How'd that make it past the inspector?
 
If ordinary folks knew how houses were built, they wouldn't set foot inside them.
 
inspectors are a joke. i get ask every other customers house im at "why didnt the inspector find that"
 
I'm waiting for my house to erupt into flames any day now. My grandfather is an electrician, and a damn good one. I worked with him for years so bad electrical work drives me nuts.

My house is a clusterfuck, the circuits are all goofy and who knows how things are run. You go in the breaker panel and it has two GFCI circuits labeled, one upstairs and one down stairs. Only problem is that only one of them is a GFCI circuit, and it is a 15amp breaker and includes my kitchen, my downstairs bathroom, my two upstairs bathrooms, my external outlets, HALF my garage, and two of the outlets in my dining room.

Who knows what the hell the other breaker does, haven't figured it out yet. Sometimes I can't even find the circuit so I short out the hot wire to trip the correct breaker when doing electrical work. :lol:
 
I know the building code and the inspectors in our county. While they miss things from time to time, things change often once the inspector passes something. also there are large gaps in inspections. you have a roughed in electrical and a finial, but nothing in between. Sometimes it can be a month or longer between those inspections and things change.
 
My take, Inspectors are flunked Engineers / Licensed. My shop was a major electrical cluster. The main wire coming in broke down and was arcking (sp?) on the panel box. My brother is licensed and hated he fell for helping out little brother for he just shook his head when he saw the wiring. He spent 2 days trying more to hide the exposed wires going down the wall after he pulled a permit and swapped boxes. He upgraded me to 220 while he was at it but spent more time on other issues.
The Inspector (very well known in Durham - but no names mentioned) comes out the very first day of inspection shaking his head but says nothing. Not having lights, me and my brother-in-law are working outside on something. The inspector sets and watches for a little while as we wrenched before he asks about my T-shirt with guitars on it. I've played since I was 13 so I know a little about them. I told him how I loved guitar and my brother-in-law backed me up on how good I played. I asked him again about how the inspection went and he said it was fine and called and had the power turned on instantly.
The very next day he drops by my shop and pulls out his guitar and played for about an hour (this is on taxpayer's time). He said he inspects the school close to me and usually has extra time. I DO NOT need an inspector hanging around. It was the first time I had to suck on purpose playing guitar. I picked a couple cult child stabbing head bang songs and played to chase him off. His face went pale. He said he thought he was going to learn something. :) He didn't learn, but taught me that he wasn't supposed to have the guitar he stashes in styrofoam behind his seat in a City owned vehicle and that he passed me to better himself....
 
inspectors are a joke. i get ask every other customers house im at "why didnt the inspector find that"
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I had a frustrating experience with one as well. I had a new tankless water heater installed and the inspector failed the mechanical permit because the gas line wasn't grounded. Never mind that it wasn't grounded for the first 30 years that the house was in existence (previous water heater was gas too). If it's not up to code I don't mind bringing it up to code...I just asked him to tell me the specs to follow and I would ground it. What size wire, can I drive a grounding spike into the ground right next to it, etc. He couldn't answer any of those questions and seemed angry that I was asking, but I was just trying to find out what standards I was going to be judged by when they came out for the next inspection.

He gave me his supervisor's contact info, so I called him. He told me I could not drive in a spike and that I would have to bond it to the electrical box. The grounding process has now gone from a 2' section of wire to 70' of wire so that I could run it half way around my house from the gas meter to the electrical box.

I don't remember what gauge wire he said to use, but I did notice when I did the installation that the wire I ran around the house was notably larger than the wire used to ground the electrical box itself. That seemed to negate any benefits of using such a thick gauge wire from the gas line to the electrical box.

