Dangerous practice

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tthh

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Retired Engineer
It is a bit of a though problem. Not sure of the solution. It is so hard and expensive to wait around for an inspector getting no real work done. Then there are the inspectors that won't even remove the simplest cover. My brother is building a new house on Pudget Sound, but very rural and he's more than an hour and a ferry ride away and still working. He's acting as GC. He asked me to help him (long distance) with the temp power. First inspector that came out would not even take the cardboard meter blank off the Milbank combo panel and failed him since he couldn't see inside. In preperation for the next inspection, my brother took the cardboard meter cover off and just put garbage bag over the whole panel. It was a different inspector, but he passed him.
 
Those photos a couple posts back are crazy. Would not trust anything that guy did anywhere.
 
Tigerloose said:
You are incorrect. I can even name the solar company that was at ground zero. It started with PV and since there are many service upgrades associated with PV it spread to the upgrade trade. Keep in mind, this is Southern California. Hundreds of solar permits are issued every day.

I don'r expect anyone to take my word for it. I am truly dumbfounded that it happens at all. But trust me on this, I am a witness.



There's electricians and then there's "electricians". Would you think that an electrician did this:

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How about this:

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Wow a few pictures of some shoddy work that happens to be PV. So informative. Let me make some macro scale conclusions on these. Let me walk down the street and find a pic of some shoddy sign work, and we can complain about how bad sign people are... 🙄

I have been an electrician for about 25 years and worked in a myriad of different states with different requirements. I can tell you there is shoddy work EVERYWHERE, and it's not limited to one specialty, not limited to licensed or not, union or not, whatever.
 
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Tigerloose said:
You may have taken personally the onslaught directed toward the PV crowd.
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Yes it is annoying. Mainly because this is a professionals only forum, and this sub topic of PV is used by me and other professionals for our work. Unfortunately there are people on here who use it has a forum to express their politics. This isn't my forum, but may I ask you find another place for that?
 
electrofelon said:
If you have something constructive relating to PV code or installation questions, then please participate.
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I don't find the topic of this thread to be outside the scope of the sub-forum.

But it would be more useful to have some hard data, like "In the fix months of 2023 I did 100 PV inspections (including reinspections), and in 15 of those I encountered unattended exposed energized services". Or whatever the percentage is.

Cheers, Wayne
 
Tigerloose said:
The PV industry gave birth to the practice. It wasn't happening until the demand for solar outstripped the available workforce....
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There have been non-PV threads on this forum about guys who thought they didn't have to be present for inspections. So no, it didn't birth this practice. But what you're saying is, PV is so great a benefit to the consumer that we need to be talking about how we can have more workforce training to keep up with the demand. That's what this conversation is really about isn't it? PV is just too beneficial.
 
electrofelon said:
I think an AHJ needs to explicitly define the requirements and parameters for inspections. Does someone have to be there? Do covers need to be removed? Can inspectors remove covers on energized equipment?
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Yeah, I don't get it, actually. Just fail the inspections and they'll stop doing it. Doesn't happen around here AFAIK.
 
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