jmellc
Senior Member
- Location
- Durham, NC
- Occupation
- Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
A client purchased a house with Chinese drywall. All of the electrical devices had corrosion on the terminal screws and bare parts of the wires. He ripped out all the drywall and hired us to remove all the devices, trim back the wires to shiny copper, and re-install new devices. After the new drywall was installed we trimmed out the house.
It's been a couple of months and he's getting ready to move in and noticed there's no power in several parts of the house. (My guy should have tested everything before he said he was done, but that's another story.) So I go over and start troubleshooting and discover the drywall guys covered up four receptacle boxes and of course they did not get made up and so everything past them was dead.
I'm charging him extra for the troubleshooting and uncovering of hidden boxes and I'll suggest he back-charge the drywall contractor which probably won't happen.
Luckily for me, I have experienced this problem so many times before that I take pictures of the entire house before the drywall goes up so I can find hidden boxes. It's a nightmare without pictures or x-ray vision. The poor quality of drywall crews is mind boggling.
Anyone might do that occasionally but a former boss and I worked for a GC that did this on nearly every job. I fully blamed him, not his crew. He sold himself as a high end GC and got a lot of jobs in upper class homes but he was little better than someone from down the tracks. He pushed speed above all else. They covered boxes, ripped up some boxes and wiring with rotozips, and covered can lights. They didn't finish around boxes unless they were in a joint. Quarter to half inch gaps around boxes were not unusual. Then he would fuss at us for taking too long. I came close to putting a hammer in his no good skull more than once.
Crews used to mark boxes and cut rock before putting it up. Now they mark center and rotozip it. Rotzips should be illegal in my book.