During an inspection of a 200A upgrade, the inspector took 30 seconds to look at the work I did, said something to the effect of: "I would never touch electricity, but I"ll inspect it" And signed off on the work.

Obviously, she meant, "work on electrical systems" instead of "touch" but I find it odd that inspectors would not be or have not been electricians. I am perfectly happy to have an inspection go so easily, but I can't help wondering what was going on in her mind while she stared blankly at the service panel. Is this what you typically experience, or was I so good looking, that she didn't want to hurt my feelings?

[This message has been edited by Joule-E (edited 09-08-2002).]

Joule-E

Were the covers removed for inspection?

Can you post an image of the service here for our inspection?

that is hard to say, without knowing all of the facts.
around here once the inspectors knows your work,which after a few inspections they can tell if you are trying to cut corners just to get by,or not installing according to the code.
on some of the inspections that i was present at the time of the inpection, i had them to just have an over all veiw of what i had done, may ask what i had install over all, especially when upgrading a service.
then without removing the cover on the panel they would sign off on it.
in the beginning when i had first had inspections done, they would remove the cover from the panel board and check carefully, even if i had ran a feeder for a mobile home or a out side building.

the concept of 'municipal immunity' echos hard here......

As for a service inspection, I remove every cover from every panel, and sub panel. The only time I don't remove the covers is when it a large service with large panels. Then at that time usually the contractor is there to remove the covers for me. As someone else posted, once you know your contractors, you might go a little easier on them. ( such as I won't check every outlet.) Then there are other contractors who you know are a little careless, I check it all out very carefully. After all the homeowner is paying for an inspection, so I will give them an inspection.

Joule-E,

In my area, to be considered for an electrical inspector's position one must first be registered as a licensed electrician. The other requirement is to be nationally certified as an electrical inspector.

Frank

There are a lot of "combo" inspectors at different municipalities in my area. Usually they come from a background other than electrical. There knowledge of electrical inspection is an 8 hour seminar they took when they got hired. (I am being facetious) The inspector on the last job I did, although a real nice guy, knew next to nothing about what we were doing. He mainly wanted to see our work before it was covered for his own education rather than inspecting our work. This is not to say it is like that everywhere here. There are plenty of cities with well qualified and thoughrow inspectors. There problem is usualy not enough time.
Nick

Sounds like most of the inspections I've witnessed.
I did a service change(upgrade to 400 amp) a few months ago and the inspector showed up 30 minutes after we got started, asked me what we were going to do and said he'd call in power approval in a few hours to give us time to finish. We did it to code, but we'd never done work in the municipality before, so how did he know it would be done even close to right?

In CA most of the jurisdictions are going to 'combination' inspectors [they inspect all trades but only need to know one]. Elect. is the trade most inspectors are weakest on - I've seen them walk onto a job site, go directly to the permit and sign it off without looking at any part of the installation - their reasoning: 'these guys are electricians, they know what they're doing.'...then you get the ones who took 1 semester of elect. code up at the local college and walk onto the job with lots of confusion and misunderstanding about what they remembered from the class they took 4 yrs. ago.

That brings up a sore spot for me. I am not a big fan of multiple hat inspectors. I mean I was doing electrical work since 1975 and all I did was electrical work, What doI know about plumbing? Most electricians are just that and most plumbers are the same. However when you see an inspector who is an electrical/plumbing inspector you have to wonder about that. Once I had an inspector do an electrical inspection for me for a rough in. The man got there walked around for maybe 10 minutes. Started to slap an inspection sticker on the wall, and I asked him. If he was the electrical inspector. He said that he was, and he was the plumbing inspector, and the building inspector, and the fire subcode inspector as well. When he walked out there was a sticker that said ALL of the sub codes had passed. I couldn't figure that one out because he did 4 inspection in about 10 minutes!

Yes I can and will post a picture, but I dont have one right now.
Thanks for your experiences. My work was fairly clean especially considering what a lot of 80 year old houses have strung up. Maybe that gave here the impression that I knew what I was doing.

I am a firm believer that we should educate the inspectors. When I have an inspection, I take time to point out each thing that was done right. In an ideal world all of the inspectors would be experts in their fields, but this is too often not the case. Therefore, I think we should teach them what a good job looks like. That way when the competition underbids with shoddy work, they will be stopped.

In all sincerety, Amen Brother!

You've described the solution to the problem I have locally. Heck, we need to ejumacate the fire marshal and his crew as well...

Or I need to "lighten up" big time like everyone else...