Just a fun thread: Curious some of the crazy/dangerous construction things you’ve ran into while you’re out working.
An example:
I stopped by a friends house Saturday. He and his wife were putting up a 3 sided shelter for some sheep they have. Now, where we live, we get a lot of snow (at least 2′).
They’ve done a pretty good job putting in some pressure treated posts, but the roof… 2 roof sections. Each roof section consisting of 2 sheets of 1/2″ ply. The sheets were supported around the edges w/ 2×4’s nailed to the posts, but the only support in the middle of the roof was one 2×4 laid sideways down the middle where the sheets butted together. They’d done that so they’d have a bigger nailing surface, (3.5″ vs. 1.5″)
Needless to say, not a short visit. I’d have felt responsible when the sheep were crushed.
Another example:
Working in the basement of an old house. Glance up, glance down, something’s wrong. Look around carefully, and hanging from the ceiling is the dryer outlet. Someone’s cut a round hole in a 1×4, shoved the dryer outlet through, connected the wires and screwed it to a floor joist. Didn’t even tape over the screws, they’re hanging out in the open.
And to think, I hadn’t noticed when I was working near there. YIKES!!! Kicker is they have small children, and I’m sure that sometime they’ll climb on the washer or dryer. I made sure that one got fixed before the job was done. Of course I shut the breaker off and made sure it stayed off while I was around too. 30 Amps of 220 hurts, at least I hear it does.
Bill
Replies
Don't get me started...
OK Too late.
In this photo at a job I started demo ing this week, the light over the pool tabl;e was so abominably ugly that the owner couldn't take his eyes off it to make decisions. He asked if I could get it down so I said sure, I'll just unpluyg the swag and...
Well, the 18ga wire was run into the wall and hardwired to 12ga. in a junction above the switch.
"I'll just put this light in the closet here until the electrician gets here next week."
By next morning the owner had cut the wire off without killing the switch power or the breaker. Just bare wires cut off and laying in the dust bunnies...
I had to scold him
Excellence is its own reward!
When I was about 19 I was just starting to learn how to fix things.
Decided to fix a table fan, motor burned out. I was real careful until I got done and clipped the power cord to use on something else. Forgot to unplug it. Didn't shock me because of the insulated handles, but it put a terrible gouge in the best tool I owned at the time.
Can't ever let your mind wander when working with dangerous things be it power tools, electricity, motor vehicles, or comments about your wifes cooking.
Why is it electrical that seems to be where the most problems occur?
When I bought my current house I ripped out all the walls in the basement and started to trace the wiring so as to figure out where I could tap in when I put up new walls. Turned out to be such a mess that I decided to rip most of it out and start over. Started at a light box with 1/2 dozen wires going into it, carefully turn off breakers until the light goes off. Go back with a trouble light and start cutting wires out of the box, bamm, melted wire cutters. Turns out there were two hots running thru this box, Go back to panel and turn EVERYTHING off, finish the cleanup with a flashlight. What a great wiring job, some circuits had one outlet on them, another had most of the house.
Robert
>> Why is it electrical that seems to be where the most problems occur?
Highest energy differential. 120 or 240 volts is a lot of push.
Domestic water supply pressure is usually not very high. If you get a small hole in a pipe, you can hold it closed with your thumb. Natural gas pressure is very low. The force of the wind trying to blow your walls down or peel your roof off adds up to a pretty good sum, but the unit pressure is very low. The water pressure that your roof has to resist is negligible. The difference between the temperature of your hot water and the temperature of the structure is only about 50 or 60 degrees, so running hot water pipes through the framing is not a risk.
As the energy differences start getting higher, you have to start being more careful. The burners in the electris stove get well over 1000 degrees, so the oven is heavily insulated, and the range borners are not inset directly into the coubter top. If household electricity was 12 volts instead of 120, a lot of the horror stories in this thread would just be annoyingly bad practice instead of threatening life and limb.
Another example is potential energy due to gravity. A brick fireplace hearth is no threat to anybody. A brick chimney sticking 20 feet up in the air is lethal in an earthquake.
With all due respect your honor, I think you missed the question. I think he was asking why we see more problems in the electrical area. My guess is that many people don't realize what they are dealing with, and once it's covered up nobody will see it. It's in the same catagory as people using sheetrock screws for joist hangers...hey - a screw is a screw, right?
Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I misunderstood the question.
I really do think some of the electrical mistakes that have been described here are dangerous only because of the energy differential. Take the case of the red hot lamp cord. The equivalent in plumbing might be running a long 1/4" hot water line to a sink. It's wrong, it's suboptimal, it's annoying for the person waiting for the hot water to show up, but there is no risk that it will burn the house down.
But you're right, I did miss the other part of the question.
One though that occurred to me was that electricity is much less intuitive than some of the other systems. You can see what plumbing is supposed to do, or framing, or door hinges. Still lots of opportunities to go wrong, lots of unobvious details, but the intended function is apparent. I used to thing you could see what shingles are supposed to do, till I saw the two instances of shingling from the top down. Even in those cases, I'll bet money the guys were thinking that the water lands on the ridge and has to go from there down to the eaves, so the shingles should do the same thing.
Electricity is not intuitive. Someone had to tell you about series and parallel circuits and resistance and ampacity and half a dozen other things. A lot of people never learn this stuff. One of my brother's tenants couldn't figure out why two light bulbs wired in series were really dim. And then when I explained it to him, he couldn't understand the explanation. (No jokes about really dim her. The guy was a college graduate.) They can do some electrical work without knowing it, just by following the directions. But when the directions are vague or wrong or absent, they're lost.
And without the theory, they can't generalize from worked examples. They could never derive the reasons, just by looking at a working electrical system, why splices must be in juction boxes, why you don't want to bundle a bunch of wires together, why you need a ground rod or ground clamp, why the ground and neutral wires are bonded only at the service entrance, etc. So they don't know why their cost cutting ideas are bad ideas. (Part of that, of course, is the things that aren't there. If you don't see thick wire bundles, you'd never think to ask if thick wire bundles are OK.)
