More strange electrical discoveries

[Minnie Bannister]

I mentioned a month or two back that I had discovered a circuit with a

20A breaker and #12 wire as far as the first junction box but #14 wire from that point on -- to a single duplex outlet.

Yet that is not the strangest thing: a couple of days ago I opened up the junction box to hook up additional outlets and saw connections with long cylindrical tape-covered doohickeys -- like over-long wire nuts, but cylindrical rather than tapered. When I removed the tape from the first one, I was surprised to see that it was bright green, unlike any wire nut I had ever seen, and with an "indented" closed end. The second one was identical except for the color -- more a blue-green.

After staring at them for a few minutes, I figured out what they were: the caps from some variety of "Magic Marker"!! And inside these DIY (= "DESIGN It Yourself") insulators I found the wires laid side by side, with a loop of copper wire twisted tightly around them.

I have no idea whether these abominations were perpetrated by the immediately preceding owner (whose "Seller's Declaration" claimed that the only work he had done without obtaining a permit used the existing wiring) or by an earlier owner. But who would have been liable in the event of a fire attributed to faulty electrical work of this type?

MB

[Joseph Meehan]

Now you know why most places require inspections of electrical work. ;-)

[SQLit]

Good one.

I was looking for a fault in a mobile home part, lots of rocks and BFR's. Found the fault in a suspicious place. Dug it up with a back hoe and found three gallon glass jugs filled with tar. The AL conductors stripped back about 6" and twisted together. Tie wire had been added in two places as an extra cinch. The whole thing had been put into a gallon glass jar then filled with tar and allowed to set. The owner of the park swore he did not do it. When I got out the crimpers and the proper crimps he made faces. He actually wanted me to put it back like I found it.

Anyone else got a goodie?

[HA HA Budys Here]

In a basement "workshop" (the entire basement of an older home was considered the workshop) 2 very tightly strung picture wires running parallel about 12" apart, diagonally across the ceiling. Hung from each individual wire was a brass pulley soldered to a wire, the 2 wires into a male cord cap. 30a Fuse fed one of the picture wires, and the other was neutral. Could walk the "outlet" anywhere needed in the basement, and his wife used it for ironing.

Homeowner (son of deceased "handiman") said he was a machinist and copied the electrical "trolley" system used in the manufacturing plant that employed him.

[Drummer of The Vibe]

Man, that is a good one. Mine isn't as good. Previous homeowner of my last home didn't really have electrical skills but wanted two ceiling fans. There was an outlet wired near the access hatch to the attic presumably for a whole-house fan or a portable light. He bought two orange extension cords, hard wired them into the fans, then plugged them into the receptacle in the attic. Now, it's not to code for sure, but at least I can't really think of any danger in the practice.. nothing like the electrocusioner in your story.

Bob

[Mitch Skool]

Crawling in a eave space behind a wall (A-Frames have a lot of wasted space, but ALL of my utilities are accessible without busting walls...neener-neener), I found a junction box for a wall outlet in the ajoining room with a 8" strand of lamp cord hanging out. It was hardwired to the outlet, and the pogue who commited the offence just clipped it off when it had served it's purpose. I suppose I'm lucky it didn't dangle onto my sweaty neck as I slithered past.

M

[HA HA Budys Here]

I wonder what the outlet was for...

[George E. Cawthon]

Hey there's no problem with those wires in the basement. You just have to be short and rather dour. No raising your hand to shout in joy. :-)

[volts500]

That's a good one!

"Handyman" calls me, saying it's the damnest thing he has ever seen........lights in garage only work when dryer is turned on. Someone had ran a 10-2 w ground Romex, tapped off the _unfused_ side of the service disconnect, up into the attic, across the length of the house, down the side of the house (with no conduit), underground, into a detached garage, and into one of those cheapo 30 amp black plastic MLO panels. Then used 2 individual breakers to feed the dryer the 240v circuit. The lights for the garage were connected (two wires under one lug) also to one of the individual dryer breakers. That's the breaker that tripped, causing the lights to not work unless the dryer was turned on. In the process of tearing all that out and re-wiring, discovered that the range was wired with

10-2 w ground Romex on a 60 amp breaker.

Then there's was another house where the entire first floor and basement of the house was wired by an "electronics technician" using zip cord.

Also once found a receptacle on a 20 amp circuit (in a factory) wired with telephone wire.

