Hi all
My in-laws are buying a new place (kind of an assisted living, but not totally) shortly.
I walked thru the new apartment and have a few questions.
1) the outlets in the living room were not all the same height off the floor. Is this considered bad code or just bad work?
2) The outlets in some places were more then 10 ft apart, I thought 8 ft was code.
3) Some outlets were more then 4 ft from the corner of the wall. I thought code said 4 ft was maximum.
4) the walk in shower has a pan on the floor 3″ high, is a curtain ok, or should it have a door of some sort?
5) I didn’t see any phone outlets in the kitchen or living room, just one in the bedroom. I thought it was common to have a phone outlet in there.
6) Can an inspector sign off on an apartment for a Certificate of Occupancy individually, without the actual building being finished? or even the apartment not having a kitchen sink or counters installed?
It would seem to me that allowing senior citizens with handicaps to move into a building still under construction is a huge liability and shouldn’t be allowed.
Jeff
Replies
No rule (that I know of) saying that outlets have to be all the same height. Sloppy, but not a code issue. Likewise, phone outlet location is generally not a code issue (though one would expect an "old folks" apartment to have lots of phone outlets).
You have to be able to reach an electrical outlet within 6 feet from any spot along the wall. This effectively means that outlets can be no more than 12 feet apart, and there must be one within 6 feet of a doorway or other wall end. (This rule really ought to be revised, but isn't likely to be revised in our lifetime.)
The rules for COs vary by state/locality, of course, but generally a CO can be issued for part of a multiple-occupancy building when another part isn't complete, so long as the construction is reasonably isolated (dust/fire/sound) and the completed part of the building (plus possibly specially maintained corridors through the construction area) meets all codes re ventillation, fire exits, etc.
I wouldn't think a CO would be issued for an apartment lacking a kitchen sink, however, unless some adequate temporary facility were provided.
Are the outlet heights WAY different, or just kinda off? If they are way different, it might have been done on purpose, for access from a wheel chair.
If the building is a handicapped designed use then the codes are a lot stricter to placements . I dont recall but you need to refer to the handicap sections. Of course the information you have provided is vauqe at best.
The placement of recpts are normally higher while the cable, phone , etc may be lower. That may be what you are looking at. In a regualr home you normally see al the outlets the same distance from the floor except in kitchen, laundry & baths.
The codes dont addess phone or cable and arent lisensed. Its totally up to the owner. As a side note the code doesnt go past the out let except in hvac & hot water heaters, , etc arent there. Unless the BI sees somthing that might damage the structure.
Talk to your BI about it . Thats the quickest way to retrieve your answers.
The final answer is yes , a BI can give a partial or a temp CO. That is his call . Ask him. He will be the best to give you an answer.
Tim
Hi all
Didn't mean to be vague, just happened.
The outlets I'm referring to are electric. In the living room they start at one height on one wall, drop down about 5 inches (about 2/3 rds of the way along the wall) continue around the back wall low, to the next wall then again rise up up to the heigher height again.
Pretty obvious without furniture on the wall. If an electrician did that on my job, I'd make him redo it. They claim it's because there's no knee wall as on the original plans. Still shoddy in my book.
Some apartments have TV and telephone on the walls, some don't. Seems like the electrician who did the work didn't follow a plan of any sort. The sales girl says it's up to the tenant to run their own wires around the walls. Poor planning is more like it. They expect senior citizens to run wires?
I can't find out anything as to who inspected the building, Vermont is a small state with few (and terribly overworked) inspectors. I'd probably never be able to catch up with him.
I worry most because I know who this building company is and have heard the horror stories from other work they did. After their gone, my inlaws won't be able to get any satisfaction. My wife and I will end up having to deal with the problems.
My choice would be to hand the sales girl a punch list, and say call me when I can come and inspect and approve it. It would include the halls and main areas also.
Trouble is my mother-in-law wants to move in asap, even tho I keep saying to wait another month.
I know I won't win this battle.
Jeff
Sometimes that flies to have work done and sometimes they laugh to their self knowing they can sell it . Just depends.
The reality is that the unit has a CO and its final. So that isnt in question.
What you are talking about is the only alternative . It would not have done any good to go back to an inspector now after hes written a final occupancy. Just to answer some of your questions . Ill add that an inspector doesnt judge quality and is not supposed to mention it . You dont take any note of it being unsafe , just shoddy work. Not an avenue for a building inspector in this case Im afraid.