It looks easy. And very, very often they get away with it. Some of the booboos in this thread were revealed when they failed, but many of them worked just fine and would probably have continued to work for the life of the house. Maybe the really remarkable thing is not how many electrical screwups there are, but how few house fires there are. The NEC is defense in depth.
I should have written more. I agree completely with the rest oif your explanation in the previous post, and this one...there is greater potential for electrical damage than in most other areas. And some people just don't understand the basics. I understand just the basics of electricity, but still can't tell the difference between delta and wye connections, and a myriad of other stuff, so I usually sub the electrical work to a qualified electrician.
I was more talking about the chance that it will be done wrong by a do-it-yourselfer.
Electrical seems to be close to 100%
Robert
I think that the reason is that many electrical projects are relatively small.
As you have seen there are other examples of problems framing and roofing and other areas.
But how often does someone put an addition on a house or replace the roof and those are big jobs.
But adding an outlet is a relatively small scale job.
I suspect that there are as many similar bad pumbing jobs. However, most of them would be leaking all over the place and that leads to two things. First there is notice that they have a problem. And 2nd the resultant damage indicates that either they redo it or that they pro to fix it.
But if the outlet on zip cord works fine for the light who is know that there is a problem until years later.
> Turns out there were two hots running thru this box....
Which is legal under current NEC. You have to expect that. The best thing is to get one of those little non-contact testers, they're about the size of a Sharpie marker, with a tip that lights up when they get near anything hot. It's best to start this kind of project first thing in the morning, so you can have it pretty well figured out before you need lighting.
-- J.S.
Maybe legal, but I don't know why you would want to do it, unless you were really trying to save wire. But I'm thinking the 6 wires and 4 splices added up to a little more than the box was rated for ;).
Robert
> I don't know why you would want to do it, unless you were really trying to save wire.
It doesn't save you any wire, but it does save on EMT and especially the labor to install it. And it makes for a neater installation and less hacking up of the framing if I send two or three circuits out of the panel in the same pipe, and then send them in different directions from a box elsewhere. Consider the two dedicated countertop circuits in the kitchen. Why would you run two pipes to the same place?
-- J.S.
Ok, I never thought of when you had to run in conduit, I only worked on one job in my short electrical career that has conduit, and as I was a lowly first year I was just taping joints.
Otherwise I will admit that it can save you drilling multiple holes in studs, but I also think that can be avioded in a lot of cases by careful layout of the circuits.
Robert
> I only worked on one job in my short electrical career that has conduit,
Ah, yes. Romex, the electrical equivalent of vinyl siding. Maybe it's time for a new thread on what constitutes fine electrical work.
But I still don't see any advantage to avoiding multiple circuits in the same box. If I have switches side by side on different circuits, wouldn't it look strange to have two separate wall plates? Can you even put a two gang plate over two single gang boxes? I've never tried. Putting in extra boxes it seems would lead to the temptation to conceal boxes. Concealed boxes are a bigger PIA to me than complicated contents in a box.
-- J.S.
Not multiple circuits, I don't have a problem with that, multiple hots is what I was talking about, as in you can trace 2 hots back to the panel.
Around here the only thing conduit is used for is commercial or in slab installations, you guys actually use it for normal residential installs? That must add a lot to the cost of a job.
Robert
"Not multiple circuits, I don't have a problem with that, multiple hots is what I was talking about, as in you can trace 2 hots back to the panel"
Yes, that is different. And DANGEROUS for several different reasons. Besides being hot when you think that the circuit is dead you can have twice the rated current on the neutral.
Chicago code (AKA union full employement act) requires conduit.
Well, I'm confused now. What do we mean by the terms hots and circuits? Is a hot any wire that is not neutral? Or does it mean the two .... well, I don't want to say phases, that's a whole nother mess .... the two things that would be phases if this were three phase, the 240 volt apart wires that come from the utility company. In the old days we used to use red for all the wires on one and black for all the wires on the other. That kinda went away when romex got started. The colors helped a lot. Red and black for things that run all the way back to the breaker, blue and orange for switch legs, purple and brown for three way runners.... The trouble is that was never really standardized.
Circuits, as I understand the term, come in two varieties. There are feeders and branch circuits. Feeders are big things that go from a big breaker to bring power to another breaker panel, and nothing else. A branch circuit starts at a breaker in a panel, and feeds end uses, but no additional panels. Everything downstream from that breaker is the circuit that corresponds to the breaker and its number. I used to use a sharpie to write circuit numbers inside the boxes, as close as I could to the hole that the power was coming in from.
As for the overloading of neutrals, that happens if you have two circuits, two breakers, on the same sorta-like-phase-thingy sharing the same neutral. If the two breakers are one on each sorta-like-phase-thingy, the neutral currents subtract, and they can share without a problem. If they're both on the same side, the currents add, and the neutral can see double its allowable load. What do you call those sorta-like-phase-thingies? Hots? Sides? Legs?.... ;-)
-- J.S.
Legs would, IMHO, be the preferred terminology. Sometimes even with trained people, I might not be entirely without sin here, the other leg is sometimes referred to as the other phase. This is incorrect as most residential power is single phase with one 180 degrees out of phase with the other but, as long as people understand the situation, they can pretty much call is anything they want.
Black and red phasing, marking, with the neutral being phased white is popular for single phase systems but there are still a few power companies or legacy systems that phase the three phase power red, white, blue for 240v with the white being live. Hooking that particular white leg into a neutral bar can lead to all sorts of "fun". Newer installations usually use black, red, blue or black, orange, yellow for 480v systems.
If this doesn't make sense that ought to tell you something. Also systems installed or maintained by handymen can be phased, marked or not, as they see fit. I have seen pink and purple tape, it raised eyebrows, used to phase conductors. The most unusual was a panel with the neutral phased with medical adhesive tape, at least he got the color right, and one leg with a band-aid used as phasing. Throughout the system there were band-aids on one leg. Maybe it was what they had on hand. We called it the band-aid building.
John
As 4Lorn1 said the common term is LEGS. That is for the two legs of the transformer with the center tap the neutral.
Now my background is as an Electrical Engineer, but most of my work with with electronics and now software. But IMNSHO it is correct to use the term phase. But it starts such fights that it is not worth the arguement.
