Contractor hit a wire while nailing up moulding in kitchen

[RicodJour]

You are confusing two different issues.

1). The contractor saying, "Don't worry." is a cavalier attitude and is scary. You'll get no argument from me that the guy behaved badly after shorting the wire, it certainly is not professional behavior, and a reasonable person should definitely be concerned in such an event. 2). The wire being in an unusual location is a "latent and concealed condition". The Owner did not know about it, the contractor did not know about it. It is the Owner's house.

Look at it another way. This is how it _should_ have worked. The contractor is legit, and the homeowner has a signed contract. The contract has the standard latent and concealed condition clause. The contractor hits the wire and it shorts out. The contractor stops work and informs the Owner. The Owner calls in an electrician to open the wall and fix the wire. You can't have a concealed electrical junction box, and the wire won't magically grow a foot so you can cut it and have the required wire length inside the box anyway, so rewiring is in order (unless everybody is cutting corners). The contractor would charge the Owner for the delay, unless he's in a good mood or has other things to work on, and for patching the wall/ceiling the electrician opened up. Then it's back to installing trim.

That is contracting and that is the textbook way it should work. Obviously it doesn't always work that way on smaller jobs, with unlicensed/hack contractors and without contracts. It does not change the fact that the Owner is on the hook for something the contractor would not reasonably expect to encounter. Since code requires wiring to be a certain distance back from the face of the framing, any typical nail used in attaching trim shouldn't have been long enough to reach the wire if it were in the correct location.

I don't know if you should be fanning the flames of paranoia with an already admitted spooked homeowner. They should be concerned, and they should get it corrected sooner rather than later, but there's little benefit in talking about deadly situations.

The OP mentioned getting a guy in to help with the trim. I am using the word contractor, though he may not be anything more than an unlicensed handyman, or a "skilled" neighbor. There are few homeowners who are totally oblivious to licensing issues. The decision to hire a guy without checking on their qualifications, licensing and insurance is usually made based on the guy's price being good, he's available, and, hell, what could go wrong with putting up a little trim? There's not a lot of liability like he'd fall off the roof, right? This situation should help clarify the error of such thinking.

About the comment of using a stud finder as a foolproof method of finding wires, and scanning everywhere before nailing. As Roger mentioned, there's a top plate running along the wall, and there are (toe)nails attaching the stud to the plate. Nobody except a blithering idiot would run a wire in a location that would require them to drill through the (toe)nails. More likely the wire was either set into notches, or just draped or stapled up in the soffit.

R

[Steve Barker]

better dig it out and inspect. I'm a wonderin' why in the world a wire would be so close to the surface as to get hit by a trim nail.

s

[John Grabowski]

You are confusing two different issues.

1). The contractor saying, "Don't worry." is a cavalier attitude and is scary. You'll get no argument from me that the guy behaved badly after shorting the wire, it certainly is not professional behavior, and a reasonable person should definitely be concerned in such an event. 2). The wire being in an unusual location is a "latent and concealed condition". The Owner did not know about it, the contractor did not know about it. It is the Owner's house.

Look at it another way. This is how it _should_ have worked. The contractor is legit, and the homeowner has a signed contract. The contract has the standard latent and concealed condition clause. The contractor hits the wire and it shorts out. The contractor stops work and informs the Owner. The Owner calls in an electrician to open the wall and fix the wire. You can't have a concealed electrical junction box, and the wire won't magically grow a foot so you can cut it and have the required wire length inside the box anyway, so rewiring is in order (unless everybody is cutting corners). The contractor would charge the Owner for the delay, unless he's in a good mood or has other things to work on, and for patching the wall/ceiling the electrician opened up. Then it's back to installing trim.

That is contracting and that is the textbook way it should work. Obviously it doesn't always work that way on smaller jobs, with unlicensed/hack contractors and without contracts. It does not change the fact that the Owner is on the hook for something the contractor would not reasonably expect to encounter. Since code requires wiring to be a certain distance back from the face of the framing, any typical nail used in attaching trim shouldn't have been long enough to reach the wire if it were in the correct location.

I don't know if you should be fanning the flames of paranoia with an already admitted spooked homeowner. They should be concerned, and they should get it corrected sooner rather than later, but there's little benefit in talking about deadly situations.

The OP mentioned getting a guy in to help with the trim. I am using the word contractor, though he may not be anything more than an unlicensed handyman, or a "skilled" neighbor. There are few homeowners who are totally oblivious to licensing issues. The decision to hire a guy without checking on their qualifications, licensing and insurance is usually made based on the guy's price being good, he's available, and, hell, what could go wrong with putting up a little trim? There's not a lot of liability like he'd fall off the roof, right? This situation should help clarify the error of such thinking.

About the comment of using a stud finder as a foolproof method of finding wires, and scanning everywhere before nailing. As Roger mentioned, there's a top plate running along the wall, and there are (toe)nails attaching the stud to the plate. Nobody except a blithering idiot would run a wire in a location that would require them to drill through the (toe)nails.

"More likely the wire was either set into notches, or just draped or stapled up in the soffit."

*I worked on a kitchen remodel back in march. It was a total gut job. While adding one additional recessed light to existing ones that were installed by a previous homeowner I found a romex cable running up from a switch that was wedged between the drywall and the top plate with no notch and no protection. I drilled a hole and ran it through the plate.

