What NOT to do.....

[ddawg16]

Guys, the following link is a classic example of what NOT to do.....well worth reading through....a lot of the issues noted have been raised here in previous threads.

Bad Construction

I would love to see pics of this place. It's also a good example of why to pull permits.....and when you buy a house, to verify permits were pulled (and completed) on any 'improvements'.

 

[LoneGunman]

It seems like they brought the problems on themselves for the most part, it does not look like a lot of the issues were existing. They pulled the permits and never called for inspections and rocked without a rough inspection. I am willing to bet they had the attitude that It's my house and I'll do whatever I please. I agree with them in theory but in the real world they now see what happens, they will be removed from the house by force if need be and you know the inspector is going to look for every little thing before he allows them back in.

Odds are this all could have been avoided if they spoke to the inspector and found out what he wanted. I have only ran into one azzhole of an inspector and I have had dealings with a lot of them. Like I said, I bet the inspector told them to correct something, probably minor and easily corrected and they started the whole "its grandfathered" thing. It may have very well been grandfathered but now you piss him off and he looks at everything.

It may not be right or fair and I do believe they have too much authority but unless you have the money and the time it does not pay to argue with the inspector.

 

[Torque1st]

I have seen many of those situations in houses that PASSED inspections...

 

[mikeyr]

The permit process is sometimes such a pain that it is easy to overlook it and choose to go without. I am having a issue with a Electrician right now on my new garage and I am stuck because no permit was pulled. I told him to pull a permit and I saw the permit on the window so I trusted him and assumed all was good. He rewired the entire house with no permit, the permit was just for upgrading the main panel from 40amp to 200amp. Its all done and I was happy with the work until he disconnected the garage smoke detector because the inspector did not want exposed romex, I was planning on drywalling so I had told him the romex would be ok but the inspector came before I drywalled, so the electrician disconnected it and got the permit signed off.

Now I go to reconnect the smoke detector and I can't, it only has 80v at it instead of 120v, I call my electrician and he tells me I have to phase it with the garage subpanel because, what ??? I have a circuit breaker in the main panel at the house for the detectors but he wants me to power it in the garage as well and what is this 80v stuff ?

We had words and he wont come back and now I find out that he never permitted this stuff, just the main panel. My fault, I trusted him to do what I requested, totally my fault, I know but I am stuck now. I can't go after him without getting in trouble with the city for doing extensive work with no permit, even though I requested a permit so that I would not have this issue... CHECK your contractors !!!

At least I think the work is fine and safe unlike the original work in this thread.

 

[no2tracks]

80v ?!?!? Somethings really wrong there...

 

[Torque1st]

80V sounds like induced voltage and a high impedance meter reading a disconnected wire.

 

[Junkman]

The permit process is sometimes such a pain that it is easy to overlook it and choose to go without. I am having a issue with a Electrician right now on my new garage and I am stuck because no permit was pulled. I told him to pull a permit and I saw the permit on the window so I trusted him and assumed all was good. He rewired the entire house with no permit, the permit was just for upgrading the main panel from 40amp to 200amp. Its all done and I was happy with the work until he disconnected the garage smoke detector because the inspector did not want exposed romex, I was planning on drywalling so I had told him the romex would be ok but the inspector came before I drywalled, so the electrician disconnected it and got the permit signed off.

Now I go to reconnect the smoke detector and I can't, it only has 80v at it instead of 120v, I call my electrician and he tells me I have to phase it with the garage subpanel because, what ??? I have a circuit breaker in the main panel at the house for the detectors but he wants me to power it in the garage as well and what is this 80v stuff ?

We had words and he wont come back and now I find out that he never permitted this stuff, just the main panel. My fault, I trusted him to do what I requested, totally my fault, I know but I am stuck now. I can't go after him without getting in trouble with the city for doing extensive work with no permit, even though I requested a permit so that I would not have this issue... CHECK your contractors !!!

At least I think the work is fine and safe unlike the original work in this thread.

