I'm in a sticky situation. My father-in-law decided to try playing GC on his own new house, cutting costs by doing his own plumbing and electrical. He sent me the plans and I created electrical plans off of them for him. He's no electrician. He then took it upon himself to ignore the plans altogether and just start wiring. He called numerous times with all sorts of basic questions (i.e. 3-way switches, dedicated circuits, wire size....). Later, when we flew out to visit, I spent the only day I had free over at the house undoing what I could and making it right. There are violations galore!
He "tested" all the wiring before rough was even complete by jamming stripped romex right into an extension cord and hooking up recepts and lights before the drywall was even up, mangling his wires with repeated tests. He also seemed to think that he needed #12 everywhere in the house, and that 12/3 was "better" than 12/2 - leading to the box fill problems.
Somehow, he passed rough (probably a drive-by inspection) and managed to wall in his mess. A few violations are as follows:
1. Main panel has all romex coming in in a bundle at the top through a 3" PVC male adapter (no clamps).
2. No bonding around water heaters
3. Improper grounding of main service
4. No GFCIs in garage/basement
5. No staples in the attic - wires going willy-nilly across trusses
6. Box fill violations all over the place
7. Simple stapling rules not followed
8. No AFCIs period
9. De-rating due to long stretchs of many romex bundled together across basement
Obviously, some of these are easily-corrected, and many will not cause a fire. I'm more worried that my 2-year-old son (their grandson) will stay in this house when it's finished (going on 2.5 years so far!) and I'm worried about the stuff I didn't see when frantically trying to fix what I could in 12 hours before flying home. My problem is that I personally don't want to get involved in flunking him on final as that would really make him mad at me, but I'm also afraid that another drive-by inspection will happen and he'll pass. This house is an electrician's nightmare, and it needs a lot of work to be anywhere near code-compliant (and therefore, safe). What should I do?
[This message has been edited by echandler (edited 12-07-2004).]