[clare]

And the "contractor" would still have known there was a possibility of hitting wire if he had used his scanner first. The wire may not have been running along the plate at all - it may (and most likely was) have been coming THROUGH the plate to go down to a switch or receptacle in the wall - and the nail ANYWHERE but where he put ir would have been a total non issue.

Knowing there was a live wire in the immediate area, the nail would have been moved 3 or 4 inches one way or the other and no problem..

When working in older homes in particular, you ASSUME there is a wire there untill you prove to your satisfaction there is none. With today's low-cost technology readily available there is NO EXCUSE for a contractor or a handyman to EVER put a nail , a drill, or a saw into a live wire.

[clare]

And we still don't know how long the nail was, do we???

Lots of guys use 2 1/2 in ardox finish nails to install cove molding. And we don't KNOW the wire was inside a 2X4. It may have been running down the side of the stud, strapped on properly. With a power nailer, if he missed the stud it could quite concievably puncture the wire. Without a stud finder he has no idea if he's nailing into a stud or not.

[RicodJour]

That was one of the first questions asked, and there was no answer.

Right. Carpenters for hundreds of years had no idea how to locate a stud. Sheesh.

R

[RicodJour]

You're putting another layer of drywall or paneling over an existing wall. Do you scan the entire room to locate the wires? Do you scan every stud and joist along its entire length? How long does that take? What about if there were a pipe in the wall? A wire that wasn't live until a switch was flicked on?

Contract law is full of cases that were determined based on "reasonable expectations". Code is full of requirements that dictate where and how wires should be run. In the vast majority of cases its not an issue as nothing ever happens - even if the wires are run incorrectly. You're backtracking and cherry-picking this one example and using it to make a blanket statement that would suck down a lot of time with very little benefit. If 100 carpenters didn't scan the walls, probably one or two would hit a live wire, none if it were run correctly. So to prevent the one occurrence you want all 100 carpenters to scan all the walls all of the time. Please. Why not just recommend using construction adhesive to attach the trim? That's even safer!

Hey, any hints on who won last week's big game?

The fact of the matter is that someone ran a wire where it shouldn't have been, or the guy installing the trim used too long of a nail.

I've been swatting nails for 35 years. I've never hit a live wire. I also have never used a scanner to scan all the surfaces. If I did, guess who'd be paying for my time? Every job I did I'd have to charge for that 'extra' service, and it would only pay off in extremely rare cases. I'd still get paid.

This all goes to risk management. Do you want to pay up front to me, whether or not there is a problem, or, _if_ there is a problem pay to fix it? A case could also be made that hitting the wire is doing the owner a favor by locating a shoddy wiring job.

R

[clare]

I look at the room and the layout of the electrics and say "where did they connect that?" and I know whether the wire went up or down (or both) from a switch or receptacle, and if wires run across between receptacles through the sruds, and at what height. I also mark where the studs are - putting in drywall screws where there is no stud does no good at all. When hanging items I also try to locate hanger nails in studs whenever possible - and with the studfinder I also know if there is a metal pipe (or other metal article) in the wall, as well as the wiriing and the location of the studs.

I then stay away from the location of wires and pipes when driving screws or nails, and use extreme caution when opening a hole in a wall where either exists.

Not very productive to cut a hole in a wall to install a box for a light switch, only to find a forced air duct taking up all the space either.

Helps to know where the "fire stops" are too, when trying to pull new wiring into a wall. - and if other wires share the space before attempting to drill through the "fire stop" to pull in a new wire. The stud finder lets me know where they are and if they exist. Gives me an idea how long the job might end up taking.

By "fire stop" I mean the 2X4 nailed in across between 2 studs, usually between where you can access to feed a wire (whether attic or basement) and the location of the switch/outlet/box you are trying to connect to.

So it takes half an hour longer to do the job (or even to quote it if you are a contractor) - you KNOW what you are up against before it happens - and believe me - THAT is good.

My Dad was a professional electrician - I worked with him many times on both new construction and renos - and KNOW that wires are not always in the center of the stud, and when they aren't they are not always protected by a "scab plate". If you did the original wiring, you have control over that. If you didn't, you don't..

I also know that not all electricians are as neat or logical in their layout as others. My dad was a pro - many are not. If I need to work in my house or a friend's house I don't just assume everything is as it should be, or that I'm going to be "lucky"

Now, when you have to break out concrete to do drain work in a basement, and you don't KNOW where the existing pipes run, That can be a challenge. Last project I had my plumber look at it and give me his "best guess" - then we laid out what we figured was a "safe" cut - cut it with a diamond saw, and carefully broke it out with the Kango, making sure not to let the chisel get in too deep. Good thing, because the ABS pipe was NOT where we thought it was. and we could easily have broken the pipe.

[RicodJour]

That's really my point. Just as someone else was saying in another thread how a newbie DIYer tries to not poke any holes and makes small access holes - how that's counterproductive and an actual waste of time most of the time - I'm constantly evaluating the work I'm doing for efficiency and risk/reward. I hardly ever use a stud scanner as I use my other senses to locate the stud - sound and touch. I can hear and feel how a hammer tapped on a wall changes as it crosses over a stud. After that the studs are going to be on 16's. I could break out the scanner and locate every stud, but that won't improve my final product or increase my speed.

We appear to have some different ways of approaching a project - no surprise there. I accept that you can't have it all spelled out, there will always be surprises, and the really odd ones are totally unavoidable no matter how carefully you think it through. If the idiot who did the wacky installation did something stupid, it probably won't be something you can deduce. At a certain point you just have to jump in, and of course, trust your instincts.

R