I just had my electric service upgraded to 200 amps (installed CAC), and had a new 40-circuit box installed. So when I asked the electrician (sub) to label the breaker switches, he said he did not want to do so b/c he could be sued down the road.
By way of explaining his position to this frankly confounded homeowner, he said he had no control if someone later came along, messed with the labeling, and then someone else got injured as a result.
When I ran this scenario past a lawyer friend, his comment was ” This is ridiculous, but now I know why every house I’ve lived in had the circuit breakers marked in pencil on tape!”
My GC is not eager to intervene, but I’m inclined to lean on him. Suggestions?
In the meantime, I’m “in the dark” as it were.
Replies
I'm no electrician, but I always thought labeling the circuits was code. Isn't it?? If he doesn't want to be (successfully) sued, he probably should follow code.
Another day, another tool.
I never had a building inspector pass me on final without the circuits labeled!
You electrician is full of it.
Sued down the road for labeling a breaker panel? First I ever heard of this. Inspectors, around here, demand that a panel schedule be present before a job is passed for the final inspection.
I have a hard time imagining what sort of protection he gains by avoiding identifying the breakers. Could it be that the job, or at least the electrical portion, has not been inspected and he doesn't want his name attached to the job? If so why not. Maybe he isn't licensed.
Worse case maybe he has burned down, or almost burned down, a few houses and is persona non grata with the local electrical authorities. Unlikely but I have seen this before. I have had to redo jobs done by glorified helpers who were doing work on the side. Jobs that they didn't know how, or care, to do correctly.
Maybe I'm being too excitable but I would contact the local inspection department, look around for permits and contractor signature cards and find out how close to the numbers this job is being run. If you haven't handed over the final check hold it until this is straightened out.
I don't know what you do if this is one of those areas that has no local authorities or permits are not required. Some of the no permit required areas have local authorities that still want to know about hacks that do substandard work and can make their name known to locals as the butchers they are.
Some good points, thanks.
The electrical job has not been inspected yet--and a UL underwriters certificate--is in my contract with the GC.
I've no reason to think the work is sub-par. I do know that our local electric utility as to be infomred as some point of the service upgrade, and that hasn't happened yet either. Think I'll push to get the UL inspector in soon....
How old is the house?
If 20 plus years, your guy has no idea what previous owner's and their alcoholic, laid-off brother's may have done.
Offer to pay him to test the board and the circuits to get a real understanding of what you have. All he did was take your breakers at face value, handle the 'heat from the street' and give you a bunch of open slots. It ain't his fault if some knucklehead pulled a non-GFCI outlet to the exterior off of the alleged dishwasher home-run.
As to code, depends on your State, and County, and Municipality, and, in my case, my wife. Lots of guy just mimic the okd smaller board: i.e. took the existing at face value, and labeled it up.
skip-'AHH! OK, that's hot!'-j
Maybe the light of comprehension is dawning upon me? :-)
The house is old c, 1893, and yes we had a real hodgepodge of wiring, including an old fuse box, that was eliminated with the upgrade.
But to the points posted about needing to have the panel breakers labeled prior to passing inspection, surely the GC knew this all along. Would this not properly be part of the contracted job, rather than an extra?
Thanks for the explanation.
Edited 2/7/2003 12:01:16 AM ET by Mongo
I dont know the code and not an electrian, but we couldnt pass inspection on our last basement finish because the box wasnt labeled when the inpector showed up. In kansas
Well I posted before reading everyone elses responce, looks like you have consensus already good luck
Edited 2/6/2003 11:28:18 PM ET by CAG
In an 1893, it would be hard to say what fixtures were on any circuit. Perhaps your electrician thought you wanted a detailed mapping, and not just one that "sort of" indicated what was on the circuit. If he was working alone, it would be a pain in the bu~~ to trace every fixture and receptacle. My guys did a quick coarse labeling of the box which was perhaps 90% accurate in that some branches had fixtures on 2 or 3 different floors. I later went back and did a complete breaker by breaker map with detailed records on where the wires ran and the order of fixtures on a circuit, and also labeled all J-boxes with the breaker numbers that were in the box. I have a copy of that list near the service panel.
The reason.....LAWYERS. They could twist it around and make anything HIS fault..MFers.
Yes it's code, but he probably saw something while doing the sevice change that made him wonder where all those wires really went. If it's that important to you, pay him his hourly rate(electricians are the highest paid trade) to go through the box, and label every outlet, light and appliances correct breaker. I'm sure it won't fit on the little label, so you will have a laminated sheet on a chain that hangs from the breaker box identifying all the circuits and what they have on them.
Labeling the box should cost about double what service change cost, but if you really want to know.......and you have lawyer friends..........
I can understand his hesitancy in an old house to write what is on any circuit. Even my 25 yr. old house has some really goofy wiring. If it's gonna cost you lots of money, I'd suggest another cheaper method.
What I did, is draw a floor plan of the house. Then sketched in every outlet, light, and switch. Then turned on every light, and got the kids to run around with night lights testing outlets. Turn off everything but breaker #1. Label, on the floor print every light, outlet, and switch that is powered by #1.
Go down through every breaker. Then go back for any outlet you missed, plug a radio into it and flip off breakers one by one until the music stops.
You may miss where some bozo put two circuits into the same box, but you'll have a pretty good layout of what is on each circuit.
It's even helpful to take the outlet and sw. covers off and write the breaker # on them w/ a sharpie marker so it's not visible with the cover on.
