ECN Electrical Forum
Discussion Forums for Electricians, Inspectors and Related Professionals

Eek! and I am no one to 'eek' at everything.

I take it there are no inspections in this area?

Holy Crap!

What do we have, about 25' - 30' of service conductors in the house?

I wonder how the cable reception is with the coax wrapped up in the NM?

4-gang with bundles of wires, switches not grounded. No outlet on counter. Romex in plumbers pvc. 25' of unfused cable hanging on plumbers strapping. A mess inside and out of panel. Central vac flopping in the return and the 90 not connected. No staples, meter sockets not level. I don't know what you guy's want, it works don't it. And yes there was a rough and finish inspection.

Oh my God!.


You'd sort of hope that was the case Bob, I mean, what sort of an Inspector would pass this rubbish??.

I can't see any redeeming features at all about this work, it needs the biggest Red Tag in the land.

That panel looks to be way overloaded.

Pic eight is a prime example of why, in another thread, I had mentioned I don't care for wirenuts in a panel.

What an incredible mess!! Someone can make a lot of money (maybe) trying to fix this!!

Pic 9 is most frightening! Take look at those Engineered Lumber joists. Some gormless fool has drilled through the OSB webs right by the flanges, and even put in some extra holes for future requirements!!!!

I'd get me to a lawyer.

Alan

[This message has been edited by electure (edited 04-10-2006).]

I actually thought of you when I saw that pic.

I thought to myself MX ain't gonna like this.

Personally I have no problem with a wire nut or two in a panel when there is a reason.

Here we have what appears to be fairly recent work and an attempt to fit as many wire nuts as possible.

I can't say that I am truly surprised by the work in this house, it really is fairly typical for new homes these days.

is this home in a development? where the inspector did not actually look at every home?

also, after viewing pic #7, I see that I used the wrong wire when I put in my central vac system. I should have used stereo speaker wire. Is that so the vacuum sounds better?

The insides of the breaker panel is quite literally a "Rat's Nest".

Looks like the plumber and the electrician both did quite a bit of cobbling on this job.

Mike (mamills)

This house is three story, and is on an existing street, there were 5 other houses built with it, in a row. They replaced a big garage that was tore down.

I see the liberal use of duct tape in pictures 5 and 9.. notice how it's already starting to peel in picture 9..

duct tape should never be used for heating ducts.. despite the name, thats not what it
was designed for.

The correct name is 'Duck Tape'. Developed by the US Army-Air Force in WWII, with the technical assistance of a team of top-secret boffins and a sous-chef at a top-secret base in London's Savoy Hotel Restaurant and Grill, [ Egg, Ham and Fries 50 cents, 10% service charge ]. It was used to wrap round HRH King George V 's Royal Duck Flight on Regent's Park Boating-Lake. This was to stop them taking off and frightening the French Ambassador. By late 1941 he was a bag of nerves, smoking 120 Havana cigars a day, terrified he would have to surrender twice in one war.

Alan

That is just awful. I guess it's just too inconvenient to do a good job these days :-/

That is some ugly, sloppy work.

Pennsylvania does not require electrical licenses, does it?

Peter

No state license, just local.

>>The correct name is 'Duck Tape'. Developed by the US Army-Air Force in WWII, with the technical assistance of a team of top-secret boffins and a sous-chef at a top-secret base in London's Savoy Hotel Restaurant and Grill, [ Egg, Ham and Fries 50 cents, 10% service charge ]. It was used to wrap round HRH King George V 's Royal Duck Flight on Regent's Park Boating-Lake. This was to stop them taking off and frightening the French Ambassador. By late 1941 he was a bag of nerves, smoking 120 Havana cigars a day, terrified he would have to surrender twice in one war.

Alan<<

Ok, Alan on behalf of all the other posters on this thread let me wish you 100 HAHAHAHA's from each.. quite funny but it seems no one else noticed..

Why don't those meters have a poco tag/seal on them?

