Stupidity Lurking

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pierre

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Westchester County, New York
Early Friday morning, there was a "bonafide" electrical fire at a large food chain store, in a large complex. The fire was confined to 1 panel, but the fire department and the building department with the electrical inspector had the store closed and all power to the store disconnected :D ;)
I ran out of capacity in my camera - 200 pics. I could not believe what I saw. I have seen plenty of horrible work, just not so much in one building. I am going back Monday with a larger card in my camera ;) .

The store will not be permitted to open until the "safety" issues are dealt with. My estimate is it will be weeks, and they will miss the Thanks Giving Shopping Season...they are verrrrrrrrrrrrrry maddddddddd. I say it is their own stupidity that made this happen. Their argument is they will loose approximately 4-5 million dollars in sales - OH WELL!

Another "BONEHEAD" move... these ECs placed their company sticker on the equipment they installed... can you believe it. For me it is not too much fun, as I know all of them. I believe they are in for a rude awakening real soon.
 
Re: Stupidity Lurking

Why would licensed ECs fail to pull permits and then put their stickers on the illegal work?

One of the features of a licensing system is people/companies can lose their licenses if they do stuff like this. Is this a possibility in this case? I would hope so.
 
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Your post got me thinking about a lot of the work I see everyday in the field. Most of the large commercial contractors (the owners) around here hardly ever set foot on the job. They or their license holder use what they feel are qualified foremen and workers who should know how to properly install electrical work. It just seems to be the way things are done on large scale projects. Most of these guys worry about finding work and getting paid and care very little about the quality of work that gets put in out in the field. The worst thing is that these jobs seem to breeze through the inspection process so when it's all said and done the EC gets paid and they simply move on to the next disaster.
 
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Pierre from my experiences in this area I would expect the stores lawyers to be tougher than the towns lawyers.

They will agree to fix it all but get the store open before all is corrected.

I am not saying it is right or good just what I have seen in my neck of the woods.

They will talk about how they care about their employees lost wages and the little old ladies that will not be able to shop and finally that "it's been that way for years" what is a few more days.

A 100,000 sq ft food store can generate grosses of more than million a week.
 
Re: Stupidity Lurking

Ouch!

Let's see them Pictures! :eek:

I never did understand why the Main Breaker for the entire strip mall tripped! It was the biggest Main I had ever seen... had to use one of those Tools that slipped over the breaker to give you enough leverage to reset it.
 
Re: Stupidity Lurking

Originally posted by davedottcom:
I never did understand why the Main Breaker for the entire strip mall tripped! It was the biggest Main I had ever seen... had to use one of those Tools that slipped over the breaker to give you enough leverage to reset it.
Click to expand...
You likely tripped the GFP circuit as it may never have been set correctly.

How do I know this?

Been there done that, I knocked out a 2000 amp bus duct feeding half of a very large office building. :eek:
 
Re: Stupidity Lurking

As of yesterday, they had 2 - 4000 watt generators at the store. The reason I am going back Monday is to take pics with better lighting. Then I will send some. Most likely you guys have similar pics anyway.
Bob
I am interested to see if the store will "muscle" their way through this, or the town sticks to it's guns.....HMMMM

One of the situations. An A/C unit on the roof must have been tripping (or they installed a larger unit after initial construction). The original feed to it is installed through the building in EMT. The EC ran an additional (parallel) feeder to the rooftop A/C up through the roof, across about 250' and into the disconnect on the line side. The load side of the disco they left original (one set of conductors). The run along the flat roof is in Sealtite, just laying on the roof, no supports or strapping. They ran an EGC with the Sealtite, and did not terminate to the enclosure, it is laying in the bottom, kind of coiled up. The contacts in the disco are completely discolored.

I think I could write a book about the work done at the store. You should see some of the A/C rooftop units, you just would not believe the fire did not occur sooner.

In the main store area (public area), they must have changed the lighting. The old/existing lighting was just pulled above the drop ceiling, and left intact - some of the fixtures are still lit, as the lamps have not failed yet. One guy said that was pretty cool, as they did not need drop lights in the drop ceiling.
This was told to me by an EC who was working in the store the morning of the fire...his guy is a fireman and was able to work on the fire as they called the fire department. This company did have a permit - and he is very happy about that :)

Firestopping - who needs firestopping
Securing and supporting - who needs that stinking support
How many conductors can you put under one lug - HE HE... I got 4 under this one- howd ya do that- cut some strands silly
Bonding - it is way overrated
Laying cables on a ceiling grid - isn't that why they put the grid there
Clearances - whats that
Lets see how many service disconnects we can sneak in (they actually snuck one in, they tapped the service, after the meter though)
Oh... the trough is too small - lets add some wood to the front of it and make it deeper

Need I go on?

