Disgusted by today's electricians, Today's rant
At one time I had about 12 licenses in different states, electrical, oil burner, gas fitting, sheet metal etc
But unfortunately, now licenses mean you don't know anything. Its becoming a joke. being a licensed electrician used to mean something back in the day. now it means your a hack.
I feel bad for HO calling contractors who not only pay contractors huge $$$ but the work is so shoddy. I have been on the other side for 50 years but I can't blame any HO for doing his own work now.
Long story short, a relative called me who I had re-wired their 1915 house in the early 80s, they have had electricians their doing work over the years since then and have a few issues. One issue is a nasty dirt floor damp crawl space. The other one is very shallow old-time framing that requires the use of shallow electrical boxes with limited space.
So even though I don't really do any "real" work anymore I was curious to take a look. I still have my electrical license and go to the update classes (don't know why).
What I found:
Electrician added new kitchen lights and an outdoor spotlight and wired them to the 20 amp kitchen small appliance branch circuit which has never been ok.
He mounted old work metal boxes by driving sheet rock screws though the back (there's 3/4 wood paneling on the other side of the wall so i am ok with that) but he "grounded" the box by wrapping the wire around the sheetrock screw. NG.
One of the shallow wall receptacle boxes I had installed back in the 80s he extended the circuit coming out of the box. The box is not large enough for the added wire and wire nuts so he hammered the receptacle in to the box crushing the wires which eventually shorted.
He added an arc fault circuit breaker to the panel for an existing circuit that he extended. When I looked inside the panel the neutral pigtail was not connected to the neutral bar. This should have left the circuit with no neutral but yet I had 120 on the breaker and the circuit worked.
Turns out the circuit has the neutral and ground shorted together somewhere. I ran out of time to track that down, but I disconnected that portion of the circuit (with the short) hooked up the AFCI breaker correctly and the breaker and the rest of the circuit is fine.
Because of the shallow boxes and wire fill problems with the smaller boxes you end up with more junction boxes in the crawl space than you would like. Most electricians don't want any part of a crawl space and I don't blame them being in the cobwebs, bent over, the damp dirt floor, rocks, rubble, broken glass tracing wire and a lot of boxes is tough. The difference is they will guess at things, and I won't.
I didn't like it when I rewired it when I was 28
I still didn't like it today at 72 but i spent the afternoon down there.
All the original stuff I did is pretty good. Every problem is where someone hacked things up when adding things like trying to add GFCI receptacles into boxes not large enough
Hope I can get out of bed tomorrow.
My curiosity is now satisfied.
Comments
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Are you sure those were electricians? That sounds like stuff i did when i was like 15 and didn't know the rules. My parents' house that was built in 1957 had the ground wires bonded to the boxes under one of the screws for the built in romex clamps(which i disconnected and pigtailed and connected to the receptacle when I changed to 5-15or 20 receptacles because I didn't know it had to be bonded to both).
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It's rough out there, and getting rougher. Two days ago, I had to rewire a new 277 volt exhaust fan where Sparky had taken the feed from one leg of the old 3 phase power to the old starter, fed from the switchgear—but then picked up the neutral from a nearby panel. This is the guy who kept pulling off this job to go work in a hospital.
Whiskey Tango Hotel.
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I only did HVAC work, mostly oil burners, when I started in this trade. Many of my customers were shocked when they found out I didn't have an electricians' license.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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Can't fix stupid………………
All Steamed Up, Inc.
Towson, MD, USA
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Consulting2 -
Shocked you say? I'm going to need to see a license for that pun.
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"This should have left the circuit with no neutral but yet I had 120 on the breaker and the circuit worked. Turns out the circuit has the neutral and ground shorted together somewhere."
I've been seeing this a lot lately. I think they plug in the circuit tester, see only one light on and twist ground and neutral together at that outlet to fix it.
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I've said it before. When I started in 1985, 7 out of 10 tradesmen, took pride in their installations and knowledge of codes and sound industry practices. They didn't do shady things and showed up more or less when they said they would. They were reachable by phone and didn't ghost you or blow you off.
I recently had the same issue in my home finding a licensed electrician that was interested in WORKING, knocked out a quote in 2 days and came and knocked out the work in less time than he said.
