Is my electrician dangerous? Please read

OK. My electrician has 1 feed for one of my bedrooms and a couple plugs in hallway. The feed coming from my basement to my 2nd story has a short. They think the drywall or siding guys screwed into the wire. The circuit was tripping so what he did was tied the neutral white wire into the breaker and then tied the black into the neutral bar of my panel. All works plugs/lights work. I caught this before and asked why he put the black on the neutral bar and the neutral wire on the breaker. He said he had a short somewhere and did that to find where the problem is.

So when I was at work I was told by my contractor that the electrical was fixed up and ready for final inspection. Curious as I am, I decided to take the cover off of my panel and found that he didn't make the change but that he put black tape over the neutral wire and back into the circuit breaker and left the black on the neutral bar.

I called my contractor (not the electrician) and told him what he did and said that there was no way that this would pass inspection. Am I wrong? Is this a fix that would pass inspection? Is this a common thing for electricians to do? This to me seems like a lazy fix, but am not sure if this presents a hazard.

Like I said everything works in my hallway and bedroom so I am thinking he reversed his wiring to make things work. So what it appears to me is that the black wire is hitting the ground wire form when someone screwed the drywall or siding.

Please offer me some advice and please let me know what I should say to the electrician when I question him on it. I know he will say hey don't worry it is safe, but I need to know if it is not safe and if it is not safe why it isn't safe to do this. That way he will not jerk me around and it would appear like I know what I am talking about.

I am almost thinking about telling my general contractor that he will not get paid for my reno until this electrical situation is fixed properly and I am thinking about getting another electrician to make the fix because I don't think I can trust this electrician.

Any and all advice is welcome

Thanks in Advance

Reply to
Doobielicious
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If you have a general contractor why are you dealing with the electrician? Just tell them you want it to pass inspection and let them deal with it.

Reply to
kzin

call your codes officer and ask him if its legal that will smarten up your electrician

Reply to
Roemax

[snip rest]

Yes, the electrician *is* dangerous. Very dangerous. There are at least two serious safety hazards in what he did: First, by reversing hot and neutral, he's instantly put every switch on that circuit on the neutral side instead of on the hot side where it belongs. Second, whatever caused the short to ground is still there; it's just connected to the neutral instead of the hot -- trouble is, the neutral carries current too, and so whatever's touching that is providing an alternate path for that current to return to ground, possibly through somebody.

Explain this to the general contractor, and demand a *different* electrician. Don't allow the first one back on your property, not even to try to fix his own screw-up -- no assurance that he's competent to do it right, and plenty of evidence that he's not.

Reply to
Doug Miller

For one thing, as of the 2005 NEC, all bedroom wiring should be AFCI protected. That situation would trip an AFCI breaker. I would question the electrical inspector regarding no AFCI protection, and certainly what the electrician did is improper and potentially dangerous

Reply to
RBM

"kzin" wrote in news:9ZWdnZa4AL9uQNDVnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Technically, the electrician does not work for the homeowner. They work for the GC. My belief anyway.

Reply to
Red Green

Doobielicious wrote: ...

If that is the case (and if reversing leads fixed the problem sounds as if is good bet) a check of that circuit for continuity between the new neutral and ground should show up that there is continuity (besides the neutral bar at the the box). That wouldn't pass inspection if the inspection is thorough enough.

Strange, however, that an electrical inspection wouldn't have been done before the walls were closed up unless this is retrofit work area.

It is not an immediate safety hazard as in it'll burn the house down tonight, but it's a circuit failure waiting to happen as well as the improper connection between ground/neutral other than the box and that there's almost certainly mechanical damage to the cable. Those should not be left unattended.

--

Reply to
dpb

First off, if the drywall people did screw into the wiring, it's because your electrician either didn't use a nail plate where he should have or didn't use a piggyback cable retainer when running more than two pieces of Romex along a stud.

As for switching wires, it's easy enough to tell if the screw shorted the black to ground. Simply disconnect the wires and do a continuity test. Code requires the neutral to be a separate wire from the ground. That way, if there's ever an open in the neutral, the ground can carry the fault and prevent frying somebody. Right now, it doesn't seem like that's what you've got.

