ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Your call.....

"2~ 'write it up' on thier bill, placing any known liability for future nearsighted gardeners on the owner...."

Even if you would write it up you are still liable or at the very least you could be sued if anything would happen.

You know, being in business for myself I'm used to looking at situations with concern for liability as well as safety and code compliance.

People that work for someone don't seem to care as much about anything because it wasn't their house that they had to put up to start the business and if thier work is screwd up and causes injury or property loss all you can do them is fire them. They don't have to pay the liability insurance premiums.

Here is a little story about how liability works.

When I first started my business, a man hired me to rewire 1/2 of a duplex home that he had purchased.

He tore out the walls down to the bare studs and removed all of the existing wiring. He and his teenage son helped me by pulling wire, mounting boxes, etc.

Part of the job involved a new circuit and surface mounted receptacle for a new electric range that he had not purchased yet.

When we pulled the wire to the range location he asked me not to mount the receptacle to the floor yet because the vynal floor was not installed. He said that he would mount the receptacle after he put the flooring down.

I connected the wires inside the receptacle and put the cover on without mounting it.

About a year or so later the house caught on fire.

The cause of the fire was determined to be the unmounted range receptacle.

The insurance investigator told me that if there had been holes in the floor where screws had been it would not have been my fault.

My insurance company paid $17,000.00 in damages.

In the ten years that I was in business that was the only claim that I ever had on my liability insurance company.

So, when people tell me that the little things can be overlooked or let go I always tell them this story.

Remember, every time that you do something that isn't quite just right according to the code, you make a decision, right there right then, to accept liability for any damages or harm caused to property or persons. Even the smallest things, like two .03 cent screws could end up costing you a lot of money and a lot of trouble.

Luckily, in my situation, no one was hurt.

Makes you think... Doesen't it.?

it sure does master66, good post!

M'66,

Yeah, Man... Thanks for sharing that.

Sounds like a close one! I had done a service upgrade on a home that was on the water a few years ago. A few weeks after I done the job I heard that the guy had a fire in the house. There was a Bad storm here on Long Island and the water level came up into the guys house. The salt water had splashed into the oil burner
and a fire resulted, damaging the entire house. No one was killed except for his cat. He had called me and asked me why did'nt his breaker trip off for the oil burner? I had told him there is no guarantee when salt water rushes into the house and the oil burner sparks and something bad happens. I felt sorry for the family. It left the same impression in my mind, that is DO GOOD WORK AND DO IT RIGHT!
Thanks for reading this. Go with the Gut feeling of doing the job right and to code.
Be safe

update,
the well pump 3/4" was installed by an excavator.

Around here excavators assume they know everything about anything that goes 'in da ground' , and operate as such.

So,i told the GC to stuff it, and if he didn't like it to have said excavator gimme a call.

So now i'm a prima donna