[This message has been edited by CTwireman (edited 04-11-2006).]

Sloppy, very sloppy poor substandard work.
Wires obviously cut to short hence all the wirenuts in piccie 8.

Non sheethed wires red,blue,white in pic 3.
conduit support strap very close to cables, could slip off and cut in cables.

Black coax type cables to close to mains wiring pic 6.

POCO meters not sealed.

Few more smoke alarms needed here, just in case.

Not very good at all.

Neat and workman like manner. YUCK WHAT A MESS

LOL, great, now I'm conspicuous with one of the moderators!!

My dislike of this practice comes from many experiences with improperly installed wirenuts in far too many cinema panels failing (or popping off while working in the panels), and several more where they've used them on the high-current wiring (>30 amps) to the lamp rectifiers, with phase loss and meltdowns resulting. It's especially aggravating when it would be less "hackish" to pull new wires to the projector itself. Most runs are 20 feet or less.

And yes, there are occasions where I work on subpanels live to do emergency breaker changeouts on the projection equipment. (Most subpanels are 120/208y 3ph.) This was common practice when I was employed with a big cinema service company. I generally power down but sometimes (as when one sub serves more than one projector system) a panel shutdown is not practical.

Most cinemas shut the breakers off each night, and the ones for the sound racks seem to fail often. (The ones handling the inrush of the power amps.)

As an interesting footnote, most Square D breakers give major headaches in this application. The instantainous trip setting doesn't like the inrush.

Sorry for the off-topic, but back to the issues here, my current work with high-end houses and screening rooms has shown that messes like these are all too common. A lot from harried EC's being pulled in too many directions at once by homeowners/GCs/designers who change thier minds as often as thier socks, and often unrealistic changes in move-in deadlines.

The last project I was on the changes and move-in date had things so backlogged, the occupants were living there for over two months(!) on temp power!! (Only 200 amps tied into thier 600amp main.)

Thou shall not allow plumbers to do electrical work.... "I have spoken..."

" Hey Moe, no wonder why these pipes don't work, they have wires in them " 3 Stooges - "This house sure gone crazy!"

Pic 3 - What's the wire diameter and Fuse rating of these Romexes in the left Pipe?

I have seen this kind of accumulation here in Germany too. There's a prescription about the down-rating of allowed current for bundles like that, and sometimes it's just ignored.

My List only goes up to 10 Cables, leaving 48% of the usual current allowed.

Table 310.15 in the NEC lists the following derating factors, based upon the number of current-carrying conductors:

4 to 6, 80%
7 to 9, 70%
10 to 20, 50%
21 to 30, 45%
31 to 40, 40%
41 & above, 35%



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 05-20-2006).]

Alan, those holes in the engeneered joists look like the factory pre-cuts. You can knock them out with a hammer, and, yes, they are that close to the edge. Besides that, WHAT A MESS!

"High Dollar," "Neighborhood," "Philly."

Pick two.

Remind me to stay away from that neighborhood.

Ian A.

[This message has been edited by Theelectrikid (edited 11-29-2006).]

That's rough. Sorry to bring this back from the dead.

Flux:

No need to be 'sorry'! A few of the posters that commented on this are not very active. That said....comments from the 'new' members are always welcomed.

That sure is a lot of embarsassing work right there.

~Matt

The documentation I have read on several manufacturers of TGI's claim a round hole up to 1 1/2" can be made anywhere in the web as long as you stay 24" away from either end and provide 2 diameters (largest hole) of space between holes.

Larger holes must follow a chart that tells you how far from the center of the beam you can drill given the size of the hole you need.

I almost never hammer out the knockouts because they blow out bad on the backside and they never line up for a smooth pull.


The LVL's can be drilled too but with much less freedom. I prefer to go around those if I can.


Just looked up LP's chart and it's a bit different from the last one I referenced.

http://www.lpcorp.com/Literature/LP_SolidStart_LPI_18_Technical_Overview-US.pdf