As with any trade, electrical work can produce damages.

It happened in a lawyer’s office, where two lawyers shared an office, and each had a pretty good desk.   And lawyers, by the way, have some mighty fine desks, some of which are very expensive,

The lawyers’ office decided to put in a fire protection sprinkler system.  The two lawyers moved out of their office for the day, in order to allow room for the plumbers to work at installing the sprinkler piping.  One of them had to come back into his office to retrieve some paperwork.  Imagine his consternation when he entered and both plumbers, with their heavy work boots, were standing atop his desk.

I believe that was the same office where we were called in to re-hang an 8 foot fluorescent light fixture.  One end of the fixture had fallen free from the ceiling and it was swinging.  It wasn’t swinging free.  However it did have somewhat of a pendulum action going.  The swing was regularly interrupted by the pass over the top of the desk where it was doing a fine job of scratching the desk.

I imagine that some insurance company had to cover the cost of those damages.

Thank goodness for insurance.

One insurance agent told me that electricians rarely have to use their business liability insurance.  Maybe, if they trample someone’s landscaping.

One time I went up to a Dentist’s office.  A patient had been in the middle of a procedure; probably doing a close examination of the ceiling.  The light fixture above her head let loose and dropped about 4 inches and was caught by the electrical wires entering the fixture.

I was told she left in a hurry and never came back.  Uh, oh, a lost client.

In another instance, in a large auditorium, a number of people were sitting in the audience when one end of a light fixture came down and was swinging “like a pendulum do.”  The auditorium had a sloped seating area, and the fixture came loose near the front so that the length of the fixture was still held above head height where it came loose.

Two older ladies had been sitting just below the fixture, but had gotten up and left their seats just before the fixture came down.

We went through the entire auditorium and refastened all the fixtures into roof trusses.  Amazing as it sounds, the inspectors would allow hanging fixtures from sheet rock with toggle bolts at that time.

It makes me question why some people will work without license, permit, or insurance.

I guess they have to be ready to leave town at a moments notice.

In times of economic downturn, the electrical trade sees a lot of “underground” business.  Out of work electricians will do jobs “on the side” to keep some money coming in.  Without a business license, Administrator’s license, or Tax I.D., this work is referred to as underground.

This blog is not about that.

There is a wire product designed for direct burial, i.e. underground, application.

When direct burial wire was first marketed it was UL approved for direct bury, outside use, at 200 amps.  It was UL approved for only 180 amps inside.  Wire that was rated at 200 amps inside was not approved for direct burial.  The Washington State L&I Electrical Inspectors would not allow the use of the direct burial wire inside a manufactured home, even if it was only to go the 3 to 4 feet to the panel.

To use the direct burial product to hook up a 200 amp manufactured home required a great deal of extra work.  I had to land the direct burial wire in a splice box of an approved type and size, and then go from the splice box with the “approved for inside” 200 amp wire to the panel.  Eventually the wire manufacturer came up with a new product (termed “Triple Rated”) that could be used as direct burial wire as well as approved to go in the home.  At that point we were able to dispense with the splice boxes and the extra wire inventory.

I have wondered just how much manufacturing change was made to the wire to make it Triple Rated.  Perhaps all that was changed was the rating.  I don’t know.  But I wonder.

At this point I should point out that the direct burial wire that is NOT rated to go inside a home is still available.  Some “Do-it-Yourself” stores offer this wire at a much lower cost to homeowners wanting to do their own hook-ups.  If it is used to go inside the home to the panel, and the Electrical Inspector sees it, a home owner must go to a lot of extra work to make a correction.

On one occasion I was called to an R.V. park and campground.  They had dug up a waterline near the electrical panel where all the circuits went out to the various sites.  It was near enough that many electrical circuits had been cut.

The owner had hired someone to make underground splices on the severed wiring, but the job done had left much to be desired.  The circuits had been spliced across circuits.  It was not just a matter of re-labeling the panel circuits to represent what breaker now fed which camp site.  The various circuits were of varying voltage and amperage.

When I got to the job, the owner had made identifying remarks about the circuitry.  Comments like; “This circuit belongs to this breaker, turkey!”

I don’t remember how many hours I spent tracing out and identifying the proper circuits, but I’m sure that my bill was passed on to someone else.

I did get a new customer.  I did a lot of work for him through the years.  It was on that site that I and my apprentice cut a plastic pipe we thought was abandoned waterline.  Instead it contained a 100 pair telephone line.  This is a very good reason for adhering to the code for conduit type and use.  You know what to expect inside a conduit by the outside color.  Grey is electrical, white is water, yellow is gas, green is septic, etc.

We had to call the phone company to repair our mistake.

We paid that bill.

When my wife and I started our own electrical company (AdenBecks) I had to develop ways to do the work without an apprentice.  As a result I created a system of doing electrical feeder installations for manufactured homes working solo.

The 200 amp wire for a mobile home is heavy, even when you use Aluminum wire.  Trying to pull the 200 amp wire through 2” PVC pipe is very difficult when you have two people doing it.  The Union prefers that the validity of a conduit run be proven by pulling wire through the run.  However that is not required in the electrical code.  My solution was to lay the wire in the run and then slide the conduit over the wire.  When the wire reached the pedestal I used a technique of swinging the conduit and wire aside and tipping the end into the pedestal.

Working alone saved my customers a lot of labor money.  The word got around and I made a niche for my new company for mobile home hook-ups.  As a result I personally connected well over 200 mobile homes.  I know that, because for years I kept a list of manufactured home hook-up customers.  At one time a newly developed Manufactured Home Park hired me to hook up all the homes in the park.  For a time I was hooking up about 2-1/2 homes a day.

There were challenges involved.

I remember one job distinctly.  It was way out in the country.  A man was putting in a residence for his mother.  While I was putting the wire in the ditch, the electrical inspector showed up.  This was fortuitous because it meant that the home owner could cover the ditch immediately.  On this job I used “Direct Burial” wire.  Therefore I did not have to sleeve the wire in conduit when it was buried.  The conduit was only necessary where the wire came out of the ground.

I finished the job and everything worked beautifully.

One day in the winter, and it was a cold day in winter, the home owner called and said that the power was off in the manufactured home.  I drove out and checked the power.  There was power at the meter, but not in the home.  The connections on both ends were good.

I took a guess at a point in the ground and dug 2 feet down to the wire (the ground hadn’t frozen completely at that point).  I found that the wire had been badly chewed by small teeth.  I had some wire on my work truck that I had salvaged from another job.  However it wasn’t 200 amp wire, it was only 100 amp wire.

I made a temporary run in conduit laying on the surface of the ground and got enough power to the home to keep it heated until a permanent fix could be made with the 200 amp wire.

I showed the owner the chewed wire and he informed me that there were no gophers in the area.  Well you don’t argue with a customer.  Even if you’re correct.

I cut out a chunk of the chewed wire and took it into the L&I office.  I asked them why the wire wasn’t rodent proof.  They informed me it was designed for direct burial, not to be rodent proof.

Huh?

We found out later that the manufacturing process of the direct burial wire used a component that attracted rodents to it.  Sort of like offering them a sweet aperitif.

I lost a customer, the temporary wire, and the conduit, but I learned a few things.

We decided to put the direct burial wire in conduit wherever possible.

And I learned that gophers did not like mothballs.  For a long time I kept a supply to put in a ditch where I couldn’t sleeve the wire in conduit.  I never had proof that the practice was successful or not.