In my particular case what happened is that I have dual furances mounted side by side. Each furance requires their own circuit. While trouble shooting anohter problem I decided that it was time to label all of the breakers. I got it down to about about 6 breakers that I could not easy identify. So I started tripping them one by one and the furnace never went off.
What I found was that a multi wire (shared neutral) romex was run from the pannel to a box by the furnances. At the box some one had time both legs where tied together and then one switch was used as a disconnect for both furnaces.
Then at the breaker pannel they moved one of the hot so that both were on the same leg.
Wow, never thought this would turn into an electrical forum.
Been quite interesting though.
Maybe it's because electrical problems stand out in our minds as they're so dangerous.
Actually, I'm sorta a closet electrician. If I didn't do what I do for a living I'd probably be one. Of course, I'm a certified, qualified, 'Interior Electrician' as far as the Army's concerned. I took my two week course. Fortunately, I'd done a lot of wiring before I got there, so it made sense, and I learned a lot.
Anyone ever notice the Army teaches things backwards? First day of class they give us an exercise: you're going into this building to add wiring for a water heater, 6 lights, yadda yadda yadda. Then they gave us a 6 page single space typed double columned list of electrical parts we might need and told us to put together a list of materials needed. No pictures. I didn't have a clue what most of the things on the list were. It was written typical Army style: Nut, Wire, 14 AWG, Green or, Metallic, Box, 8.3 cubic inches, Electrical. What a joke. After we were reamed for failing to prepare a complete bill of materials, none of us had all the conduit connections etc. down, they asked were there any questions. I asked can you take us over to the shop and physically show us what these items are? That had never occured to them.
Now 2 weeks later after being taught to bend conduit, wire circuits, connect power through a weather head, balance loads, etc., I could have done much better. Of course, I'd have still missed several things because of the non-english descriptions on the list. Some of the names just didn't make sense.
Thanks for all the input.
As for the overloading of neutrals, that happens if you have two circuits, two breakers, on the same sorta-like-phase-thingy sharing the same neutral. If the two breakers are one on each sorta-like-phase-thingy, the neutral currents subtract, and they can share without a problem. If they're both on the same side, the currents add, and the neutral can see double its allowable load.
What you're talking about is a shared neutral. It's usually used for lighting and saves an unnecessary wire. Basically, you make sure the load (amperage) is balanced, and that the impedances are balanced. You must use each leg or you will possibly double the current on the neutral. If done correctly, the neutral should have almost no current.
I live just outside of Chicago and LOVE that conduit must be used. It keeps so many idiots who have no place doing electrical work from doing it. Also, there is no possibility of a nail puncturing conduit, or of rodents chewing through it. And yes, there are still people who like the look of a professionally done job, not something some wannabe stapled up in 10 minutes.
When people 100 years from now see my work, they'll know I cared. --Matt Mulka
>> Also, there is no possibility of a nail puncturing conduit ...
Does that mean everybody has to use rigid conduit? It's not that hard to get a nail through EMT.
> What you're talking about is a shared neutral. It's usually used for lighting ....
I'm doing my receptacles that way. Each location gets a two gang box, one on each leg. Open any box, and it should be obvious what's going on. Black on the left, red on the right.
I agree completely about conduit, 3/4" most places, and compression fittings too, not those crappy things with the screw that dents in the side. Big 4 11/16" boxes, too, to stay well under the fill limit.
-- J.S.
I live in Chicago too and conduit does not keep out the average homeowner. In the City of Chicago only license electrician are allowed to do any electrical work (residential and commercial) and all must be in conduit. Go to an open house an you will see romex, exposed BX and bare wires. 10 years ago all wire including speaker wire, coax, telephone etc. had to be in conduit but now the inspectors seem to require only low voltage wire in conduit. I like conduit (and its not that difficult to install) because it is easier to fix my screw ups. Conduit does not guaranty quality or competency. I use nail plate on the studs over conduit since a screw can easily go through it. The inspector on my house was pleasantly surprised by the nail plates. He did not like the separate ground rod (1998) since the new City code that would require ground rods instead of using the water pipe was not yet enforce. Had to remove the ground rod and ground to the water service.
I once had to troubleshoot a conduit job where the "electrician" used a tubing cutter to cut the EMT and then failed to ream the conduit. The job started shorting out within minutes. He had patched a few shorts by pulling in new conductors to get it stable enough to get paid and evaporated. As far as I know he was never seen again. I had to disassemble the entire job and ream every piece of conduit, remount everything and pull in new wires. I must say that other than his choice of tool and failure to ream the conduit he had done a remarkably good job. It's the details that kill you.
I had one trouble call where a nice little old lady complained that the dual exterior floodlight on the garage was acting up. It got dim, flickered, then stopped working.
Got there, took a look, found a surface-mount fixture up under the eave with two, 100 watt floods. Looking around in the garage, I find that the fixture is being fed with candy cane--AKA bell or thermostat wire--the red-and-white twisted stuff, about 20 gage. Just kind of looped over the ceiling joists. The other end was tucked under a receptacle outlet cover plate into the box, and wrapped around the terminal screws. The insulation was brown from overheating, and the one of the wires had burned through.
A little MC cable and I had it working safely.
I asked her who had installed the light, and she very proudly said that her college student grandson had done it for her! She was such a nice lady and so pleased with her grandson that I couldn't really say what was on my mind--f'ing idiot was dangerous! I asked her if he'd done any other electrical work for her, and was very relieved to hear that he hadn't. I told her that her grandson must be a very nice fellow, but she should let me take care of the wiring.
I've seen my share of "flying" splices (not in a box), miswired outlets, bootleg grounds (usually the father-in-law; "well the neutral and ground connect back in the panel, right?"). It's suprising that there aren't more accidental electrocutions.
And there's no way to stop people who want to do their own electrical, so making good information easily accessible is the best way, I think.
Cliff
Re: the existence of so many DIY electrical "what the heck were they thinking?" scenarios...
First, I think it's mighty tough to get a licensed electrician to come by for a small 30-60 minute job. Thoise jobs just aren't efficient enough for the electrician to tackle. Too much road time compared to wring time, and to charge fairly for the travel pumps up the price to something that appears unreasonable. The homeowner only sees "$250 for an hour's visit?" without realizing that there is travel time on each end, etc.
