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.

Above ground wiring must be at the proper height, and wiring that is covered must be installed at the proper depth.  Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it?  However the phrase “safe and legal” transforms that idea into one of many complications and convolutions.

For instance, wiring over the top of a roof has to be of a specific height, depending on the slope of the roof and the distance from the eave.  There is one requirement for the height over your back yard and another for over your driveway.  In fact depending on if your driveway is commercial or residential (in some cases if it is gravel or paved) the height requirement may change.  There are even different height requirements depending if the electrical wiring is going over a street or a highway.

There are different height requirements over a hot tub, or a body of water, or explosive fumes.  If you are placing conduit and electrical wiring on top of a roof, depending on such factors as average ambient temperature, roof construction, etc., there are different requirements for how high OFF the roof the conduit must be run.

If you have a roof covered with tar, the temperatures reflecting off the roof can become very high.  Therefore, the wiring must achieve a certain height off of the roof to provide cooling.  Even the entity doing the wiring installation can have a bearing on the height requirement for a specific wire.

There are just as many requirements for how deep conduit must be buried.  Rigid Steel conduit requires a different depth than PVC, and PVC requires a different depth than direct burial wire.  In fact some conduit is not allowed to be buried at all.

The depth of a ditch for conduit can also depend on what type of cover will be placed on top of the conduit.  If concrete is going to be poured over the conduit the depth of burial will depend on the thickness of the concrete pour.

One of the strangest circumstances I have had to deal with is when a roof is made of a concrete pour mixed with insulation, and conduit, boxes and wiring are encased in the concrete roof pour.  In such an instance, you have to use materials we call “chairs” to keep the conduit a proper distance from the top and bottom surfaces of the pour.

This gets to be a problem when you have the concrete finishers tamping and smoothing the wet cement.  As they perform their work, they can stomp on, step on, or push on the conduit and boxes.  This can result in broken conduit, misplaced boxes, or the whole being too near either the top or bottom surface.  When the concrete pour is finished, you have no way of seeing how well the electrical conduit survived.  Hopefully it all works.

There is a similar puzzle when many floors are being poured in a multi-story building.  There is a wire mesh that is installed in the middle of the pour.  A hook is used to raise the mesh to the proper depth in the wet cement.  However, by doing so, the conduit and boxes can become displaced, or to put it another way, completely out of whack.  I have had to stand and watch my conduit construction while a pour is going on to make sure that the conduit is not pulled out of position or broken.

On a building with no attic, sometimes thick pads of insulation are used and concrete is poured over the top of them.  It is necessary to notch the insulation and bury the conduit, all the while making sure that the conduit is not re-arranged.  On one such job, I got to the job when the concrete pour had already begun.  I had to really work fast. It ended up with some of the boxes and conduit sticking out of the top of the cement.

I couldn’t do anything about it.

Usually, running power into a manufactured home requires that wire be run in conduit under the home for some distance.  Sometimes the distance is short (less than 10 feet), sometimes it is longer (the whole length of the home).  Over the years, changes in the NEC required that we change our manner of installation.

When I was starting to install a lot of manufactured housing, we could run flexible metal conduit under the home.  Then the requirement changed to dis-allow FMC and require PVC.  After that, different types of PVC were required.  One gauge of PVC was allowed under the home, another gauge of PVE was required outside the home.

Then a change came that affected the depth of burial for the PVC outside the home.  Changes also came regarding how the conduit was secured under the home.  For awhile we could secure the conduit by any means we could determine.  Sometimes it meant driving pieces of remnant EMT into the ground and bending it over the conduit.  Then more of a manufactured nature was required – i.e. strapping.

Soon cement pads/footings were poured for the home to sit on and we had to change again by shooting concrete nailing shots into the concrete to secure the strapping and conduit.  I purchased a powder actuated “gun” and we would drive 2 inch nails into the concrete.

From previous experience on large commercial projects I had learned that you should call out a warning before activating the nail gun.  One time while installing the conduit under a manufactured home for a friend, I called out; “fire in the hole.”

I didn’t realize my friend was under the home at the other end when I did so.  I was just calling out the warning/notice as I thought I should.  After calling out the warning I activated the gun.  My friend came out from under the home a little perturbed.  He said; “Adrian called out “fire in the hole BANG!”  What you are supposed to do is allow time for everyone to get clear.”

We’re still friends.

On a different tack, this account reminded me of another dear old friend over in Glasgow, Montana.  Whenever I would meet him on the street, or any place unexpected for that matter, he would say; “Well what a man won’t see when he comes away from home without his gun!”

Another friend of mine, of German descent, would call out; “Adrian, Vas ess loes?”

I would try to reply and he would say; “No, no.  You are supposed to say ‘Alles ess nacht ochtopune.’”   (At least that is what it sounded like to me, since I didn’t know the German language.)  The exchange was supposed to mean; “What’s up?”  Followed by; “Everything is not tied loose.”

Permision granted to laugh at my poor German now.