That makes sense, I guess a small job, that is not to code, or inspected, will only injure or kill someone just a small amount, or cause a small fire, it has nothing to do with undercutting, it is public safety.
And just where do we draw the line as to when to stop requiring certain things to be inspected? We are over regulated so much as it is, and not just the electrical or construction related trades I mean everything.
If public safety is the concern then maybe everytime you buy a hamburger for lunch there should be a health inspector to check your sandwich to make sure it is safe to eat. Maybe there should be a traffic cop every 500 feet on every public road to make sure no one breaks any traffic laws and endangers themselves or others. Shouldn't an auto mechanic that replaces the brakes on your car have someone inspect this work? It can result in just as much or more life and property damage if done incorrectly as improperly framing a patio deck.
There are so many other professionals that are not inspected in the same way as construction professionals are. Why is that? Construction people are not smart enough to do things right the first time? Some maybe are not. Others know more about what they are doing than the people that inspect them. There are many regulated professions that get some type of inspections only once a year or even less than that, and some only when there is some kind of accident or lawsuit, but certainly not an inspection for practically every client that work is done for.
I guess that new construction and major additions or rennovations are like manufacturing a new product, and many products are often evaluated by a third party for public safety reasons, but even then you find companies that cheat or mislead people to put their products on the market and make consumers think they are safe.
As far as the inspector hiding and waiting for a guy to commence replacing a water heater, he needs to get a life, or at least a real job. Most inspectors I know of do not have time to do something like that, when they do catch someone doing unpermitted work that should be permitted, they just happen to be in the right place at the right time, or may come in afterwards when some one else files a permit for other work and finds what has been done.
We need laws for public safety, but they can't be so strict that we no longer have individual freedoms granted by the constitution either. If a homeowner wants to do something to his own house he should have the right to do that and assume whatever risk there is for not doing it to certain standards, If an individual or business were to do the same then we have standards to meet even if an inspection is not required, but even then if something goes wrong we are still held liable for the problem in many cases.