I know plenty of good, licensed electricians, but try getting a hold of them. I find the inverse now...3 out of 10...if you're lucky. Mad Dog
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Yeah its pretty sloppy. Back when I got my electricians license in 81' it was a big accomplishment. Now it seems we have a bunch of slobs. It was common knowledge that you had to pay attention to what you were doing and do it right. MA was always pretty strict. I worked in NY very little, VT a little and CT quite a bit and the electrical work in MA was always done better.
Upstate NY was like the WW west very sloppy, VT was ok on commercial but you didn't need a license to wire a house so the residential was bad. Ct could be good or bad. They had electrical inspectors in the bigger towns and cities, but smaller towns only had "building officials" who some weren't good on electrical
I have wired a few houses but most of my electrical work was in boiler rooms
House are different but sloppy is still sloppy
In addition to the above, I worked as a pipefitter/gasfitter and as a service tech.
In some way this put me at a disadvantage because it was difficult to keep up with the electrical code but in some ways it helped.
Because I didn't do electrical all the time and someone asked me a question I might have to look up the answer or actually read the code book.
This was sometimes an advantage because most electricians don't ever pick up a code book unless they are forced to to pass a test or take a code update class.
Since I had to struggle to keep up, I read the code as it applied to the work I did and found I knew more than most on the stuff I did.
Related to this I have a relative who has worked in power plants for 50 years as a boiler operator. So they have to know some pipefitting and controls and electrical a little.
He started as a 2d class fireman, then a first class fireman and then a 2d class engineer. All these licenses were difficult to get. You had to pass a written test then sit in front of 4 state inspectors for the oral test
The last license he got he took the written and passed but the inspectors flunked him on the oral because he never worked in a nuke plant (although this was not a requirement for the license he was going for) that's what they did. He took the written 3 times and passed every time, but they would flunk him for the same reason. Finally, they realized he wasn't going away and his boss complained to the inspectors that they were flunking him on requirements he didn't need for that license. Completely arbitrary in the old days.
Now where he works, he is being told to sign for a guy (sponsor him) who came from overseas who I guess has a ME degree from his country, but the guy won't provide any paperwork. He is being told the state and the Governor wants these (maybe) unqualified people to get the license.
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If it makes you feel any better, I recently purchased a house with the intention of a flip or rental and when it got down to installing light fixtures, I realized that the laundry room light had a hot neutral. Upon further investigation, the switch in the laundry room also switched a hot neutral in the dining room on the opposite side of the house. I will be baffled until death, but the lights in both rooms actually worked despite having a constant 120v on one wire and a switched 120v on the other… I'm actually getting diabeetus just thinking about this again
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Electrically switching the neutral will work however illegal. In the old days of knob & tube they sometimes switched neutrals and there was the "Carter System" where they could wire 3-way switches using less wires by switching the neutral, but it isn't allowed now. you can Google Carter System.
Also it was common to bring power to the light fixture hot and neutral and then run a 2 wire cable to the switch (called a switch loop). This is still allowed but you have to reidentify the white wire as a hot. previously it did not have to be reidentified if the white for the switch loop was connected to the hot in the light fixture box.
Electricity is color blind it doesn't care what color the wire is but it confuses some HO
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Don't get me started on wire colors. (Too late. 😉)
Electricity don't know no color. I learned that last century. If they really wanted safer jobs, they'd just use one color for all the wiring. That way, you'd have to know what that wire did before you cut it.
All the different colors just make it easy for stupid electricians. I don't know about you, but I hate coming behind a stupid electrician.
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I had the certificate framed and it's hanging on the wall.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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I guess this is more common than I originally thought. I have a friend who is a fire investigator and he showed me some pictures from an electrical panel he opened during an investigation. The first thing I noticed was that the arc fault neutrals were clearly not connected so and I mentioned to him that's all wrong. He knew that but he said the circuit had power. Making more sense now.
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Also it was common to bring power to the light fixture hot and neutral and then run a 2 wire cable to the switch (called a switch loop).
This is how all my original wiring is and I hate it. I’ve changed over about 1/2 of them but I still have a few left on the second floor
NJ Steam Homeowner.
Free NJ and remote steam advice: https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/new-jersey-steam-help/
See my sight glass boiler videos: https://bit.ly/3sZW1el
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Nothing wrong with a switch loop although there is a very recent code change that requires a neutral at the switch location for powering rf devices so you have to use x/3 instead of x/2 cable now.
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What do you have against switch loops?