Secondly, there are the HGTV shows that show "Alice and Marty" coming into a homeowners house to put in a ceiling fan or add a 3-way switch. What they don't show is the licensed electrician doing the work, then he's sent off-camera to have a doughnut so Marty and Alice can step in when the cameras start rolling. Electrical? It's so easy!
DIY is here to stay...for better in a lot of areas...for worse when it comes to things like electrical. That said, there are some DIYs that do excellent work, they take the time to educate themselves before even removing the switch plate.
If Joe homeowner hangs drywall with 16d nails, tapes the joints with masking tape, and muds the joints with silly putty...well, the job just looks crappy.
If he paints with a dried out, stiff paintbrush with watered down paint to extend the gallon a bit further...well, the job just looks crappy.
Bad electrical can injure or kill, directly or indirectly, and that's why the stories, even minor guffaws, create a sense of "oh crap" from those that see them...and those that know that the work could have been completed in a more safe manner.
I think the thing that offends me more than anything is to be in a box store and hear someone wearing a colored apron give a homeowner erroneous information. That really pisses me off, and I always feel compelled to add a few words to the conversation. It's a situation I just want to roll my eyes at and walk away...but like an impending train wreck, I feel compelled to stick around and try to prevent the crash before it happens.
Good of you to offer help. You are right it won't stop.
If you didn't offer help there would be many more lamp wire jobs and even SOW cord behind the walls that smoked out my Sister-in-Law & family last fall. There, a college slum lord hired someone who didn't know better. No suit there but there were fines for substandard work.
Doing it yourself is kind of the American way. It may be an offshoot of the can do attitude that made our forefathers jump on a boat to the New World. I think I Can starts with the little red engine and creates the Hewlett Packard, Ford Motor, and every business startup since.
I took in a Nephew last year for his Junior year of Highschool. He came from Luxembourg (Yep over there). The mentality came to light in a simple event when he was learning how to drive. I asked him what he'd do if he got a flat tire. His response was to call the "Garage man" and have him change it. I think flames shot out of my ears (or some other orifice). He started with some bad information from his culture but I thought it isn't anything that training couldn't handle.
Without that can do attitude we'd have an orderly society with everything being done by the trade or not being done. If you've visited Europe, you'd probably see what I mean. I saw some cars in England that were held together with wire to keep the fender from rattling, Many homes (except for the Financially ept) are shoddy little holes that history holds together. They are cute at a distance but live in one of those cottages or visit one of those quaint taverns and you wonder how they keep a decent attitude about their life. Crooked walls & floors, Electrical switches that are nothing more than sliding metal (no snap action) etc...
The discussion with the Nephew on services for the population, medical care, etc. often lead to the result that "the government takes care of it". Who pays we asked... silence.
So the tires... I verbally guided him thru the way to rotate tires by using the spare out of the trunk with the given scissor jack. Then we went to the radiator overflow, the radiator do's & don'ts, Oil level, Transmission level, brakes etc. He got greasy, cut hands, broken nail, and dirty overall. No love of the job on his part, but he's a better person for it.
Without the desire to learn there isn't cross pollination of ideas in the brain. He also got (conscripted) into the construction of my cottage 1800 sqft. Sort of a modified post & beam with 16/12 pitch over the main section. He learned how to carry sheets, hook up a block & tackle, install windows on first & second floors, and install shakes, and pull wire. Between him and my other 3 boys there was a comradery that turned into team work.
He'll never sully his hands if he doesn't have to I'm sure. He's off to the Univ of Fribourg (Switzerland) next year to become the necktie in his dreams. The impression I think he came away with, is that there is a need to know how to help yourself.
Money limits many on doing it right as does the stupidity not to know safe from unsafe. A few will get hurt, some will die, some will thrive. Darwin described more than waterfowl.
It is an ugly reality, but I think there is a thread of Old Glory in the American soul to believe you can, and to know you have the right to try.
Bravo and 3 cheers Booch! Let the thunder crack and the waves roar.
We're going on.
We're knee deep in remodeling our kitchen/family room, and found several wacky construction techniques during demolition. The PO lived next to a retired HVAC contractor who "helped him out" a lot, and who was very creative in the re-use of existing materials and in cutting corners. When I was trying to remove the old load bearing beam in one wall (don't worry - we had the roof already propped up!), I couldn't get the beam to give. I finally realized it was hanging by a piece of mystery romex. I found a box carved into the beam that apparently used to hold a light fixture. When the fixture was removed they just put caps onto the wires, filled the box with mud and painted over it. The wires were hot.
There is a 3' high solid brick wall around the family room, with framing on top of that. Every 2' there is a stud exposed in the brickwork. There was a hole drilled in one of these studs, and a lightweight extension cord came out of it and plugged into an adjacent outlet. No one could figure out where the cord went; during demo I found out. It went out to the exterior wall, traveled over the old shiplap and under the vinyl siding, was connected to another cord (still beneath the exterior vinyl), went back into another hole drilled into the wall (maybe 5 feet from the first one), and then at one time had come back into the room through a hole drilled into the paneling. It had been a TV cord at one time; I guess they really didn't want the extension cord to the plug to be seen. When the TV wore out, they just cut the cord with wire clippers and left it there.
In our old house we had central heat put into the house. When we opened up the wall to remove one of the old wall gas heaters, we found that there had been a fire in the wall at some point. The studs were completely burned up, and the wall was held up by the fiberboard (pre-drywall/post lathe stuff) and plaster.
One of my favorites is the front door on our current house. It has a 30" square glass window in the upper half. The window had been broken, and someone replaced it with a piece of thin plexi - held in with 2" clear shipping tape.
"A completed home is a listed home."
Good story. Nothing like real...."quality" workmanship to make you sleep well at night. It is a wonder more people don't get hurt.
You gotta love old houses or it'll drive you crazy.
I poured a footer and built new walls outside an old porch add-on on my place. When I tore the old walls down I discovered that the first wall stud was against the house's thin redwood siding and fiberboard insul-brick, no sheathing beneath the siding, with framing nails thru that stud penetrating the quarterinch clapboard siding and missing the wall studs on the original part of the house. Kinda went hand in hand with the wire wrapped around nails holding the cellar stairway up. Let the thunder crack and the waves roar.