If you feel strongly about your idea and feel it might be unsafe that would need to be presented by a home inspectors report . I doubt they would judge quality either . You might ask Bob here about that as he is a home inspector.
Tim
> In the living room they start at one height on one wall, drop down about 5 inches (about 2/3 rds of the way along the wall) continue around the back wall low, to the next wall then again rise up up to the heigher height again.
That's just sloppy, but not a code violation. Why not nail them up one hammer handle length above the sole plate? Easy enough. If what you can see is that bad, just guess what's hidden behind the drywall.
-- J.S.
Ya gots to pick your battles.
The height is an aesthetics issue. With the furniture in, it'll hardly be a big deal. It does show a general lack of concern over quality, though.
You're off base in terms of outlet spacing requirements--as others have said, it's 6'/12' with any two foot space needng a receptacle outlet. So you've got no grounds to find fault there.
It might not be a bad idea, though, to have an electrician test voltage drop at the outlets using a special tester. This would give an idea of the overall quality of the workmanship on the circuits.
Because it looks like the builder used low-bid, hack subs, I'd look into the fire alarm system and the fire sprinkler system. There've been cases where a cheap basturd builder just glued sprinkler heads onto the ceiling (no piping), ditto for smoke detectors and horns/strobes--just devices, no wiring!
Phones/TV--where ever the builder paid the sub to put 'em. One phone jack in a small apt is chintzy, but with cordless phones with base and remotes, it'd work just fine.
The question is, are they paying for caviar and getting chopped liver? If they're paying a price consistent with the quality, i.e., a Code minimum dwelling, then fair is fair.
Best o' luck to you and them,
Cliff
Note that heights that vary wall-to-wall may be due to some structure in the walls.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
You're right, maybe there's some piping or blocking in one wall. In another situation, you might want to put the receptacles in the baseboard in a wainscoted wall, and 12" or other height in the standard sheetrock walls. But given the OPs description of the place, it's likely that there's no wainscoting, and good sparky would have adjusted the height of all the boxes to work around an obstacle in a wall or part of a wall.
I have had to do it on occasion; normally I set receptacle boxes at 18" to the top of the box AFF, except in rooms where the window sills are too low to allow that. Then all boxes in that room get adjusted to suit the situation. They usually have to be dropped a few inches. Why 18"? The average age of the general population isn't getting any younger, and I'm of the opinion that receptacles are therefore better a little higher off the floor than lower. Old backs and knees don't bend as well as young ones, or so I hear ;-]
Cliff
Thread hijack alert!!!!
This is a good time to air my beef because you mentioned handicapped regulations. Here's my beef: How come they always mount the toilet paper holder so low in a public restroom???? They raise the toilet seat,then lower the paper holder!?!!! I can barely reach down there to grab a piece, then it takes maximum effort to get enough pulled out to do my business.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
blue
Roar!!!
I think they should insert a shelf for Sears catalogs out of the way but very reachable . hahaha .
Tim
http://www.codecheck.com/pg27_28electrical.html#rough
Any wall 2ft or wider needs a receptacle. No place on the wall can be more than 6ft from a receptacle.
Corners don't mean anything.
--"5) I didn't see any phone outlets in the kitchen or living room, just one in the bedroom. I thought it was common to have a phone outlet in there."
This used to be a bigger problem...now you can just get a cordless phone set with two or more phones. Plug the main base into the bedroom phone jack and put the other charger bases anywhere you want (all you need is an electrical outlet).
While we can give you rough estimates based on the more common aspects of codes used around the country, every code enforcement jurisdiction can and often does have amendments to the codes, either more or less strict. One county I worked in had 175 amendments just to the UBC.
Yes, I agree that building codes vary widely from state to state, and often a state/municipality/etc adopts a model code but then modifies it quite a bit.
On the other hand, in the few states that I have lived, they use the NEC verbatim, the only variable being which edition (year) NEC they have adopted. What are your thoughts on that?
Anyone else have experiences with modifications to electrical code?
Probaly not as much modificiations of the NEC, but there are some.One local city excludes AFCI's (and from what I have heard that is not uncommon). Another ones GFCI requirements read like something from 93 code. And a lot of places put more restrictions on service entrances, such as requiring outside disconnect and different grounding.
Probably the greatest form of "code amendment" is simply how the codes are interpreted and which portions are inforced the most strictly and which are more or less ignored. It's simply a fact of life in any code enforcement agency.
Along the same lines, there is a lot of gray area in code enforcement that has to be felt out in each jurisdiction. Heck, it takes a few times to get a feel for each individual inspector.
Good building