I feel sorry for the electrician because he's going to have to run new romex. But this stuff happens all the time and it's precisely why the code requires nail plates over drilled-through studs and piggyback cable retainers that center the cables on the stud to keep them away from drywall screws.

Bottom l>OK. My electrician has 1 feed for one of my bedrooms and a couple plugs in

Reply to
Rick-Meister

Usually two inspections are needed for new construction. One for the rough while the walls are open, then the final. It may have passed the first as there were no visible problems and this is why the require a second.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

If, in fact, that is the problem, it is not much different than the fact that the neutral and ground still end up on the same bar in the panel. He effectively just change the color of the wire.

The problems though, is that if lights are on that wire, the switch is no longer breaking the hot, but breaking the neutral. Problem number two is that you just don't know if the black is just hitting the ground. It may be screwed through and into something else, such as a copper line that can become the ground. The screw may have also broken or severely damaged the black wire. I'd want the real problem found and fixed.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

Poor phrasing on my part.

Just tell them, the GC, that you want it to pass inspection and let them, the GC, deal with it. It in this case being your dubious electrician.

This is what General Contractors are for.

Reply to
kzin

Well, that's the way it used to be. New main panels separate the neutral bus from the grounding bus. The whole point is to keep the neutral and ground lines separate in the event of an open neutral--even from the main panel to the grounding rod or plumbing.

Reply to
Rick-Meister

Point this out to the inspector. I have a strong impression that making switches end up in the grounded conductor and having any outlets get hot-neutral reverses is against code.

Point this out to the inspector - I have heard of inspectors not looking at everything.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Reply to
Don Klipstein

Point out your concerns to the inspector. He has the final word. Either it's acceptable or it's not. Why all this tap dancing? If it fails, call the GC and tell him it failed, and why, and to send a different electrician to fix it. Maybe it will pass, and you're jousting with windmills.

Steve

Reply to
SteveB

That isn't exactly new -- it's been that way for decades.

Reply to
Doug Miller

[snippo]

If it passes, then the inspector isn't any more competent than the electrician. There are multiple Code violations here: a) at least one place where the cable isn't adequately protected against nail or screw penetration b) damaged cable as a result of a) c) neutral conductor now connected to something grounded as a result of b) d) use of black wire for neutral e) use of white wire for hot f) hot and neutral reversed at EVERY receptacle on the circuit g) EVERY switch on the circuit in the neutral conductor instead of the hot

Reply to
Doug Miller

You can label a wire on both ends using a tag or paint to make it another color. In other words you can put black tape on both ends of a white wire to use it as a hot wire. Any experienced electrician should know what it takes to pass inspection. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass about a government inspection, but I do care about safety.

Reply to
Phisherman

I agree. This must be fixed. However to find the problem holes may need to be made in the drywall. The electrician should be able to narrow the problem down a little by disconnecting wires at each outlet and switch until it goes away. If no one will cooperate, tell the electrical inspector. He won't pass the inspection until the problem is resolved. The electrical inspectors that I have dealt with carry their own little plug-in polarity/ground/GFI tester. If that was inserted into one of your receptacles it would have immediately shown that a problem exists.

Occasionally I find a situation similar to this in large scale condo, townhouse, and single family developments. Some of which are many years old. It takes me hours to find the problem or I just wind up refeeding the circuit with new cable. Unfortunately there isn't always a neat way to accomplish this. Better to nip your problem now.

Reply to
John Grabowski

re: Explain this to the general contractor, and demand a *different* electrician.

I'm not arguing this point, in fact, I agree. I'm just noticing a bit of a grey area here.

If the client should be dealing only with the GC, does the client actually have the right/authority to decide which sub-contractors the GC chooses? Wouldn't there need to be some sort of clause in the contract to grant that authority?

Reply to
DerbyDad03

Only under certain circumstances. And this isn't one of them.

A *black* wire is *never* permitted to be re-identified as a neutral.

And what about the damage to the cable? What about the fact that all of the receptacles on the circuit have the hot and neutral reversed? What about the fact that all the switches on the circuit now break the neutral side instead of the hot side?

If you care about safety, then you shouldn't be suggesting, as you appear to be, that there's *anything* legitimate about what this dangerously incompetent baboon masquerading as an electrician did.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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