We're going on.
The former occupant must have run out of duct tape. Clear is pretty fancy.
I am getting ready to install such a circuit for a little different reason than John.
What is now the master bedroom has an outlet and then the circuit continuses on for lights in the dining room (which appears to have been part of the MB in the past) and then continues on to the living room lights.
The walls in the MB are already open. But the other rooms have finished walls. I was going to do some of the work in the attic, but the access is very poor and it is covered with about 8-10" of cels so that is out.
And the bedroom needs more (and grounded) outlets. So I am running 2 new circuits to the bedroom. One will be spliced in the box to feed the existing lights in the other areas. The 2nd circuit will feed the current and new outlets in the MB.
While this is not my prefered way of running circuits, it is the most practical solution in this case.
BTW, I am using a sq box with a plaster ring to that there is enough space in the box.
Why so many problems?
Electrical work, about 90% of it, is dead (No pun intended) simple. It is deceptive. It appears intuitive in that 'A' connects to 'B' to 'C'. Handyman wants to make it work. Make connections and it runs. The problem is that functionality is, and rightfully must be, the last consideration.
An electrician, all the good ones I know. Built it according to code or better, "In a neat and workmanlike manner", with materials and techniques designed for the job. The fact that it works is almost an afterthought. If you build it right it will work.
The other problem is that electricity is, for the most part, an invisible force. A nail holding flashing around a roof perimeter that hits a live wire can, I know this from personal experience, make the flashing on the opposite side of the house angry enough to try to kill you. Most potentially lethal problems for other trades, with notable exceptions, are visible and thus avoidable. An electrical fault can lie in wait for years and strike silently without warning.
I contend that any reasonably able bodied and intelligent HO can do most of his/her own electrical work with two provisos: They do their homework and they know what they don't know so they can stay out of deep water. Unfortunately the sorts of men who work as handymen, almost always men, really don't believe in book learning and have too much pride to admit they don't know. Won't read about it and can't admit enough ignorance to learn from someone else.
Which gets me to the house that was wired in extension cord. Or the one where he, again it had to be a he as women aren't this silly, ran a single conductor to each device and then ran a shorter wire to the nearest grounded object. Plumbing, ducts, gas lines and even the expanded metal mesh imbedded in the plaster, leaning on a wall was risky, was tapped. I was called when he sold it and the new owner tried to take a shower and got shocked with a toe touching the drain and reaching for the valve. He had advised them, after the sale, not to stand too near the drain.
Or the house that the resident electronics genius, male of course, trouble shot his house with a meter. In a few spots there was no current on the funny white wires. He figured they were spares so to cut down on confusion he just snipped them off. All the light were on. Problems didn't show until his wife got home and he went to turn off lights to go to bed. Then things got screwy. Shared neutrals. A formative experience that soured me on the concept.
And the beat goes on.......
Electrical mistakes are probably more common due to self-compounding behavior.
I remember talking to a friend after my sister in law moved into an old house. There were a many stupid wiring hacks (I'll get to a good example afterward).
I called my friend to ask him for the phone number of an electrician he knew. First thing he tells me is "don't get a pro in there, with all those screwed up circuits it will cost you a fortune to pass an inspection"
I guess some people avoid doctors so they will never be told if they have anything bad. I do wonder, though, if people avoid hiring electricians out of fear of uncovering some of these problems?
Now here is my favorite first hand experience with a wiring hack.
Many houses of the vintage my in laws moved into had wiring run through old gas lines when they upgraded. Anyway, I went over to help to take down a fixture (due to extreme ugliness problems). I took at look at the wiring and realized the hot came down a wire as expected. The neutral was carried on the gas pipe! A quick check revealed this to be done in several other locations.
As a counterpoint, here is my personal stupid electrical mistake.
When I was in college, my roommates and I were walking by an old theater near our home. The theatre was being torn down, so we asked the crew stripping the place if we could look around for any cool period stuff. They agreed.
What I managed to find was a really amazing old house amp that looked vintage 1940s. I'm not sure of the real age, I just assumed it was early in the talkies period. Anyway it was a big mono tube amp. I dragged I home and put it on display. We used to turn it on just to watch the tubes glow, but we never actually wired a pre-amp to it and listened to it.
One day I finally build a custom pre-amp for it and got it working. Sounded brilliant. Unfortunately, on the way to making it work, I did one of the stupider things one can with electricity. I, assuming and unplugged amp is safe, discharged a capacitor the size of a coffee can into my hand. Ouch! it was numb for days!
"Why is it electrical that seems to be where the most problems occur?"
Don't know. But there sure seem to be a lot of DIY electrical mistakes.
I think I've told this story before, but what the heck. My BIL does apliance repair. He was called to go out on a service call for some warranty work on a new dryer that wouldn't run.
When he got there the HO said the dryer had never run. I made a sort of humming noise, but that was all. After he investigated a bit, he found the 220 cord had been cut off the dryer about a foot out from the appliance. The HO had spliced in a 110v lamp cord and plugged it into a 110 outlet.Don't confuse busiwork with productivity.
"I made a sort of humming noise, but that was all."
Sort of like this? Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
;).
Excellence is its own reward!
"Sort of like this? Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
"
Maybe a little higher pitched than that..............
I know of a couple who built their own shelter for a lawn tractor this summer. The whole 8x10 unit only used ten 2x4s, a blue tarp and fpour sheets of plywood for the roof with a similar detail to what you have described.
Excellence is its own reward!
Couple of guys without roof jacks or anything resembling a harness (or a decent sense of self preservation) and a need to get onto a dilapidated 12/12 cedar shake roof to tear off the siding on the back of the chimney and replace it. In their favor, they had 4 1/2 sections of scaffolding in front and tied off. The solution? A 2 x12 about 10' with 2x4 cleats nailed on the face for foot and hinder grab, and a bunch of 2" nails going the other way so all them little spikes made like a big football cleat on the roof, but no thru holes. The top had another board that kicked over the ridge about a foot as insurance. One brave soul departed the scaffolding and sat down, stayed put until the paint was on too. I was the chicken who stayed on the scaffolding. He was the help, and he got paid real good that day. I hate heights. One of the stupidest stunts I ever pulled, and ain't gonna happen again.
