Some workmen have jobs where there is very little variety.  For instance, some men may work only on high-rise towers, or in manufacturing plants, or military jobs, or huge apartment buildings, or residential homes.  Fortunately, in my 65 years of being an electrician, I have worked on such a variety of jobs I have never been bored.

As I previously wrote, I have been employed in North Dakota, Montana, Washington and Idaho.  I have worked in small farming communities to places as large as the Port of Seattle.  I have worked for electric shops large and small as well as establishing and running my own business for 25 years.

People talk about starting a business on a shoe-string.  Our shoe-string was about 2 inches long.

A friend of mine asked me to do some work on her place as I was out of work.  I accepted.  She paid me $8.00.  Another friend asked me to do some work, so I spent the $8.00 on material.  This friend paid me $30.00.  I received $100.00 for the next job I did.  Then I had to buy gas.

There was a sale on at one of the supply houses so I borrowed some money from another friend and purchased a used station wagon and $200.00 of material.  After spending money on licenses, insurances and permits we were in business.

A couple of years went by before we ran out of work.  I went to Seattle.  One of the Seattle contractors I was working for got a job in Pullman.  I got to come home and travel to Pullman for work each day.   After the job in Pullman completed, work around Spokane had picked up enough that I could stay at home and make a living.

For a time I would work Monday through Thursday noon in Seattle and then drive home.  On Fridays I would catch up on all my local jobs for my business.  On Sunday afternoon I would drive back to Seattle.

On my way to and from Seattle I would often encounter cars in the ditch, rolled over, etc.  There were traffic delays and very often heavy fog.  Sometimes the fog was so heavy I couldn’t see the cars on the other half of the highway, but I could hear them.  I noticed that some drivers would pass me up and disappear into the fog.  I figured out that if I could speed up just enough to keep their taillights in sight, I could make better time.  Neither would I be likely to be rear-ended.  One time I followed someone right off the freeway, not realizing we were on the exit.

Working in Pullman about 100 miles away was much the same.  After a few years of that I was happy to stay home and work.

I finally got here from there.

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.