The only reason I ask is I used them in all the houses I wired. For me after the SR was up I always knew the power was overhead in the light and I just had to do the switches. It was just easier to remember.
To me running power to a 3 or 4 gang switch box gets complicated. You have power in and maybe power out plus all the cables your switching
A lot of guys use to feed through with 3 wire cable. You come out of a receptacle and power the switch box with a two-wire cable H & N, then a three wire cable from the switch box to the light Hot (black) Neutral (white) and switched power (RED) to the light. Then black and white (H & N) continue to another load.
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You guys had me confused on the switch loop… that's how I wire all the time. in my home. Then it occurred to me… you are talking about running Romex… I run in EMT and pull my wires.
Another rather recent change I found out from an electrician here in Chicago. It used to be you were not allowed to run a separate ground wire if you were in metallic conduit. I understand the logic was that you could get electrocuted because the ground potential in the conduit could be different than the ground wire. Now they are requiring ground wires when running in metallic conduit.. a complete about face. I sometimes wonder whether those writing the codes are actually testing in real life. I suspect enough conduit connections were coming loose that problems began to surface with grounding.
To learn more about this professional, click here to visit their ad in Find A Contractor.0 -
the separate ground ban sounds like a very uniquely Chicago thing. a separate ground wire has been required in raceway in Michigan for a long time, not sure if the model code requires it now, but it was a change Michigan was making to the model 20 years ago.
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No way I'd trust EMT as the grounding conductor. I think over the years I've seen more loose fittings, setscrews, locknuts, etc. than tight ones.
If the pipe and the ground wire are at a dangerously different potentials, getting shocked is the least of your worries.
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I agree that I have seen a lot of EMT pulled apart so that in itself is a good reason to pull a ground. Its strange that in my area any pipe newer than 45-50 years old usually has a ground pulled in. Older than that it was common to use the pipe which is still completely legal.
But I haunt a few electrical forums where many good electricians insist that the pipe as a ground is infact better than a pulled wire.
But for me I have seen emt pulled apart and loose locknuts on all kinds of raceways, so I usually pull a ground.
So I went back to this job today to track down the romex that was shorted N-G and I just replaced it as it was only 15' long and was fished.
It went from a switch to a ceiling fan.
Much to my surprise when i took the fan down I found it mounted to a round NAIL ON PLASTIC BOX!!!
I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore.
And yes, it was done by a licensed electrician.
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also when i was like 15 i mounted a couple fans on a metal box on a bar type mount. Some fans have a bracket that really looks like they meant for you to have the option to screw bracket to a joist if it didn't have a fan box. The fans themselves are also great at making a n-g connection after a little use. Many people in my family had an obsession with the $20 k-mart/home depot/meijer fan with no discernable brand. Things went much better when I convinced them to get hunter or at least sears(this was like in the 80's/early 90's).
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Fans are also where running 14/3 or 12/3 to the light for the switch loop comes in handy. Getting most of one of those steel new work boxes with the bracket that goes over the face of the stud mostly out and putting a 2 gang old work box in its place along with either a second 14/2 or a new 14/3 to the light for the fan and light is a pain.
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What do you have against switch loops?
The only reason I ask is I used them in all the houses I wired. For me after the SR was up I always knew the power was overhead in the light and I just had to do the switches. It was just easier to remember.
@EBEBRATT-Ed Im a different case because all the work I do is after construction (in my house).
The simple reason is when I turn off the wall switch I like for no potential to be in the fixture. With loop switch there is always 120 waiting for you at the switch and the fixture.
NJ Steam Homeowner.
Free NJ and remote steam advice: https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/new-jersey-steam-help/
See my sight glass boiler videos: https://bit.ly/3sZW1el0 -
The big problem with back switching is that there isn't power available in the switch box unless you do something so horrible that I'm not even going to say it out loud, except that it involves the 3rd wire of 2 wire Romex.
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Using the ground wire as a neutral?
I'm not sure I'd classify that as "horrible".
Bad yes. Wrong yes. Frowned upon yes.
But I've seen people do far far more horrible things with electrical work than that.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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Using the ground wire for a neutral should trip a GFCI if there was one involved.
My guess that the requirement for a neutral at switches came about because of that, as eventually every circuit will be on a GFCI/AFCI breaker.
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That combined with LED and CFL lamps not being able to power something in the switch with a small current through the lamp.
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