How Do You Deal With Sub-contractor's Sup-par Work

[tallgirl]

The whole quality/ pride in workmanship thing has taken a big dive in the last twenty years now. Twitter dedum and twitter dee dee.

It's easy to blame this group or that, but the concept of "quality" as a buying decision has gone as well. The focus is so much on "price" that there's no room for "quality" -- and that extends to labor as well.

[jmellc]

Worked on a kitchen today and discovered a wall three or four inches behind another wall. Plastic outlet boxes had the backs cut off them to allow four to five romex to be tied together. I lost count of boxes buried in the inner wall. Owners were horrified and wanted it done right though, so that's reassuring.

I've seen a lot of that too. Have sometimes used 2 fire rings to bring out to surface level. I've tried in vain to get HO's to let me demo old stuff and do new boxes, etc. Often, the wiring is old 2 wire or BX with aging insulation. But, most people will only pay for the cheapest solution. That's why they were done so sloppy the 1st time and/or whoever did the work didn't know better. You can see so much crap in residential wiring that it can ruin your attitude & outlook sometimes.

[tryinghard]

Non-qualified type (home owners) are not going to understand the need to install correctly. Wire fill, voltage drop, boxes being flush with finishes, AFCI… these are meaningless to them. So if their approval or opinion is solicited they will never agree just because of NEC and likely not with a qualified’s attempt at teaching either. To them it’s just another reason to do more and charge more, their emphasis is skewed.

The qualified electrician will have best success with asserting “this will be or this must be” and maybe include a few options none of which should include using the same wrong found methods but only correct methods. The home owner simply cannot decipher without knowledge of the hazards and intents and we know how long these take to learn.

[cdcengineer]

If you are in any position of authority and you run into this type of shotty workmanship, than just use NEC 110.12 (Craftsmanship) as your ammunition for demanding things be brought up to snuff.