It just seemed like they were judging the work of myself and the plumber on standards they didn't fully understand themselves.
 
kaiser715 said:
Got up under the house, working on getting everything hooked up. Saw one piece of insulation had dropped down. Got closer, found a 14ga romex, about 15' long, coiled up, between the insulation and subfloor. One end coming down from inside an exterior wall, the other end just clipped off.
Yep, it was hot.
How'd that make it past the inspector?
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Lazy ass inspector probably never went under the house.
 
drkelly said:
Lazy ass inspector probably never went under the house.
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+1
Shawn said:
If ordinary folks knew how houses were built, they wouldn't set foot inside them.
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+1

A friend called me yesterday about some electrical problms he was having. He just built a new home and moved into his house back in November. He asked me about wiring it when it was being built and I gave him a quote. Material at cost, and $250 labor and he helps me, so he will know how his house is wired if he ever has a problem. e tells me he found someone to do it for half my price.
Fast forward to yesterday. Electrical problems, he has a 3 week old and I like his wife....I agreed to com check it out. 27 outlets on 1 circuit. A 30A breaker feeding the heat pump. All breakers 20A all wire 14awg. Both hall ways have 3-way switches...well they have single poles at each end....they should have 3 ways.

And this shit was passed.

I was shocked to crawl under the hosue and find colored romex and spray painted studs.
 
OMG! It must happen alot. Many years ago I and my dad, where under the 67 vintage house insulating the galvanized ductwork way in the back, laying on the ground w less than 3' to the joists dad, (an electrical engineer) noticed a wire hanging down from the insulation between the joists. A coil of wire fell when he pulled on the insulation, and fell on him and he grabbed it...... I swear his body jumped a foot off the damp clay, laying on his side, from the shock. He then lay there moaning and cursing loudly!!. I asked if he was ok from 10' away and he said in gasps, "Don't ....touch ....that wire" !!
 
I was in a clients office once...had to stick my head up in the suspended ceiling to get a cable over a partition...used their ladder (aluminum). Pushed out the 2x4 panel, and then laid my hand on the grid -- HOT.

At some point, they'd removed a 2'x4' lay-in florescent fixture, and just left the pigtail flopping around, hot lead was laying on the ceiling grid.
 
Not electrical related, but I finally got around to looking at why my fence gate sagged.

One post was attached to the side of the house with two eye hooks and some bailing wire. None of the fence posts had any concrete in them either. While I was cleaning up around the fence area so I could fix it I leaned against the fence and the entire section popped out. :lol: I tore the whole section down, cemented in the posts, and am building new gates.
 
Shitty contractors is why I have a job... :D


But, it also takes a decent contractor one to manage the crappy ones. If the GC is crappy, the subs will be too. There are tricks to the trade with inspectors and most GCs know them.

And, its scary, residential construction QC is far less than ideal as compared to commercial and way below the QC requirements for industrial/pharmaceutical.


My suggestion, when hiring a GC or other contractor for a significant project, hire a 3rd party manager to control quality and adherence to code. GCs will only manage quality and adherence to code enough to get the job complete and get his $$$. Unless the homeowner knows what to look for and what they are doing, he is at the mercy of the GC...
 
Ron said:
Or "project engineer" :flipoff2::flipoff2:
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You can't trust those guys. They sell their souls to manufacturer reps in exchange for bowl game tickets and golf weekends at the beach.
 
Shawn said:
You can't trust those guys. They sell their souls to manufacturer reps in exchange for bowl game tickets and golf weekends at the beach.
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'tis true....but I hear Archy's are guilty of the same, no?
 
Heh. We're lucky to get some sweet potato biscuits from Cafe Carolina. No fancy perks from our reps.
 
If you only knew how much time was wasted trying to write a bulletproof spec that would keep some low-bidding POS contractor from coming in and nabbing a job with a substandard product that "meets the spec".

And then submitting change order after change order for things that "weren't in the drawings" until his cost is at or above the bids of the people that tried to give an honest (er... more honest?) price.

That's the one advantage that engineers have... and the one big opportunity for graft. :)flipoff2: Ron) They can write a performance spec that's essentially single-source because competitors can't match the spec without spending a whole lot of money. If our specs are too narrowly written, the manufacturer complains to the owner that we're needlessly costing everybody money, and we've got to eliminate whatever clause is keeping their crappy product from being bid on the job.
 
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