after fighting with changing switches & receptacles in my circa 1950 home with extremely short wire tails and often having to add to them and then fight with the small boxes & additional marrettes, I wouldn't complain. 
Why do electricians leave
- Thread starter Junkman
- Start date
35Ford
Well-known member
Yikes! I hope you're not paying .65/ ft. Current price here for 14/2 is $355.75 / 1,000 bought in 250' coils. 1,000 ft reels are usually a few dollars more. 12/2, $.51
UserNameAttempt3
Well-known member
You should see what is low voltage guys do, would throw you into a tizzy.
"Is it 250 or 280ft... Pull all of it"
Plus your probably paying for a spool and not by the foot.
"Is it 250 or 280ft... Pull all of it"
Plus your probably paying for a spool and not by the foot.
JohnX14
Well-known member
Can OP show the quote and scope of work?
William Payne
Well-known member
Yeah I figured as much. When I had my house wiring redone I had a really fussy electrician who even proceeded to ring up another electrician who had done prior work just to let them know what he thought of their work. Haha man that was embarrassing at the time. Some of his rules that he talked about the honestly might have just made up.
theoldwizard1
Well-known member
IMHO, 1' is reasonable. 2' is a waste !
I am also the guy who believes that using 20A breakers and 12 AWG for the entire house is a waste. Use 20a breakers and 12 AWG where required by code or logical (workshops/garage). I am not a NEC expert, but there are many "best practices" (not required by NEC) for kitchen wiring that are simply a waste.
theoldwizard1
Well-known member
Been there, done that.after fighting with changing switches & receptacles in my circa 1950 home with extremely short wire tails and often having to add to them and then fight with the small boxes & additional marrettes, I wouldn't complain.
No big heartache.
wyliesdiesels
Well-known member
he was referring to the sheetrock cut-offs
dcg9381
Well-known member
Last house I built, a kitchen cabinet was built for the oven. Unfortunately, the pig-tail on the oven had to be in a particular place and I didn't specify the exact position of the drop in the cabinet.. It necessitated moving the drop over about 1'.
Due to the electrician leaving a foot of wire on both ends, we were able to accommodate the change without me having to pay to run a new drop of 6ga wire.
I'm much more interested in what the panel looks like AFTER it's wired than leaving 1-2' of wire hanging out of the box.
Ah, I thought he was still on the Sparky issue.
There is value to that practice.....
wyliesdiesels
Well-known member
Ah, I thought he was still on the Sparky issue.
There is value to that practice.....
lol i saw that in one of my groups lol
mike93lx
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Having all that "dead" space in my kitchen would drive me nuts. But I appreciate the effort for humor!Ah, I thought he was still on the Sparky issue.
There is value to that practice.....
sparky 1971
Well-known member
I don't leave loops because I don't see the point but that's nothing more than my opinion which, in the old days when combined with a quarter, would get you a phone call. When pulling wire I make an attempt at leave about 6" on one cable and a foot on the other (out of the box for both) for pigtails. That being said, there are some pulls that are a PITA, whether it's around a corner, a long distance, or overhead, resulting in too much getting pulled; that gets left and scrapped because the cost to pull it back is more than the cost of the wire. And..I'm lazy.
fixed your quote for you
Now that's funny, I don't care who y'are
JohnX14
Well-known member
I thought I replied several days ago, yes my post was meant as sarcasm. I should have added an emoji or something.....sorry.
JohnX14
Well-known member
This is the post I thought I had replied to explaining the intended sarcasm and apologizing for the typo.
I figured it out after your next post. Others, not so much...
eejack
Well-known member
As much as I hate the expression...
Better to be looking at it than looking for it.
Better to be looking at it than looking for it.
fitter30
Well-known member
Glad i was pipefitter that ran hvac sevice. Three things i looked forward to everyday breaks , lunch and going home. Two people were the only ones with problems on the job, my boss and the customer. Starting time was a given and going home was my choice. Last job i had lasted 40 years. And if your mind forgets your feet will remember.Electricians have an inherent need to be wasteful.
They always leave a swallow or two of beer in the bottle or a bite of an Egg Mcmuffin behind. They often drive their work vans around just to waste gas. They donate to losing political candidates buy their wives jewelery, throw socks away when there's only one small hole in the heel or buy hunting licenses when they know they can't shoot worth a damn. .
I don't know what makes them this way.
My boss always told me when I was an apprentice electrician; "Better looking at it, then looking for it".
SouthernIllinois
Well-known member
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- 1,658
^^ This
My Dad's place we bought was built in 1996.
Whoever wired it must have gotten a bonus for every 1/6th of an inch of wire they saved.
