Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!rutgers!topaz.rutgers.edu!awalker
From: awalker@topaz.rutgers.edu ($   *Hobbit*)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: electrical codes
Message-ID: <17905@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: 9 Feb 88 10:17:50 GMT
Organization: LCS Expert gang, Rutgers
Lines: 17

I have cause to seriously wonder how many commercial electricians have
really *read* these.  A hospital near me recently built a new wing that's been
plagued ever since with electrical fires.  Just the other night I found an
outlet in a friend's house whose ground lead wasn't ground, it was the other
side of the transformer, so between hot and the plate there was 240VAC.  Every
time I go to a hotel I find *something* wrong with the room wiring.  My current
place of residence even had some fairly strange kludges in it, most of which I
fixed and the rest weren't dangerous; whoever wired the upstairs-downstairs
light switch didn't get it right either.  Many of the screws in the breaker
box were loose, and the breaker box wiring itself looks like shit.

I have seen good installations with nice neatly-dressed-back wiring too, and
can't understand why there is so much variation among the work of tradesmen
who are all supposed to have read the same documents.  There's no way in hell
I'm going to let them anywhere near the wiring in *my* [hitherto theoretical]
house...

_H*