At Home In The Woods

[dcyrilc]

That's a fairly decient outcome from the inspection. It's rare not to find any violations.

 

[tony Cecil]

Over the last ten years I have had strange problems from thing not being properly grounded...Had no idea about grounds.....All in all I have found all the rules and regulations really are correct, although I don`t like the system for enforcing them.....Tony

 

[Obed]

H&A Gas Line Update

Certificate of Occupancy Inspection

This morning my wife went out and checked the pressure gauge on the gas line. The pressure on the gauge had dropped from 15 psi to 9 psi. There was a leak in the gas line.

...

This afternoon, one of the H&A workers came by and found the leak in the gas line. The owner had quickly disconnected the gas line from the meter and put a pressure gauge at that end of the line. The leak was occuring at the pressure gauge.

Our next CO re-inspection for the gas line and porch will be Monday. We weren't planning on moving into the house until the floor finish cures so the re-inspection doesn't really change anything. However, it did discourage my wife some because this was a big milestone she wanted to be able to check off the list.

My wife checked the gas line pressure gauge this afternoon and the pressure has gone down again since it was "fixed" yesterday. We left a message with the H&A guy. I had just spoken to him 60 seconds earlier about the code violation using the Romex wire in the conduit. He didn't answer my second call. He's probably screening our calls again. If he doesn't come out and fix the gas line tomorrow, then we'll have to once again reschedule the CO re-inspection that is scheduled for Monday. If we keep this up, we're going to get on the inspector's bad side.

It's hard to work with someone who only returns calls when he feels like it. I would say that not returning calls is one of the worst things you can do regarding customer service. At one place I worked doing computer support, we were required to return customer's calls within 5 minutes of being paged. Even if we had to tell the customer that we were busy and would call them back, just talking to the customer made a lot of difference. The absolute worst thing you can do is not return calls and leave the customer wondering when they are going to just be able to talk to someone. Our H&A sub obviously hasn't learned this lesson.

 

[Obed]

Congratulations on being almost ready to move in. It will be a shock having so much space after living in the camper for so long.
I looked at the photo of you standing in the empty trailer and I knew how you felt. Not too long ago I emptied my trailer of all the old shingles from my shop roof. Because of leaving unexpectedly for a project a couple of days after stripping the roof it all sat on the trailer for a couple of weeks during which time it rained, then snowed and froze. Took most of the morning to empty the trailer of maybe half of what you had on yours.

I hate frozen garbage. Have had the dump trailer full and frozen solid few times

Rod and walleyed,
Sounds like I'm not the only one who has had this problem. I would have thought it to be a rare thing.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Over the last ten years I have had strange problems from thing not being properly grounded...Had no idea about grounds.....All in all I have found all the rules and regulations really are correct, although I don`t like the system for enforcing them.....Tony

Tony,
You summed it up very well. For our house building project we bought a copy of the code book from E-bay and used the code to educate ourselves regarding what should and shouldn't be done. We saw lots of things mandated in the code book that we would not have considered otherwise. We have insisted that subs do things by code. I think that getting familliar with the code may have saved us some future grief.

However, I have some issues with the code enforcement, mostly regarding my beliefs concerning how far governments should get involved in people's affairs. I tend to line up with our country's founding fathers philosophies on the topic.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed -

Sooo....what are you putting in the garage then?? Wife's car, and the JD? Will you're dually fit?

Frank,
We have 2 cars, the dually, and the JD tractor but only 3 garage bays. We'll park my wife's car and my car in the main floor garage. The dually will fit in the main floor garage but we probably won't park it in the garage. One garage door is 10 feet wide, specifically so we could put the dually in the garage if desired. The basement garage door opening is currently filled in with a framed wall so we are required by the county to finish the basement garage with drywall at this stage. My intention is to park the JD in the basement garage once we put up a garage door in the basement.
Obed

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

It is my belief that when you hire a suppossed professional subcontractor, i.e. electrician, I would think that it is in their personal interest to "ace" inspections.

 

[Diamondpilot]

Frank,
We have 2 cars, the dually, and the JD tractor but only 3 garage bays. My intention is to park the JD in the basement garage once we put up a garage door in the basement.
Obed

Make sure you put you BH and ROPS down first. I have seen too many pull the tractor in the first time and tear the garage door and header off.

 

[dstig1]

Make sure you put you BH and ROPS down first. I have seen too many pull the tractor in the first time and tear the garage door and header off.

Gawd I would hope he made the doors high enough for that.... I have up-sized the doors on our plan to 8' (the ones that weren't already that level or higher...), knowing that it will cover any flavor of Kubota I would ever get (no M-series in my future...). The 3130 is only an inch or two higher than being able to fit in my 7' doors right now, so 8' will be plenty. Of course the BH is another issue (that I don't have)...

As for Romex, no it generally isn't allowed in conduit. But neither is UF. Both are "cables" which in NEC-speak means a manufactured assembly of multiple wires. Conduit is really made for individual wires. Often THHN, THN, THWN, etc. Now most Romex is made from one of those wires, so if you rip the outer sheathing off, you can get at least a black and white from that, but you still need a green or yellow for the ground (insulated). In single family residential - For short runs where the conduit is mainly for physical protection of the wire, most people don't seem to care and just pull romex. Depends how picky the inspector is. The restriction has to do with conductor heating - the more layers insulating the conductors, the less cooling they get so the chance of overheating is higher.

 

[brin]

Tony,
You summed it up very well. For our house building project we bought a copy of the code book from E-bay and used the code to educate ourselves regarding what should and shouldn't be done. We saw lots of things mandated in the code book that we would not have considered otherwise. We have insisted that subs do things by code. I think that getting familliar with the code may have saved us some future grief.

However, I have some issues with the code enforcement, mostly regarding my beliefs concerning how far governments should get involved in people's affairs. I tend to line up with our country's founding fathers philosophies on the topic.

Obed

Obed....I just meant in our County my experience with the inspectors was good but I 100% agree with you and share your concern about how far government should get involved in our affairs. I believe our founding fathers had it just right.

I remember years ago we just bought a permit for $25.00 at the courthouse and proceeded to build what we wanted...those were the days my friend !