[AJScott]

I'm no electrician to know where on the ladder of foolishness this one stands in comparison to anyone else's examples, but even I stood there wondering WTF someone was thinking over this one:

I gutted the entire basement a few months back, and I started ripping down the drywall and paneling in a little 10x10 room made into a bedroom. Each and every one of the room's electrical outlets, which were placed normal height, were all conduited and wired into to another outlet about 4 feet higher. Each and every one of those higher-up outlets were live, and had been duct-taped over and covered over with a layer of insulation, and then drywalled and paneled over.

My wife and I inherited this money pit eyesore we live in from my sister in law, who never had the place inspected before she and her now-dead fiancee bought the place. Which has instilled in me the solid opinion that anyone buyiing a house should spring for an inspection before they buy a heap of rubble, even if it does happen to be in a tony neighborhood.

I won't even go into one of the previous owners replacing pretty much all the original 3/4" copper water pipe with 1/2" PVC as yet another lunatic passage to adventure ...

AJS

[indago]

040304 1508 - Mitch Skool posted:

I'll say...

[Chris Lewis]

According to Drummer of The Vibe :

ITYM: not covered by code. Because it's connected by plugs, code doesn't cover it at all.

There's nothing wrong with the practise. Because it's really no different than buying a portable fan, plugging it in, and mounting the fan to something.

The danger is if the cords aren't attached to the fans properly with effective clamping and strain relief. Or if the cords can fall into the fan blades... But these aren't electrical code issues.

In the same sense, my shed is a "portable appliance". There's a bit of

120VAC wiring in it, but it only gets connected by an extension cord (occasionally) from the house.

_Theoretically_, a code inspector can't fault it. However, before being sold, by Canadian law, it has to be "approved". I'd have to rip the wiring out of the shed first before selling the house... [The shed isn't really portable ;-)]

[Charlie Bress]

Not exactly in the same category, but no less dumb is this one. As a retiree, I was working at our local RadioShack. A woman came in and wanted a line cord with a plug on both ends so she could interconnect two strip lights. I told her we didn't have anything like that and furthermore it was illegal and dangerous. She said that the guy at Home Depot assured her that we carried that item.

Charlie

[HA HA Budys Here]

In a local hardware store, around Christmas they put up a placard showing 2 male clamp-un plugs (The kind you'd use to fix a lamp plug without having to strip the wires) connceted to a short length of lamp cord.

The sign reads: "WE DO NOT SELL THESE"

Clerk tells me every single year at least 5 homeowners string up their lights in the wrong direction, and end up with the male plug at the wrong end.

[volts500]

Hard wiring a ceiling fan with an extension cord most definitely _is_ covered by the NEC and a gross violation. Article 400 Flexible Cords and Cables.

400.8 Uses Not Permitted. (1) As a substitute for the fixed wiring of a structure.

[Mike O.]

October 2002 we moved into a 35 year old house. A few months later, one of my (many) projects was to put an electrical outlet (with GFCI) in the main bathroom. The only electrical outlet in there was on the metal base on a wall mount light fixture, but because of the height and angle, we never used that outlet.

I shut off the power and removed the fixture...Then just stopped and stared at it in disbelief.

The wire coming into the wall box was standard 14-2 w/g romex. The light fixture had two wires going to the light socket, and three wires (black/white/green) to the outlet (green also going to the base of the fixture). The white wires were all connected properly, but the black hot wire from the wall was connected to the black wire on the light socket, and the black AND GREEN wire to the outlet. That's right, the entire metal fixture was hot every time the light was turned on... On the wall directly over the bathroom sink... No GFCI... Copper plumbing that would provide a nice grounding path...

I don't know if it was original from the builders, but it looked old enough. Hard to belive it went that long without someone getting injured (or killed).

[Minnie Bannister]

We did have an inspection done before we finally agreed to purchase the property, but is any inspector going to look for junction boxes hidden above a suspended ceiling and then open up those junction boxes?

MB

On 03/05/04 03:43 am AJScott put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[Chris Lewis]

According to Minnie Bannister :

J-boxes above a suspended ceiling is perfectly okay.

J-boxes sealed behind drywall isn't. That example was probably that the room was originally used as a workshop, and moved the outlets when they converted it. Burying the abandoned ones is definately bad.

[George E. Cawthon]

That wasn't hardwired, it was just a long extension plugged into a receptacle.

[Tom Miller]

When we bought our run down 1921 house in 1981, we did a lot of interior repair, remodeling and renovation, for which we hired a contractor. One item we asked the guy to attend to was a large bulge in the plaster on a living room wall.

At some point, he chopped the bulge open, meaning to replaster the spot. Inside was a live BX cable with the end unwrapped, wires exposed, apparently meant for a long removed wall sconce. It was just plastered over into the wall. He said there were sparks all over the place when he hit it with the hammer claw.