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But you know what they say, when in _______ , do as the ______ do.(fill in the blanks)

Hehehehe..yeah, no kidding. But not when it comes to electricity as far as I'm concerned!! [Linked Image]

Don,

Some of it is downright scary... exactly just like those pictures we've seen and worse.

Some of it looks 'proper' at least at first glance though and the problem is not the original installers' fault but fellow 'civilians' who hack up the existing system to do mods - like adding more outlets to a room.

I've seen street vendors in downtown Cali "steal" electricty by running zip cord from a building through a groove in the sidewalk (cemented over) into the gutter, down the street and to their stall.

And you see the taped splices in spots where the wire has broken....all this to run their stupid little laminating machine or juice machine. Come closing time they just unplug their whatever from the rubber female cap poking out of the pavement and tuck the connector into a little hole so it doesn't get stepped on.

Colombia has a code (modified version of the NEC), but almost nobody follows it or cares. Old houses are sometimes wired up by residents or handymen who tend to do the job as cheaply as possible - stapling zip cord to the walls and using obsolete surface mount devices.

That's what this guy had done to my grandmother's house which dates to 1949 and according to her had standard in-wall wiring before this guy messed it up. Ahhh the bauties of being an absentee owner.

Somewhere in the NEC section I think I posted some info on the Colombian Electrical Code...

I'm sure problems like this are not exclusive to Latin America....otherwise we wouldn't have anything to complain about here!! hahahaha.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 04-12-2003).]