Inspection When to or not

[Fulthrotl]

In MA an inspector must do trench inspections within 24 hrs. and rough inspections within 72 hrs. Also the inspections are required to be conducted within normal work hours.

I don't brag but my work and the work of my men is impeccable. ....

To help justify his job for being so kind to come to the site as required by law I had my men remove the staples for the top of all switch boxes so he could find something wrong with the job. the only thing he found wrong with our work was the romex not stapled on the top of the switch boxes.

yesterday, my inspector and i were talking, and the subject came up,
and he said it's in the NEC that an inspection must be performed within 72 hours,
or you can cover it up.

the subject came up, as it seems that the city of newport beach has such a backlog,
it's three weeks or so to get rough electrical on a house there.

we also discussed how stupid jamming an inspector with a deadline would be, going
forward.... most of us have repeat interactions with inspectors in the cities we work
in, and the last thing i want to do is give someone with the ability to make my
professional work difficult a reason to want to do that.

my inspector wanted me to bond a 2" air line that runs thru my housekeeping pad
under where my switchgear goes.... is it required by the code? who cares? it's two
clamps, and six feet of 3/0.

picking my battles is something i've learned the value of by not picking my battles.

 

[kwired]

yesterday, my inspector and i were talking, and the subject came up,
and he said it's in the NEC that an inspection must be performed within 72 hours,
or you can cover it up.

the subject came up, as it seems that the city of newport beach has such a backlog,
it's three weeks or so to get rough electrical on a house there.

we also discussed how stupid jamming an inspector with a deadline would be, going
forward.... most of us have repeat interactions with inspectors in the cities we work
in, and the last thing i want to do is give someone with the ability to make my
professional work difficult a reason to want to do that.

my inspector wanted me to bond a 2" air line that runs thru my housekeeping pad
under where my switchgear goes.... is it required by the code? who cares? it's two
clamps, and six feet of 3/0.

picking my battles is something i've learned the value of by not picking my battles.

I understand the value of picking your battles, but this guy needs edumacated to make for less future battles as well, but then again you are in a high population area and maybe seldom see this inspector. I deal with same inspectors all the time because there is only one for certain areas. I just so happen to live about right on the border of 4 different areas so which inspector applies depends which direction I have to travel for the job.

 

[stevenje]

Never?

Me to.

I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong.

 

[kwired]

I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong.

I had a high school math teacher that always told us that.

 

[readydave8]

I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong.

Right, I never make misteaks

 

[jaylectricity]

All my photos are compliant. I can install that 165' of conduit in a matter of minutes after the trench is ready sand on the bottom lay pipe and cover. It would take me longer to photo shop my pictures than to do the actual work. That's kind of a crude way to look at others by not trusting them.

In MA an inspector must do trench inspections within 24 hrs. and rough inspections within 72 hrs. Also the inspections are required to be conducted within normal work hours. We have a lot of small towns here and most of the inspectors are not full time. They hold other jobs or have their own contracting business. I accommodate them by meeting them after normal hours or on a Saturday which i do not haft to do. If after giving written notice for a trench inspection if its not inspected within 24 hrs. i can just cover it up. So would you rather have pictures or nothing?

I don't brag but my work and the work of my men is impeccable. We don't make mistakes. We were wiring a large 18,000 square foot house along with another electrical contractor doing the HVAC control wiring and another doing the alarm system. It was a tight schedule we finished our work, I faxed in for an inspection. The inspector called and said he was not going to inspect until everyone was ready. I told him we had a deadline and I did not care about the other contractors. his reply was hes only part time and he is not going to make 3 separate trips out there. My reply back was im telling the contractor to cover the walls in 72 hrs. He then changed his mind and said he would be there in an hour. To help justify his job for being so kind to come to the site as required by law I had my men remove the staples for the top of all switch boxes so he could find something wrong with the job. the only thing he found wrong with our work was the romex not stapled on the top of the switch boxes.

The trust has to be there its a give and take situation.

If he wanted to he could have said you need to request an inspection in writing before that 72 hours begins.

yesterday, my inspector and i were talking, and the subject came up,
and he said it's in the NEC that an inspection must be performed within 72 hours,
or you can cover it up.

the subject came up, as it seems that the city of newport beach has such a backlog,
it's three weeks or so to get rough electrical on a house there.

we also discussed how stupid jamming an inspector with a deadline would be, going
forward.... most of us have repeat interactions with inspectors in the cities we work
in, and the last thing i want to do is give someone with the ability to make my
professional work difficult a reason to want to do that.

my inspector wanted me to bond a 2" air line that runs thru my housekeeping pad
under where my switchgear goes.... is it required by the code? who cares? it's two
clamps, and six feet of 3/0.

picking my battles is something i've learned the value of by not picking my battles.

