On a commercial job in Spokane, Washington, we had a man come up from California to work with us.  At that time the Union allowed one man to work in our area or on our job from out of state.  The man that we had was made our foreman/superintendent.

At the time the electrical regulations in California were not as strict as the ones in Washington, and this man had done mostly residential work in California.  With all that being said, and looking back on the experience, I developed a bit of a pre-judgment about him.

From my perspective he seemed a bit shy of the necessary knowledge needed for a commercial job.  This to me was especially evident in the way he wanted the heating wired and installed.  I felt that his experience in the warmer climes of California was skewing his requirements for heating in Washington.

Then I found out, realized, had pointed out to me; that the facility we were wiring was to be a manufacturing plant for electronics.  The heat generated by the manufacturing process was being re-allocated for use as building heat.

I realized that the knowledge deficiency had been my own.

I should have given the California guy a little leeway.

This particular job had a feeder ran in three 4” conduits with Number 4/0 wire.  There was a junction box in the ground on each of the conduit runs.

When you run parallel runs of wire feeder, each individual wire is required to be of the exact same length, insulation, and size.  Some electrical inspectors are very strict about this requirement.  When we came to make up the wires in the bottom of the 600 Amp panel, it was impossible to keep the wires the same length as we landed them in the terminals.

I made some objections about the circumstance, but no one objected to changing the length of the parallel wires.

I learned that this rule had a lot of leeway.

My bad.

When I first started working and carrying a lunch, the current available lunch carrier was either a paper bag or a metal box.  The metal boxes had a round top where a small thermos could be carried.  The thermos would hold hot or cold liquid.  (It was not wise to put both in at the same time.)

Many workmen became very imaginative about the use and design of their lunch box.  For instance one of the first innovations I saw was a change in the thermos carrying portion of a metal lunch box.  The thermos size wasn’t large enough for some guys.  They would open up the end of one side of the box so that it would accommodate a longer thermos inside.

I mentioned previously about the guy that installed a “hot-plate” in his lunch box.  He took the heating element out of a clothes iron and installed it in his box.  He put a metal plate on top of it and fed the plug and cord outside the box.  He would put a cup of soup and a sandwich on it and fifteen minutes before lunch his box-lunch would get plugged in.  I wondered what he would do with his fruit or metal eating utensils, but it worked for him.  At lunch time, he had a hot meal.

I expect an electrician could have added a thermostat to the arrangement, but I never heard that anyone did.

When I first started hiring employees, I encouraged them to bring a lunch and not go out to a fast food place.  My feeling was that a healthier lunch helps you think more clearly, and promotes continued high production for the full 8 hour day.

After a few years you couldn’t buy a metal lunch box anymore.  Now they are all made of “melt-able” materials.  However with new technology you can get a lunch box that will keep your food warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

I have also seen the next iteration of that old “heated” lunch box.  You can now purchase a lunch box that works off of a 12 volt system to provide heating or cooling.

I wanted to buy one for each of my men, … but they weren’t inexpensive enough.

Everybody has the right and privilege to work on their own projects.  In fact the Do-it-Yourself industry is growing.  Whether or not a person does their own work or hires it done, the job must still abide by the laws governing inspections.

I have noticed that there is a great deal of difference in workmanship, usually depending on the experience factor of the person who performs the work.  There have been a few cases I have seen where a “Do-it-Yourselfer” has been so particular in his or her work that the job was as good as a contractor.  But that result is not common.

On the other hand I have seen workman in a particular trade do work so bad it could have been done by “Joe’s Pretty Good Garage Mechanics and Tradesman Coalition.”  Through the years I have looked at the finished product of Electricians, Plumbers, and Carpenters.  After awhile I could identify the company and the tradesperson involved by looking at the work.

Usually the difference was most notable between professional and non-professional.

On one job I watched a number of teen-aged boys on a scaffold trying to put up a sheet of 4’x8’ sheet rock.  (The process for fastening sheet rock has changed over the years and I won’t comment on what is the more correct way to do it here.)  These boys were using the process of placing the sheet rock in position, nail the corners, and then decide it was in the wrong location and remove the sheet.

When you remove a nailed piece of sheet rock, the nail heads pull through the sheet.  This leaves a small nail-head size hole on the front side and a large divot of missing sheet rock on the back side.

The crew of teen-agers did this so many times that the sheet they were using became as limp as a dishrag.  I guess they left it up to the taping and mudding to cover up.  When it comes to taping and mudding, you can really tell the difference between professional and non-professional.  A professional taper can tell the difference between a professional rock hanger and a Do-it-Yourselfer.  (Just as much as a painter can tell the difference between professional and non-professional taper.)

One time we were on a job where the sheet rock dust was about ¼ inch deep on everything.  It turns out that the rock hangers had been using a table saw to cut the rock to fit.  Their clothes looked like they had been grinding grain into flour.  It is usually not best to fit the rock so close that there is absolutely no space between pieces.  (Then again, I’m not a sheet rocker or a taper and I don’t play them on T.V.)

Speaking of which, when my wife and I were building our home we used a lot of pieces of sheet rock left over from jobs we had been on.  We wound up doing a lot of extra fitting and finishing.  We also used some 4’x12’ sheets, which were hard to handle for two (inexperienced) people.

Years later I found that there is a tool for sheet rock hanging.  They have a ceiling jack for the purpose of putting up large pieces of sheet rock and it works like a charm.

Which is why, generally speaking, no matter how much you know or want to do your own work, people with the right tools and experience will generally cost less than a D-I-Y project.