Sometimes help isn’t help at all.

In a few auto repair shops I have seen a sign that says; “Fees – $60.00 per hour.  If you watch – $70.00 per hour.  Double if you help.”

I can identify with that sentiment.

There are times that the “Do-It-Yourselfer” is not properly capable and trained.  One thing that many do not understand is that, with few exceptions, all electrical work must be inspected before it is covered.

For instance, if there is ditch work on the project, and a contractor or home owner decides to fill in part of the ditch for access, an inspector will get real touchy about what has been buried without his O.K.

On one job the contractor wanted the wire in the ditch so that it could be buried, while the manufactured home it was intended to feed was not yet on the job site.  It was necessary to estimate the length of wire feeder because we had no idea where in the footprint of the home the wire would need to reach.  We wound up with a lot of extra wire.  And the wire was not inexpensive.

Later we had another job for a home owner that wasn’t “assisting” us so much.  The contractor from the previous job was helping the homeowner set the home.  When we completed our portion of the work the contractor questioned why it cost the home owner so much less for the electrical.  I told him he was giving me too much help on the first one.

Through the years I have hooked up hundreds of manufactured homes.  I had developed a system of doing it that was safe and economical.  Whenever someone wanted to deviate from that system, it was always more expensive.

One contractor who thought he was being helpful left a hole in the concrete under the home, where he thought the conduit stub out from the manufactured home would be.  This meant that I had to dig a ditch under the set concrete to be able to run the conduit under the concrete to the hole.  This was difficult enough, because of the rigidity of the conduit.  However, to complicate matters, the location of the conduit coming out of the ground, and the location of the conduit coming out of the manufactured home were off by about 6 inches.

The solution required a lot of extra fittings, and labor to make it work.  Of course that increased the cost of the installation.

That was help I really didn’t need.