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davidandkasie

i hate idiots

davidandkasie
16 years ago

we had our fire inspection at work last week and one thing the new firemarshal saw was a box not affixed to the conduit. this has always been like that, since we bought the place and first remodeled. the conduit comes down the wall, then a piece of split loom is shoved in it and the box is over about 3 inches from teh end of the conduit. you could not see it before becasue a file cabinet and copy machine sat there, but we had JUST moved it when he showed up.

anyway, he told us to reattach the box to the conduit. sure, i can do that in like 2 minutes. well, today i finally got around to it and this is what i found. the wires coming from the conduit were BOTH black #12. they entered the box and then pigtailed to the first outlet. i hav eno idea why they had a pigtail, they were plenty long enough to reach direct. then a jumper wire went to the other oulet next it in the box, freakin #16!!!! on a 20 amp circuit! it is a wonder we never had a fire from this.

anyway, the guy who wire dthis up is the same guy who wired up my grnadmother's addition on her house. there he wired an outlet to a dimmer switch for "mood lighting". problem was 15 years later she forgot the outlet was on teh dimmer and hooked up a 1500 watt heater to it. almost burnt the whole house down, and it was unlivable for several months until that entire end could be rebuilt!

back to the current situation, the conduit is the only ground, so i guess i will need to pull a ground wire if i can ever find where it goes from the light. we have found several hidden j-boxes in the building, all of them original to 1960 when the building was first built. hell, one of them is INSIDE a cinderblock wall.

if the fire marshall knew all this, he would hav elocked the front door and cut power to the building until we rewired the whole darn thing. while i am no electrician, at least i know when i am over my head and should get someone in who is certified.

and yes, we do have a licensed sparky coming in to correct a couple other issues, so i will get him to check this circuit as well.

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