Originally posted by Bill Addiss:
bordew,
A county by me has a competency exam for consumers filing as doing their own work. Perhaps something as simple as that (and a copy being sent to their ins. co.) would help cut down on the illegal work.
Question: does anyone know if Insurance companies view situations (who did the work) any differently with regards to rates paid or paying out claims? If they don't, maybe that's part of the problem too.
Bill
The problem as I see it is that the inspector has to catch the guy and pursue prosecution, leastwise, in my county. Its not fair to the guy who plays by the rules, pays all the insurance, bonds, licenses, certificates,and then the customer says, well your to expensive, and John Fosdick Electric who is not licensed, can do the job for a buck and a half less, but John doesnt have to have a Million dollars worth of insurance either, this was required this year. In my area, you can always tell when an illegal does a 100 amp service, they use split-bolts to make their hot-taps, and of course there is never an inspection sticker on it and the split-bolts stay, Ohio EDison uses crimp connectors in this area after the job is called in.
But sometimes it comes back to bite them in the butt, the illegal uses copper service conductors and splice to the tri-plex, which is aluminum, I got a service call on one of these, one leg was missing to the house checked everything and got to the meter, had to call OE and let them know that I was cutting their seal, and had only 120 at the meter base. got out the ladder, climbed up and opened the taps and you wouldnt believe the corrosion on those bugs, so sometimes we get even but not often.