[ November 13, 2005, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: pierre ]
 
Re: Stupidity Lurking

I was sitting here eating a ham and cheese when I read that they placed their stickers on shoddy uninspected work.Well it tasted good until i spit it all over the place :eek:
That`s like a police video I once saw where a guy robbed the bank he does his banking at.Or the burglar that just fit through that window in a food store and had 1 to many twinkees and got stuck trying to get out ;)
 
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sounds more like lurching than lurking. Lurkers wouldn't leave their business cards. others lurch ahead with directions unread. Lurkers would leave another companies sticker on their own bad work.

The reason those guys do it is that they get away with it. Once it becomes a code/permit problem, they just stay away from any permits until they have to. Then they get to blame it on some past manager or other company engineer or whatever, so the lawyers can roll it over.

Looks like the employees will stay working, so I have no sympathy for the store. Should be treated like a car in the diamond lane with dummies in both seats.

no one was hurt, which is good

paul
 
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We just got a very stern warning in our service department, that ANYONE caught working without a permit will be terminated immediately. This happened because one of our electricians got caught without a proper permit on their job.
 
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It's sad but I would have to say that the vast majority of post-construction work I have seen in the commercial/industrial arena has been sans permit. I did service work for one large outfit for about seven years. No permits were ever pulled on small projects unless a general building permit had been pulled or someone got caught by an inspector who happened on the scene. In the case of the latter the company would then pull a permit with no further repercussions. This was in a metropolitan area encompassing numerous jurisdictions. This company wasn't alone by any means. It seems to be SOP in the area.
 
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Often times the company/ corporate "electrician" will do the work. His qualifications max out at light bulb changer. His conduit bending radii is limited by the tire size of his truck. Wiring pulling is accomplished by luck. Often times the insulation is skinned or nicked. Pipe fill (what's that?)is unlimited. Most of the work done by unqualifieds is ugly and dangerous!
 
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Pierre, it would be very easy to stop this sort of un-permitted work if the authorities would take public safety seriously. The responsibility for permitting should fall on the property owners ( with fines for unauthorized work ). I have lost two jobs this year because I would not work without a permit, these remodeling jobs were done by other contractors because the GC and the owners did not want to permit. The reason one of the owners didn't want to permit is because of an earlier job when the inspector ( Fire Marshal ) found a lot of repair work in the rest of the building that needed to be done ( I got a lot of added work on that one ). I think most electricians like permits because it's money in the bank for us but the owners and GC's are trying to get out as cheap as possible by doing as little as possible. When electrical contractors can get low balled by others willing to cut corners it's very tempting to say if you can't beat them, then join them.
 
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I would think this kind of thing would come to a screeching halt is the food store's insurance company refused to pay because the work was done without permits, and is therefore illegal.
 
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I am surprised that the store did not have inspections by its own insurance company. I have never worked in a store but the several different manufacturers I have worked for the last 25 years all had annual risk inspections. Any unsafe conditions were written up and turned in to upper management, then they were responsible for getting it fixed.
 
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A few years back I watched a restaurant being remodeled across from a job I was doing, no permit. I could have reported the job but I wanted to see what happened. The work was completed and the insurance inspector showed up. I went across the street and had a chat with him ( outside the restaurant ) and explained that the job was done without proper permits. I was informed by the inspector that he had found nothing wrong and the business would remain open and insured. The risk was acceptable. The insurance companies get to make the call on what they will or will not insure. They don't turn down many large customers.
 
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most of these chains have risk management people that all they do is decide whether a risk is worth taking or not. they can tell you to the penny what each option will cost (or save).

i have never actually heard of an insurance company getting off the hook due to lack of permits. I suspect an urban myth.
 
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I have an inquiry into the insurance industry as to the permit/payment issue if no permit has been pulled for a particular installation. The initial response (I am told it is unofficial) is they will have to make a job by job determination. I suspect the official answer may take some time.

As far as the Building Dept and the Fire Dept, this building has been closed until all of the infractions are corrected. My understanding is this will take weeks :eek: . The store attorneys were not able to muscle the store open - I say good, as the store is just as guilty for permitting work without permits.

BTW- this action also brought the Health Dept in ... never a good thing for official invitations to a Health Dept, especially when they know many eyes are on the project.
 
Re: Stupidity Lurking

i have never actually heard of an insurance company getting off the hook due to lack of permits. I suspect an urban myth.
Click to expand...
I talked to an inspecter a while ago who was asked to do an inspection of the wiring for a swimming pool in which someone had been electrocuted. I do not recall the details of the situation. The insurance company had discovered that no electrical permit was issued for the installation and therefore no inspections were made. They were hauled into court for refusing to cover any liability. The inspector testified in court that he did not find any code violations. The court ruled in favor of the insurance company.
 
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