Still, use a test pen to varify there's no power before doing any work.
Also, you can check if all outlets that should be on GFCI circuits are, and if there are 33 outlets on one breaker, it'll be obvious. I found my freezer was plugged into a GFI breaker that feeds both bathrooms and both outside outlets. Ended up putting in a new outlet so it's on it's own circuit.
I had a single basement light on a 20A breaker, and direct wired w/o a switch as the wire connecting it to the switch was romex that ran across the stairwell ceiling. Of course, this was a fixture w/o a pull chain so it had to be controlled from the service panel.
The 1st floor bathroom GFI was "added into" a wire that ran up the wall and supplied the lights and outlets to two rooms on the second floor. Prior to discovering this, I was using that outlet preferentially to power all tools since aren't all bathrooms dedicated 20A circuits?
The house was converted to an up-down duplex around 1950, and the refrigerator on the second floor was plugged into an outlet that was on the same circuit as the first floor lights, ungrounded knob and tube to boot. I thought it was nice that the first floor people both heated the second floor and cooled their refrigerator.
The detached garage was wired with a run of 12-2/G and a couple of phone lines inside RMT that was buried between 3 and 6 inches between the two buildings. In the garage it supplied a two-pole fuse box with 2 120V circuits, that were nicey laid out with romex and new construction boxes on the surface of the finished walls.
3 way switch on stairwell light was wired with 12-2 between the switches. Nothing like a bare wire traveller.
Oh, and there was no neutral on the house, just a ground through the heavily corroded galvanized water service.
But other than that, things were pretty safe. ;-)
I only wish I had documented these on film before they were repaired.
A round here the electrician will install a new 200 amp service but won't move any of the old circuits to the new box.
The call usually goes like this.
Ho. how much would a 200 amp box and breakers
E. how far from the old box do you want the new one.
Ho. 2 ft
E. do you want us to rewire the house.
Ho. no
E. $300. depending on how many breakers.
E. Who is going to move the old wire to the new box?
C. YOu?
E. not unless we rewire the hole house, We don't want to be sued for some work a drunk fool, that did some thing that will burn the house down or kill someone latter.
I dunno.....the liability thing can be a red herring...sounds like the guy is lazy. My totally limited understanding of law is that you're only held responsible if your liablitiy can be demonstrated to be more than 50% of the problem. So if some non-electrician type hurts himself by working on a live circuit that was MAYBE not labeled entirely clearly, it would have to be demonstrated that the electrician was responsible for more than 50% of the error. On a new house, maybe he would be found liable, on an old house w/funky wiring ...........?
Around here (Western Massachusetts) if we're working on an old house we are required to label any NEW circuits we install. If we work on an old circuit then we label it. When I want to do a nice job for a homeowner I get my two-way radio and my helper and we can map out an entire house in about 1/2 hr. It's really no big deal.........people spend more time fussing about it than it takes to do it right.
Ed
My totally limited understanding of law is that you're only held responsible if your liablitiy can be demonstrated to be more than 50% of the problem.
In a few places in the US, but not most.
_______________________
"I may have said the same thing before... But my explanation, I am sure, will always be different." Oscar Wilde
This scenario seems a shocker (pun intended) in more ways than one. Heck, even my lawyer friend chimed back in today suggesting I spend a Sunday morning doing the walkie-talkie upstairs, downstairs testing stuff. (You guessed it, he included a disclaimer in his email!)
Electricians: where does the UL electrical inspection fit it with the 200 amp service upgrade? As I mentioned in my initial posting, the upgrade was part of a new addition to the house, and CAC installation In my neck of the woods, I can't apply for a certificate of occupancy without a UL certificate. (Electrical already passed the first, pre-walls inspection.) Inquiring minds want to know.
Thanks, everyone for your opinions and perspective. I have a fuller appreciation of all sides. Oh, the joys of "this old house."
"Electricians: where does the UL electrical inspection fit it with the 200 amp service upgrade? As I mentioned in my initial posting, the upgrade was part of a new addition to the house, and CAC installation In my neck of the woods, I can't apply for a certificate of occupancy without a UL certificate."
It doesn't.
And I am surprised that your contractor or electrican or people on the forum have not mentioned this.
UL only list or registers equipment not homes.
The NEC (National Electrical Code) specifies that approved materials should be used. There are other testing organizations that can "approve" items, but AFAIK UL is the only that test of electrical equipment.
The NEC also defines the standards about which materials should be used in which appication and the standards to doing the work.
AFAIK all locations that have electrical codes use the NEC, but there might be local modifications to it.
If you have inspection/codes in your area in most case the city/county/state will do the inspections and base that on the NEC.
UL never gets involved with the home.
BTW, NEC (1999) 110-22 "Each disconnection means required by this code for motros, appliances, and each service feeder or branch circuit at the point where it orgininates, SHALL BE LEDGIBLY MARKED TO INDICATE ITS PURPOSE...."
And there is some more specific working in another section on pannels.
I'm not going to add much other than what struck me as insightful. There's a young pup of an electrician here who can't have had his masters long and he not only labels on the door, he cuts off about 3" strips of romex insulation (think 3" straw) and slips it around the black wire and labels that too. If the paper on the door comes off, smears, whatever, it's still labeled inside. Probably not completely original, but I like seeing that kind of extra effort.
" Clothes make the man. Naked people have litte or no influence in society" - Mark Twain
I think that detail was published in a FHB article a few issues ago, maybe iin one of Rex Cauldwell's aticles?