22ga two strand speaker wire used to wire a hall fixture. It was routed down a groove between pieces of paneling and caulked over.
In the same house a 20' run of lamp cord, 18/2 zip cord, was used to feed a receptacle. A carpenter had been was using this receptacle with a circular saw drawing 15A and a small compressor. The wires were glowing red when I discovered it.
A friend of mine called me up and asked me to come over and look at this addition hes doing(Unpermittd) on his house. Now picture a U shape patio with walls on three sides and a cover, he was frameing the floor joists. He had 6X6 fir girders set on the concrete attached with ties, and the joist attached to the girders. Nothing was tied into the house adding any strength or support .It was free standing. The whole thing rocked like a water bed. I explained to him about pressure treated wood usage (coming into contact with the concrete) and ledger boards lagged to the existing system (its a raised foundation) also the necessity for blocking. Well I came back about a week later and he had it together it looked pretty good and felt real strong after he made all the corrections, now I hope he understood what I was talking about when I explained load bearing walls to him as he was going to make a arched passage way into his kitchen (the wall is on one leg of the U). Did mention he was going to sweat some water lines while the water was dripping from the lines also. I told him to open the hose bib and drain it from there after He insisted he drained all the lines. he listened (finally and it stoped he was able to sweat the lines)
I bet you guys really see some funny stuff....
At Darkworks cut to size made to burn......Putty isnt a option
Edited 10/23/2002 11:23:24 PM ET by Ron Teti
I as roving the neighborhood yesterday afternoon with my son, we were selling wreaths for a Cub Scout fundraiser.
At a neighbor's house..."While you're here, can you look at this light?"
DANGER! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
They had a built-in buffet wired with low-voltage puck halogen lights. A single transformer with two output legs, each supplying three 20 watt pucks. Total 120 watts.
None of the lights worked. Checked, the breaker was popped. Set the breaker, went back upstairs, flipped the switch, no lights...the breaker popped again.
They had just had the cabinets built, and the lights were wired in by an electrician the day before. They had called him, he said he'd be there "sometime over the next few days." Well, they were having a get-together that evening and wanted to use those cabinets as a buffet to serve food from, but with no lights...
I went home and got my electrical box.
Flipped the breaker back on, and put the meter leads across the switch screws, and
"POP"
Lemme see...one two three four five...yup, still have ten fingers, none of them charred...
But I had melted about 3/8ths of an inch off the end of one of the meter leads.
Sure enough, the breaker popped again...which I was greatful for.
Took down the cabinet's access cover that hid the wires and traced the wiring. What had happened is that the power supply from the breaker (through the ON/OFF switch) had been back-wired into the tranformer...the incoming power supply was wired into the output side of the transformer.
Now, I'm no electrician, but is it safe to guess that if this tranformer was supposed to step power down from 120v to 12v, that by backwiring it it was pumping the juice up from 120v to 1200v? Seems a bit far-fetched...but my meter lead was melted, the meter's fuse was blown, and the meter itself was fried even with the fuse blowing.
I went home again and pulled a spare low-voltage light kit out of a parts box in my basement. Robbed the transformer, went and wired it in their house and everything worked fine.
They ordered eight wreaths from my son.
Still...Ouch!
My understanding of transformer theory is that you are correct. ten times the voltage if wired backwards. Fortunately at one tenth the amperage. The 12v winding would look to 120v as a near short and trip the breaker eventually. Hopefully before the firemen need to be called. It pays to hire svelte tradesmen to work on such systems. Their bodies are much easier to move. Otherwise the place gets "cluttered".
It pays to be careful. As an electrician I am often amazed at what some "electricians" can come up with.
Thanks for the feedback.
I agree as well. 1200V ! ! !
That kind of potential is impressive. I bet that 1200V could jump an arc a good distance thru clear air.Steelkilt Lives!
The dairy farm I worked at 25 years ago had a grain bin (dry feed) in a bad location for a new bin that was being added for pelletized feed (also dry) We needed to run a 6 inch auger completely through the old bin to get the feed from the new bin into the barn. This would basically be a 6 inch diameter steel tube running through two thicknesses of heavy galvanized steel for a distance of about 20 feet. The old bin was about 12 feet in diameter. The new auger would slant up about 40 degrees above level, and at a compass heading with no relative position to any darn thing.
This was a real vector problem . . . we scratched our heads for a long time and tried using a string line from inside the (empty) bin to determine just where to start cutting holes. An old guy that had been around there for years sized up the situation, walked over to his pickup, and got out a .30/'30 rifle. He laid on the ground and sighted a line that we wanted to follow. Everyone walked around a corner, and he fired one shot . . .
Turned out to be absolutely the correct path for the auger tube.
Greg.
Oh, you must be talking about the 10x26 deck that was nailed to the side of my 1971 spec. special... With LOTS of 16s...
Or the zip cord the prior owners used to wire the vanity lights in the upstairs bathroom. The same lights that were actually wall sconces, and only lit up the counter.
Or perhaps it would be the TWO places in the attic where 2-3 sets of romex were spliced together without junction boxes... or wire nuts... just a good twist and some tape.
Or maybe it's the breaker in my main panel labeled "Oven" in a house that never had a separate oven. The breaker was on when I moved in, I shut it off, and finally discovered the run of 10-3 hiding between the kitchen floor joists. It had electrician's tape over the end.
Or could you be referring to the truss whose bottom was chord cut so a whole-house fan could be installed?
Or the now-missing fireplace in the living room that was installed in a 2x6x8-foot box made of 3/4-inch particle board and two-by-fours, and then covered in Z-brick?
Or the two windows that flanked that fireplace, which were installed by nailing the brick mold to the t-111 siding without so much as a stick of lumber for blocking between the sheetrock and siding.
Or the patio slider in the kitchen that didn't have a header or flashing over it. It had leaked so badly where its trim met the T-111 that I found ~10 pounds of silicone caulk in the wall.
Sometimes I wonder what I'll find when we start on the kitchen and open the rest of the kitchen walls.