If an inspector has so many inspections he can't get to you for three weeks then they are not charging enough per permit because they should be hiring another inspector to help with the workload. Unless they just want their whole town to be a shanty town while all work gets covered before they can get there.

You can "pick your battles" all you want, but it sounds like it will never matter because if they aren't getting out there to inspect, they can't hassle you about anything, and legally they have no recourse.

 

[Little Bill]

I have one inspector that will allow me to take pictures of a trench.
Then I have another that doesn't want pictures but will let me stick a flag, stick, etc anything that shows the trench has the proper depth. He just pulls out whatever I stuck in there to check the length compared to depth required.

 

[kwired]

I have one inspector that will allow me to take pictures of a trench.
Then I have another that doesn't want pictures but will let me stick a flag, stick, etc anything that shows the trench has the proper depth. He just pulls out whatever I stuck in there to check the length compared to depth required.

I could have fun with that one as well, how about we drive a rod 10 feet deeper then the actual depth of the installation and tell him that is how deep it is, he could have some difficulty pulling it as well:happyyes:

Maybe the inspector should be required to have an underground locator - they usually can tell the depth of the object being located, if not directly on a display you can determine depth via a triangulation method. Locate it vertically then locate it from a 45 degree angle. The resulting triangle you have has two sides the same length which also is your depth.

 

[sdewitt74]

I take some pipe and stand it vertically on top of my pipe in the ditch and fill it all in so the inspector can stick his tape in it and reference the depth when his tape makes contact with the pipe. Then i can remove the pipe and and all i have is a small hole to fill.

 

[kwired]

I take some pipe and stand it vertically on top of my pipe in the ditch and fill it all in so the inspector can stick his tape in it and reference the depth when his tape makes contact with the pipe. Then i can remove the pipe and and all i have is a small hole to fill.

If you have an inspector that trusts you. Go back to earlier in the thread and how I was horrible for suggesting people could produce a photo edited to their favor:roll:.

It would be pretty easy to cheat with that method if you wanted to.

 

[iwire]

It would be pretty easy to cheat with that method if you wanted to.

The horror, a conduit might be shallow. :lol:

 

[kwired]

The horror, a conduit might be shallow. :lol:

Tell me about it.


One place that I have found (disregarding code) that it is important to be deep is in field crop areas. I have had to fix a few underground lines, and sometimes the equipment it is connected to as it pulls on attached conductors, that were damaged by tilling type operations. Simple surface operations are generally not a problem unless there has been soil erosion, but some of the deep soil operations involve chisel plows that go up to two fee deep. After a few years of erosion they suddenly find a line with a plow that is not as deep as it once was.

You can cheat an inspector all you want in this case, the real disservice is to the customer.

 

[69gp]

Tell me about it.


One place that I have found (disregarding code) that it is important to be deep is in field crop areas. I have had to fix a few underground lines, and sometimes the equipment it is connected to as it pulls on attached conductors, that were damaged by tilling type operations. Simple surface operations are generally not a problem unless there has been soil erosion, but some of the deep soil operations involve chisel plows that go up to two fee deep. After a few years of erosion they suddenly find a line with a plow that is not as deep as it once was.

You can cheat an inspector all you want in this case, the real disservice is to the customer.

Ok I can attest to this a little more. We were working at a new police station and already installed a 2000 amp service with 8-4" conduits 6 containing 4-600 mcm copper conductors in one duct bank about 120 feet long under a drive way. another bank running about 10' away and parallel to electrical duct bank were installed per the drawings and laid out with a total station. These conduits carried CATV, phone and the 911 emergency. My uncle who was my foreman on the job called me and said that the duct bank had been damaged and that I better take a ride out there.

Well lets say that a large vibratory compacting roller can do a lot of damaged to a concrete encased duct bank. What happened is the civil engineering drawings did not have the correct elevation shown. Our duct bank was down to 30" to the top of the bank per the plans and they had to cut the grade by 24" to make the correction for drainage. The duct banks were trashed, cracked and exposed conduits, conductors showing. Steel re-bar held the duct banks together but it had to be replaced. A good change order for us. The only thing I dislike when this happens is nobody wants to take responsibility. The owner ended up paying the cost for repairs but it should have been the civil engineer should have paid since it was his mistake. I have only seen once where an engineer had to use his E&O insurance.

 

[iwire]

Sad, but that would have passed inspection and been back filled before the grade was cut.

I have seen basically the same thing with a gas line, it ended up just about 2" or 3" below grade due to grade changes long after it was installed.