Re: COVID-19 - On the Ground
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 4:35 pm
The way the planning department and the inspectors tell it, they’re protecting the homeowners from unscrupulous contractors and designers. We did a second story addition to our house in 2006 and we were the general contractor. It was a very extensive remodel and essentially the whole house was down to the external studs and built back again with significant foundation work. Due to the location bulk of the work was seismic related.
But the biggest contention was in electrical matters. We were among the earliest adopters of solar power and wanted to run the wiring inside the walls (they were open at the time). The City wanted no part of it saying it was against Code. Except that it was in the 2005 Code, but the City and County were operating under the 2003 Code! The solar company showed them the installations in San Mateo County where they had done this (they had to provide a DC disconnect on the roof so that firefighters wouldn’t accidentally cut through a live electric cable). The head of the electric inspection basically said write me a letter asking to allow this, “but don’t mention anything about the 2005 Code”.
This was also the time they were trying to get rid of the incandescent bulbs (a few years after Enron holding the State hostage). We had CFL in EVERY fixture but they wanted us to put dimmers and motion sensor in all the rooms. I was talking to the head inspector and he held the line that this was code, and his response was that after the inspection I could remove all the CFL and put incandescent bulbs! Never mind that I was a net electricity producer. My electrician has a supply of dimmers and motion sensors which he installed for inspection purposes- so I told the inspector that what I WAS going to do was replace all the motion sensors and dimmers after the inspection!! Which I did
. The duma$$ even tried to work the dimmers during inspection- of course the dimmers are not going to dim...
But the biggest contention was in electrical matters. We were among the earliest adopters of solar power and wanted to run the wiring inside the walls (they were open at the time). The City wanted no part of it saying it was against Code. Except that it was in the 2005 Code, but the City and County were operating under the 2003 Code! The solar company showed them the installations in San Mateo County where they had done this (they had to provide a DC disconnect on the roof so that firefighters wouldn’t accidentally cut through a live electric cable). The head of the electric inspection basically said write me a letter asking to allow this, “but don’t mention anything about the 2005 Code”.
This was also the time they were trying to get rid of the incandescent bulbs (a few years after Enron holding the State hostage). We had CFL in EVERY fixture but they wanted us to put dimmers and motion sensor in all the rooms. I was talking to the head inspector and he held the line that this was code, and his response was that after the inspection I could remove all the CFL and put incandescent bulbs! Never mind that I was a net electricity producer. My electrician has a supply of dimmers and motion sensors which he installed for inspection purposes- so I told the inspector that what I WAS going to do was replace all the motion sensors and dimmers after the inspection!! Which I did
. The duma$$ even tried to work the dimmers during inspection- of course the dimmers are not going to dim...