On Tuesday 10 December 2024 11:58:38 am wn4isx via groups.io wrote:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 11:35 AM, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
but I've often wondered who the hell did that...
Some highly paid electrician.
Not necessarily. I've been doing AC wiring for a long time. Helped the landlord with outlets and lighting as he finished his basement, an electrician was called in to inspect afterwards, no problems. This was in NYC, which has some pretty strict licensing requirements. I have had a number of occasions where people mentioned the "need" for a licensed electrician, but PA has no such requirement, excepting the city of Harrisburg as far as I know. And I've seen some crazy shit. In one place I lived there was a box with a switch at the top of the basement stairs, for the basement lights. Wires coming out of that box was not romex or anything similar, just single conductor black, held down with staples. In this 100 year old house all of the outlets are of the grounded variety, I'm sure that somebody did that for convenience of plugging things in without the need to use an adapter. My handy outlet tester shows no ground on several of them. A complete survey is on my list.
One of the things I did a fair amount of before I retired from running those service calls was a lot of "low voltage" wiring. Phone, network, RF -- I still have boxes of cable and jacks and wall plates and such that used to live in my car. My service area used to include MD, but then I bumped into a licensing requirement in Harford County. Inquiring, I was told that the way to get a license there was to get into a 3 year apprenticeship. Not gonna happen! I just love it when some trade decides to protect themselves with crap like this.
(...)
And the NEC requires the neutral and ground only be bonded at the entry breaker panel/
I worked in a place with about 18 sub panels, every one of them had the neutral ground jumper in place.
If they really want people to conform to the NEC then they should make it more easily available. Like downloadable or similar. But no, they see that as a money making source, so they don't.
(...)
A friend worked in a local hospitlal the new wing had all the 120V outlets Hots miswired to 240.
All of them.
Heads rolled in that mess.
As it should be.
Several years back we were buying a trailer. Got a site, and had the guy bring it up there and hook it up. I had to borrow a truck and go and get a fuel tank for the furnace and install it. Then fix it when the lack of a filter started causing me some problems. I learned much more than I wanted to know about oil furnaces back then. The guy hooked up the three wires for the electrical service wrong. Turning on some lights caused them to blow immediately, and another casualty was the element in the water heater, which in trailers is 120V, not 240, so when it got 240 it wasn't real happy. At that point in time I was lucky enough to know a contractor that had the special wrench to swap that thing out, too.
Yep, carpentry and electrical work can get real interesting here in PA...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