If you go to the town, and explain that he was responsible for getting the permit, they will take your word for it. If he reports you first, then you might be the one on the hook. Either way, get to the town and have a discussion with them. If there is no permit, then it can come back to haunt you at some later date. If there is an electrical fire, and the insurance company finds that there is no permit, then they might balk on the claim. If you sell in a few years, the buyer might want to see if everything was permitted. If there is a re-evaluation, and the assessors see the additional work, then they might report it. How is that for a few good reasons to fix the problem now, not later. Since he pulled a permit for some of the work, they will be looking for why he did additional work without a permit. He has more to loose if you report it now, and you have more to loose if you don't report it now. The problem will not go away....

 

[LoneGunman]

Junk hit the nail on the head. If he's a licensed electrician, which it sounds like he is as he pulled a permit for the service, it's his a55 not yours. The licensing board can do all kinds of things that will hurt his ability to make a living if he does not do the right thing. I would report this to the city construction official immediately.

If you go to the town, and explain that he was responsible for getting the permit, they will take your word for it. If he reports you first, then you might be the one on the hook. Either way, get to the town and have a discussion with them. If there is no permit, then it can come back to haunt you at some later date. If there is an electrical fire, and the insurance company finds that there is no permit, then they might balk on the claim. If you sell in a few years, the buyer might want to see if everything was permitted. If there is a re-evaluation, and the assessors see the additional work, then they might report it. How is that for a few good reasons to fix the problem now, not later. Since he pulled a permit for some of the work, they will be looking for why he did additional work without a permit. He has more to loose if you report it now, and you have more to loose if you don't report it now. The problem will not go away....

 

[LoneGunman]

80V sounds like induced voltage and a high impedance meter reading a disconnected wire.

Yup, no doubt it was checked with a DMM, which in my opinion is used way too much now. A wiggy (solenoid operated) tester should be used 99.9% of the time.

 

[mikeyr]

Well he came back today and fixed it, I was shocked when he drove up after the "words" we had yesterday, I really thought he would never show up. I guess like you all say it really is his derriere that could get in trouble.

Of course he did not "fix" the problem but he did connect the smoke detector so it works and I think I AM GOING TO GO TO THE CITY anyway because something else is very wrong. I really hope I don't get into trouble with the city, the part going for me is that he pulled 2 permits and I really thought he had gotten one for this work, one permit for the panel upgrade and one permit for a sub-panel in the garage which was separate because they were done a few weeks apart (should/could have been one permit but I did not plan it well).

Anyway, here is what he says is the problem, it makes NO SENSE and I am sure he is trying to BS me. There is only 80v in the line because of the distance from the main house, he says because I am going 80ft. from the first smoke detector that the 14-3 (maybe 12-3) can't hold the 120v and it dropped to 80v, he says if I had true 120v in the line to begin with that would not be a problem. We do have a low voltage problem that Edison is looking into, not his fault its at the pole where we only have 116v and Edison is going to look at that, he claims that if we had the full 120v everything would be fine so what he did to fix was run a white neutral from the sub-panel to the smoke detector and wire-nutted that into the white wire from the house. His words "I am phasing the neutral wire because there is a problem at the pole with the neutral, its what we electricians call a noodle" I actually laughed at the noodle comment and told him he was making it up. All he did was add a neutral from the sub and voila everything worked with 116v, temporarily I am happy, this gets me past one more permit and my garage is officially finished as I can call for the final inspection. But I AM STILL GOING TO THE CITY and talking to them, yes he is a licensed electrician and he wired the entire house with no permit while I still have the original quote from him with permit costs included (that is how I found out he did not get a permit he did not charge me for it, guess I trusted him too much). At one point I had 4 permits with 2 different contractors going, so things were confusing.

I did check the wiring today, from the main panel in the house is a 15amp breaker going to the first smoke detector and that has 116v, there are 2 circuits connected to that, one goes not sure where right now and the second goes out to the detached garage via a underground conduit, its at the garage when those wires come out that its only 80v, I still need to figure out what the second circuit is at the first detector and trace those wires, something is wrong somewhere and I am not a electrician, anything above 12v DC is greek to me.

