Integrity, Honesty, and Electrical Contracting
I was recently on an estimate in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin on a recent Saturday. A Wauwatosa homeowner had called me since I was a State and Wauwatosa Licensed Electrical Contractor and Master Electrician. Guess what kind of problem he called me for? Another contractor’s mistake that damaged his garage feed from the house.
The homeowner just had a new concrete patio poured in his backyard. It was adjacent to the garage. When the mason contractor or concrete contractor excavated for the patio, he dug up a ½” rigid conduit from the house feeding the 20-ampere 120-volt circuit on the garage. I was shocked when the homeowner told me what the mason said in his defense of his mistake. It takes integrity to be honest and not BS your way out of a mistake one makes. When I looked at the job on Saturday afternoon, I saw 10 feet of rigid conduit laying bent up on the surface of the ground in the back yard, near the garage.
First lie: the concrete contractor said it was an unused pipe, nothing was in it. This occurred on a Friday. Friday morning, the light, and the garage door opener were working. Friday night, the garage door did not open, the light did not turn on, nor did the garage door open that night. The contractor poured his concrete before replacing the conduit and replacing the copper wire from the house to the garage. How foolish, he just created seven times as much work to repair the power outage.
Second lie: next, the concrete contractor denied responsibility for the damage to the conduit and the power outage to the garage saying the pipe was too shallow. Code requires rigid to be at least 6 inches below grade, I didn’t dig to see what the pipe depth was but if they used rigid conduit, which is what it looked like, it was probably done by an electrician and it was probably deep enough. When I see homeowners and handymen doing garage wiring, they either use cable or EMT, an indoor or above grade type conduit not approved for direct burial. As a concrete patio contractor and with 30 years experience pouring concrete as he claimed, he should have known to take a minute and notice the exposed conduit between at both the house and the garage, before he started the excavation. I personally do not like contractors or people that have little if any integrity, it gives many contractors bad names.
What good is a person if his or her word cannot be trusted? Our society is based upon trust. In order to deal with people with honesty or integrity, one’s word should be one’s bond; one’s word should be as good as gold. The mason used for the patio pour lacks any shred of honesty and casts a shadow of doubt on all contractors. One has to be very careful who they hire for any work, electrical work or otherwise, around their home or business.
When I think of honesty and integrity, I think of two things in particular. One is the many Bible verses I have read and heard preached about honesty and integrity. The second thing is Lt. William Kelly regarding his lies regarding the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam. If Lt. Kelly was just honest to begin with, he would not have dug such a deep hole for himself and cast such a dark shadow upon the men and women who proudly wore uniform with honesty and integrity in the military. I was in the USAF stationed in Okinawa several years after the time Lt. Kelly made all of the bad news. Even several years later, the USAF stressed to all of the airmen for the need to maintain absolute integrity in all we said and did. Those same lessons and those same Bible verses are part of every word we speak and part of every job we perform. Without integrity, you have nothing.
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Integrity, Honesty, and Electrical Contracting
I was recently on an estimate in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin on a recent Saturday. A Wauwatosa homeowner had called me since I was a State and Wauwatosa Licensed Electrical Contractor and Master Electrician. Guess what kind of problem he called me for? Another contractor’s mistake that damaged his garage feed from the house.
The homeowner just had a new concrete patio poured in his backyard. It was adjacent to the garage. When the mason contractor or concrete contractor excavated for the patio, he dug up a ½” rigid conduit from the house feeding the 20-ampere 120-volt circuit on the garage. I was shocked when the homeowner told me what the mason said in his defense of his mistake. It takes integrity to be honest and not BS your way out of a mistake one makes. When I looked at the job on Saturday afternoon, I saw 10 feet of rigid conduit laying bent up on the surface of the ground in the back yard, near the garage.
First lie: the concrete contractor said it was an unused pipe, nothing was in it. This occurred on a Friday. Friday morning, the light, and the garage door opener were working. Friday night, the garage door did not open, the light did not turn on, nor did the garage door open that night. The contractor poured his concrete before replacing the conduit and replacing the copper wire from the house to the garage. How foolish, he just created seven times as much work to repair the power outage.
Second lie: next, the concrete contractor denied responsibility for the damage to the conduit and the power outage to the garage saying the pipe was too shallow. Code requires rigid to be at least 6 inches below grade, I didn’t dig to see what the pipe depth was but if they used rigid conduit, which is what it looked like, it was probably done by an electrician and it was probably deep enough. When I see homeowners and handymen doing garage wiring, they either use cable or EMT, an indoor or above grade type conduit not approved for direct burial. As a concrete patio contractor and with 30 years experience pouring concrete as he claimed, he should have known to take a minute and notice the exposed conduit between at both the house and the garage, before he started the excavation. I personally do not like contractors or people that have little if any integrity, it gives many contractors bad names.
What good is a person if his or her word cannot be trusted? Our society is based upon trust. In order to deal with people with honesty or integrity, one’s word should be one’s bond; one’s word should be as good as gold. The mason used for the patio pour lacks any shred of honesty and casts a shadow of doubt on all contractors. One has to be very careful who they hire for any work, electrical work or otherwise, around their home or business.
When I think of honesty and integrity, I think of two things in particular. One is the many Bible verses I have read and heard preached about honesty and integrity. The second thing is Lt. William Kelly regarding his lies regarding the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam. If Lt. Kelly was just honest to begin with, he would not have dug such a deep hole for himself and cast such a dark shadow upon the men and women who proudly wore uniform with honesty and integrity in the military. I was in the USAF stationed in Okinawa several years after the time Lt. Kelly made all of the bad news. Even several years later, the USAF stressed to all of the airmen for the need to maintain absolute integrity in all we said and did. Those same lessons and those same Bible verses are part of every word we speak and part of every job we perform. Without integrity, you have nothing.