K-
-
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert A. Heinlein
I really like the quote at the end of you post.
The first house I bought was owned by a young single girl. Her father was worried about her living alone, so had come over and installed dead bolts on the doors. Of course, the front door was a hollow core interior door & the side door had a 2' square window in it.
My current house I have found numerous wiring problems. Taped over splices in the attic. A ceiling fan that was screwed to a 2' 2x4 laying on, but not attatched to, the sheetrock, no electrical box, connections taped and buried in insulation. Wobbled bad. Rafters cut for a chimney, no bracing. Downstairs wired w/ 12-2 but all breakers 30 or 40 Amp single pole. A 220 outlet wired on 2 single pole breakers, a 30 & a 40 amp, also 12-2 wire.
If my brain was on I'd think of more.
But, in the essence of fair play, since I started this by picking on others, I'll pick on myself.
The other night, the light kit on my ceiling fan won't work. Fan's controlled by a knob on the wall, the light is controlled w/ 2 3-way switches. One of them is a dimmer sw. that no longer dims.
I assume the switch finally went bad. Turn the power off and replace it. Same problem. Take the other sw. cover off, turn the power back on and use my power pen to see if the sw.s work. They do. Drop the ceiling fan check there, yep power getting to the fan. Open the light kit, yep, getting power here. REMEMBER THE SHORT PULL CHAIN SW. WE NEVER USE. Put everything back together. Get it together and wish I'd thought to bypass the pull chain sw. so that could never happen again.
My wife didn't even give me a hard time. We were both so tired we shouldn't have been working anything more complex then a toothbrush. Went to bed. GOODNIGHT
Oh, one good quote deserves another:
"Associate yourself with men of quality if you esteem your reputation, for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company."
-President George Washington
I have a standing rule for working on my computers. Never install software after 9:00PM. I just don't have the attention span or mental wattage to think after that hour. After your post, I should consider extending that to electrical work.
That's funny and priceless stuff. I can see it now.
Would this fall under the heading of dead-reckoning?
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
You said 25 years ago. That made me think it would have been prophetic if some kid watching would have said,
"Some day they will have Ray Guns to do this" and then went on to invent the laser level. . . .Steelkilt Lives!
Love it! Hunters transit!
I seem to remember a figure of 20,000 volts per inch of dry air.
Yes, transformers do work both ways. A transformer is nothing but a couple coils of insulated wire wrapped around some fancy-assed ferrous alloy. This one would step 120 up to 1200, but only for as long as it takes to burn the insulation off the supposed-to-be-secondary misused-as-primary winding. Until it frys, there's no limit on the current that can be drawn other than the impedances of the windings and the load. That's why it's so dangerous to have an emergency generator tied into a house without a proper transfer switch. Backfeeding the transformer on the pole can kill utility workers on the high voltage side.
The figure of 20 kV per inch is pretty good for striking an arc. But the arc ionizes and heats the air, and the ionized air is a much better conductor, so the arc will sustain through a much greater distance. Long ago I made a Jacob's ladder using a 12 kV neon sign transformer. (That's the classic Frankenstein movie prop with the arc climbing between what look like TV rabbit ears.) It would strike thru a half inch gap, and sustained up to about 6 inches before re-striking at the half inch point. The greater the starting gap, the higher it climbs.
-- J.S.
"the lights were wired in by an electrician the day before"
An electrician did this ?
Don't bogart the Ghost
Quittin' Time
Yup, an electrician did this.
At least he claims to be an electrician. He's a high school sophomore who took a night school course on electronics before the start of this school year.
A lot of people use him, as he only charges $8 an hour under the table.
They said they were concerned when he showed up to do the work. When his older sister dropped him off (the electrician doesn't have his driver's license yet), they said they smelled a whiff of marijuana when he got out of the car.
Still, he did the work, they paid him, and then they gave him a ride to his next jobsite, as his ride never showed. He's actually a pretty good kid. He's tried to straighten his life out after some legal troubles he had last year regarding breaking and entering and assault and battery. He got caught breaking into a neighbor's house and just about killed one of the kids in the family with a baseball bat when the daughter came home from school to find the electrician rifling through drawers in the parent's bedroom.
The legal troubles really weren't all his fault. The daughter shouldn't have comfronted him, and if people would pay him a better wage for his work he wouldn't have had to break into the house in the first place.
Just kidding, Luka.
Yeah, a real, walking and talking, licensed electrician did this. I know of the guy, but have never worked with him. He's got a decent reputation.
A simple mistake, but a bad one nonetheless.
That was a good yarn...you had me believing it until I read the next message. Everything seemed completely plausible.
Well Mongo,
Wiring it wrong can indeed be a simple mistake. Leaving it that way and going home without testing it and fixing or disconnecting it is unprofessional.
He could have at least melted his own meter rather than leave the potential for a fire or injury behind.
4LORN1--
Are you that really that picky regarding his use of brown cord? If both were glowing red, wouldn't merely covering one with white tape have fulfilled the color coding you electricians so love?...
Regards,
Rework
I am helping a friend out with a house that she just bought. It was orginally built around 56, but with at least one addition in the early 70's. I think that the orginal constructions was OK, but it appears that several different generation had there hand in "improving it".
They had a light in the basement and garage that was operated with a 3-way at each end. The light in the basement was a scounce wired with #18 zip. However, it did not work as a 3-way, never traced it out after I saw all of the other problems I just ripped and re-did. They ran 14-2 wire and then a separate wire. The separate wire was spiced a couple of places in the middle of the run. One they have twisted too hard and it had broken leaving just 3/4 of a turn of one wire around the other one. As I started examining it the lights started flashing. And they cut the ground wires off of all runs so that they would not get in the way.
The garage had a sub-pannel for the addtion. They did not run a neutral for it. No rommex connectors on the wires from the sub-pannel. Wires CCW about the switch and recpt screws.
I found taped splices above the finished basement ceiling where the splices where so loose that they start arcing as I moved the splices.
I could go on about the electrical, but let jump to the carpentry problems.
A hollow core door for the outside door into the garage.
The notched the joists in the garage for the door openers. The garage is under the large addition.