When we remodeled it I replaced every outlet and switch - what a PIA because of how tight they ran the wiring.
Wrench97
Well-known member
Yea but they still cut a foot and half off before making the connection......
Cut it twice and it was still too short.
Have you searched for cable stretchers from Temu or Alibaba ?
Adaylate
Well-known member
At trim out, all tails were saved for scrap. The scrap paid for the beverages at the Christmas party. Tails seemed to be a little longer in December!
Actually an iron worker's saying. Post tension stretcher?
I'd be very afraid to search that...
Thoughts of pain or visions of blood/shredded meat?
Well, I'm pretty sure I know what "lay some cable" is, so a "cable stretcher" may be some sort of medieval stretching device
I know the joke is the electricians don't know how to use a broom, but when I built my house, he was actually the best sub at cleaning the job site. He would even clean up after the other subs. But I was paying him for the job, so I didn't care if he used 1000 extra feet of wire and spent 100 extra hours doing it. But really, if you leave 2 feet of wire laying out of every outlet in a house, what is that 100 extra feet total? So $40-60? What's that, the cost of labor if one of the tails gets scraped by a drywall saw and the electrician needs to repair the tail because he doesn't already have the extra wire sitting there?
And you think a little cable is wasteful, just wait to you see how much your roofer cuts off the shingles, how many full sheets of drywall that could be patched together from the cut offs and how much window casing and baseboard is lost because the finish carpenter won't take the time to cut finger joints into every scrap and glue them together.
And you think a little cable is wasteful, just wait to you see how much your roofer cuts off the shingles, how many full sheets of drywall that could be patched together from the cut offs and how much window casing and baseboard is lost because the finish carpenter won't take the time to cut finger joints into every scrap and glue them together.
When my house was built 30+ yrs ago, I was travelling for work so I had limited visits to the build. It's a tract build so the subs weren't top shelf.
After the roof was put on, and siding started, I visited. All of the roofing debris, some siding scraps, etc. were laying next to/in to the foundation excavation only partially backfilled.
I pulled all of that debris out of hole and put it in the garage to make sure it didn't get bulldozed into the hole.
Builder's super was pissed. (Hmmf, I wonder who did that.) Planting bushes later wasn't full of surprizes.
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mike93lx
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Kids today!
My grandfather and his brother owned a large commercial HVAC company in the 1950's through the 1980's. My grandfather's brother, Earl, was a real penny pincher..... In the early 1990's I was an apprentice in the HVAC business and one of the old journeyman that I was working with at that time had worked previously at my grandfathers company many years earlier. He said to me one day.... "Let me tell you a funny story about your grandfather's brother, Earl."
This old journeyman was working on a job site one day when Earl came to visit the job to see how things were going.... While Earl was standing nearby, this old journeyman happened to drop a sheet metal screw(s) on the floor while working up on a ladder... He didn't think anything about it and just grabbed another screw out of the pouch on his tool belt and kept working. Earl saw this (remember he's half owner of the company) and he said to the journeyman: "do you know how much those screws cost?" And the journeyman replied: "NO, I don't, but I do know that you can't afford to pay me to get down off this ladder to pick up the screw and then climb back up the ladder to keep working." Earl paused for a minute and then said: "you're right! But I can afford to pick up the screw(s) myself!" He then proceeded to walk around the job site and pick up all the dropped sheet metal screws to save himself some money. lolol.
This old journeyman was working on a job site one day when Earl came to visit the job to see how things were going.... While Earl was standing nearby, this old journeyman happened to drop a sheet metal screw(s) on the floor while working up on a ladder... He didn't think anything about it and just grabbed another screw out of the pouch on his tool belt and kept working. Earl saw this (remember he's half owner of the company) and he said to the journeyman: "do you know how much those screws cost?" And the journeyman replied: "NO, I don't, but I do know that you can't afford to pay me to get down off this ladder to pick up the screw and then climb back up the ladder to keep working." Earl paused for a minute and then said: "you're right! But I can afford to pick up the screw(s) myself!" He then proceeded to walk around the job site and pick up all the dropped sheet metal screws to save himself some money. lolol.
ehcsrop
Active member
Or plan the yield. At least run through the house and make all the long cuts first. But I've seen and done worse. At least I can say I learned while many times not so much for others. I'd be surprised if you can't make a max yield cut list on a phone now.
William Payne
Well-known member
A friend of mine was having his house built. He would follow the builders around and pick up every dropped screw and or nail.
RetiredSparky
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- Apr 26, 2026
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Cut it too short, you get yelled at. Cut it too short, you get fired!