Anyway, I did not mean to hijack the thread, I was just agreeing with the original poster about getting permits for EVERYTHING. I hope you are right Junkman about the city letting me off the hook on this, I will find out this week when I talk to them.

 

[Torque1st]

Unless something is heavily loading the line, the voltage drop from the small current the smoke detectors are placing on the wire would be very small.

If you have an open neutral from the pole the lights would flicker as loads changed. An open neutral can be very dangerous.

Power the garage smoke detector from the sub panel.

If all a person has is a DMM you can get a better AC voltage reading by hooking a temporary load to the line and then measuring the voltage. I have used a 40W bulb in an old rubber covered socket with wire leads and alligator clips.

 

[mikeyr]

In the house the lights do flicker as devices come on/off, the Edison guy (not my electrician) said it was a issue with the power from the pole and it would get fixed asap (this was a week ago but its the holidays so I am ok with the time). My electrician says nothing is wrong with his wiring of course.

The 2 smoke detectors talk to each other so they are supposed to be on the same circuit that is why we ran the line to the garage, this way when the garage one goes off the kitchen one goes off and vice-versa.

City building inspector came out today to sign off on another permit we had and I told him what happened, he quickly looked at the wiring and said, its ok with him and he knows the area is overloaded at the poles, many houses in the area have low power there is a upgrade planned in a few weeks (big apartment buildings were built a year ago a few blocks away), he also said my electrician has been doing this stuff for years and he would trust him. He then said, report it to the city and get a full inspection anyway, I wont get in trouble, so Friday off I go (maybe tomorrow).

Going to read up on open neutrals now and see how to detect it myself and talk intelligently about it.

 

[LoneGunman]

If he ran a neutral to the smoke and it works there is an open neutral somewhere and it has nothing to do with voltage drop. I'd also be willing to bet it's not an open neutral on the pole, I'd GUESS it's an open neutral he created by miswiring something elsewhere, hence the easy fix of running a neutral.

Remember, many inspector were electrical contractors and they do have buds that are licensed electricians, him telling you not to worry about it does not seem right to me, if we lost a neutral somewhere we'd never run just a neutral to it, we'd run a new feed, if the wiring is in romex, we'd only pull a new neutral if it was in conduit.

 

[walrus]

In the house the lights do flicker as devices come on/off, the Edison guy (not my electrician) said it was a issue with the power from the pole and it would get fixed asap (this was a week ago but its the holidays so I am ok with the time). My electrician says nothing is wrong with his wiring of course.

The 2 smoke detectors talk to each other so they are supposed to be on the same circuit that is why we ran the line to the garage, this way when the garage one goes off the kitchen one goes off and vice-versa.

City building inspector came out today to sign off on another permit we had and I told him what happened, he quickly looked at the wiring and said, its ok with him and he knows the area is overloaded at the poles, many houses in the area have low power there is a upgrade planned in a few weeks (big apartment buildings were built a year ago a few blocks away), he also said my electrician has been doing this stuff for years and he would trust him. He then said, report it to the city and get a full inspection anyway, I wont get in trouble, so Friday off I go (maybe tomorrow).

Going to read up on open neutrals now and see how to detect it myself and talk intelligently about it.

If the smokes are interconnected? there should be 3 wires between them. Is there?

 

[mikeyr]

yes there are 3 wires, black white and red, the red according to the directions is the "feeder" line to trigger the other detector. I get 80v between the black and white until he connected the second white to the subpanel. There is actually 4 wires as there is a bare ground also but that just goes to the fixture.

I am off tomorrow and will be going in the attic and looking around to see if I can figure it out, due to budget cuts the city inspection is closed until Monday the 5th so I cant go talk to the city until next week but the building inspector that was here today said he would record my concern so that when i go in there is a record and I won't be in trouble, at worst I will just have to pay for the permit and of course get it corrected which is fine with me. I will crawl around and try to figure it out but electrical is NOT my strong point, I understand 12vdc and gearboxes and pistons and carbs but not 120vAC.