What was orginally a large L shapped living room they divided it off by closing the L. They did not take down the sheet rock. Rather they just extended the wall flush with the current finished wall and they slapped some fake stone masonite panneling over the whole thing.
When I was about 10 years old I watched a person put cedar shingles on a roof. He started at the top and worked down. I knew it was wrong and told him so. I was told to get the f out of there and no snot nosed kid was going to tell him how to do the job. The roof leaked when he was done. They finally called a roofer and they took all singles.
When I was in the National Gaurd one of the other guys owned a roofing buisiness. He came in one weekend and told us about a guy he'd quoted a shingling job.
A couple weeks later he drives past the house, and the guy had decided to do it himself and save some money. He started at the top and worked down. Perfect roof, except it would have funneled all the water into the house. My friend made more money on the job, demo & installation.
Fortunately he saw this before it rained.
I'd been up in the attic several times over the past year or so. Along with shingles and some other junk I kept noticing a loose wire poking out of the insulation. Thought I'd just leave it in case I need a piece of wire up there. One day I had brought up my tester for some other work and for fun I put it to the end of that loose wire - damn thing lit up! Makes you scared to go into dark places, especially where others have been...
First house we bought was a 1929 bunglow. All the orginal oak trim and cornice. The kitchen was orginal and the two bedrooms had brass two lamp decoritive ceiling lights with pull chains. Saw the house with furniture in place. One bedroom had an electric clock and the other had a lamp on the dresser (assumed there were outlets in each room). We closed on the house and got access. No outlets in the bedroom. The previous owners had drilled through the walls and pluged in the lamp and clock into outlets in the dining room and living room (one outlet in the dining room and one in the living room). They had spackled the cords in so when the left they just cut the cords leaving the plug in the outlet and a 1/2" of cord sticking through the bedroom walls. A couple of the table lamps in the living room must not have been pluged in at all since there was only one outlet in the room and it was 12 feet from where the lamps were.
I live in the same house my folks bought in '50. Built in '31, re-wired in '51. Knob & tube.
Dad always figured he could add to the wiring. He spliced into everywhere, eventually adding Lomex (Romex) as it became available but still, no ground. I've been replacing the wiring as I go along with 14/2 as required.
Decided, eventually to replace the fuse box with a 125 amp circut breaker unit. Counted the fuses - 6 15's, 2 20's etc.
My cousin arrived (licenced electrician) and asked about the 20s. No, Dad over fused the circut 'cause the fuses blew .....
Never could figure out why that clamp on the other side of the basement attached to the water pipe (½" copper) never fit properly.
Turns out it was the ground when we had galvanized pipe in the house and the clamp was never replaced when we went to copper with the smaller exterior diameter. I replaced it.
When the place was added on to in the early '80s, I was living in South Africa. When I came back, I asked why the kitchen extension dropped off 4" over 9'. I was told the builder had explained that the slope was needed for the rain(!). Every year I would jack up the extension so the back door would open.
Seems that the builder had designed in a full perimeter footing, but (I guess, they are both gone now) found there was an old oil tank buried and decided to use piers - 2 of them for a 9'x18' extension, and the piers keep sinking .....
Builder didn't charge any less, though. Dad didn't know better.
I have to use house jacks and push the house up as level as possible, remove the floor and level it, put in the full perimeter footing and a new floor.
I work alone, so it's going to be a while ....
At my age, my fingers & knees arrive at work an hour after I do.
Aaron the Handyman
Vancouver, Canada
I've been wanting to submit this one for some time, and this seems as good a thread as any......
I was called and hired by a family friend to go into his brother-in-law's (married to this guy's sister) home and finish an addition the brother-in-law had been working on for a couple of years. His slow pace had resulted in four kids (including newborn twins) sharing one bedroom.
One of the first mornings I arrived at the jobsite, the homeowner was not around, so I let myself in. A few minutes later, he comes sprinting into the addition carrying a bag from a local auto parts store. He explains that the building inspector is due in about an hour to inspect the PVC DWV system, but that he cannot get the pressure to build and hold in the DWV pipes.
Despite my immediate advice to call the inspector right away to reschedule (so as not to waste the inspector's time, etc.), this guy provides to shoot four cans of "Fix-A-Flat" through the DWV system through the fitting he had hooked up his compressor to. Amazingly (yes sarcasm) this remedy does not work. He finally relents, and calls the inspector to reschedule. I advised him to go around each joint with more glue and that solved the problem.
To make this even sadder, at the time, this guy was an inspector for the sewer department for the City of Toledo! And probably still is!
Great discussion! Been a guest here many times, but I had to register and join in on this one.
Lets see, where do I start. Bought a turn of the century 1.5 story victorian about 10 years ago, great fixer-upper at the right price. I have an extensive background in general construction, so I was undaunted at a total gut & rehab. Many problems were obvious (wiring running everywhere in the basement w/no obvious rhyme or reason, inadequate support structure in basement, etc..), but ahh, what you can't see.
House had a beautiful wrap around porch on 3 sides, except where prev. owner had chopped off a section to add an atrocious and innapropriate 2 story redwood deck. Decided to add a 2 story addition to gain a bedroom and laundry. Upon demolition found that the ledger had been spiked through the colorlock masonite siding, board sheeting, and occasionally hit a stud. No flashing whatsoever, so had extensive rot down the entire wall, and I shudder to think if we had ever loaded the deck w/actual people.
Upstairs had some lights and a handfull of outlets, but dang, it was cold in the winter. Came to find out our entire upstairs is wired via large holes knocked in the walls up in ceiling of porch at joist level (all joists are open end to end of house, and walls open floor to nearly roof by balloon framing) so it did a great job of cooling the whole house all winter. We actually kept a leftover turkey in a closed off stairwell one Holiday season-it froze at times.
I could go on for pages, but rest assured, things are getting fixed right.
The baloon framing makes a nice chimney if you get a fire in the basement. Good to hear you blocked it off. Can't do that now for 2 reasons, not according to code and they don't make 2x4's that long.
Buddy of mine had the same sort of Baloon framing and didn't realize it until he was having cellulose blown in the walls from the top down. He had about 30 bushels in the basement before he figured out what was going on.