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An average day

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The site plan shows two 600 gallon tanks. There's no description of the tanks or any details. I found the leaders and drain pipe. The idea is to take the water from roof drains and put it in the tanks.


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Neither tank has been placed per plan. That's because they would have been in/under the driveway and there's already water pipe, building sewer pipe, gas pipe and conduit under the driveway.

The six inch schedule 40 has no cleanouts and none are shown on the plan. There is no provision for draining the tanks once they are full except for the fact that the inlet and outlet are at the same level. The purpose of the tank is for irrigation. The tanks will fill with rain water and then in the summer the water can be used for irrigation.

The main house is 12,000 sq.ft. There are two other houses....one for the pool and one for whatever. An artisan was brought from Hawaii to decorate the bottom of the pool. There is extensive landscape planned with irrigation. ......and somebody thought it was a good idea to make them install these tanks that couldn't be used if they wanted to.

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Wouldn't the tanks need straps to prevent floating up?
 
Did you allow the Siemens breaker in the Eaton BR, "Zinsco II" panel, going into UL listed, vs classified quagmire, not seen anything allowing Siemens QP, or it's lookalike cousin Murray MP, to be installed in any competitive panel.
 
A bunch of work was done without permits. Now I have to be the bad guy.

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Box depth and gap around the e-box, ...not good!

Do you think they used glue on the drywall or can they just back the screws out?
 
Box depth and gap around the e-box, ...not good!

Do you think they used glue on the drywall or can they just back the screws out?
They didn't use glue. I recommended that they remove entire sheets rather than cut open the the areas that have electrical. They decided to cut open rather than remove.
 
who would have approved that design a 3'6" can side support an 8' wall! Maybe they fully reinforce masonry fences in California? Footing for existing wall looks to be a sloping footing never seen that with masonry.
 
who would have approved that design a 3'6" can side support an 8' wall! Maybe they fully reinforce masonry fences in California? Footing for existing wall looks to be a sloping footing never seen that with masonry.

I've been building in California all of my life and have never seen anything like that, of course Southern California has always been known as Hicksville or Tinseltown.
 
Other than the "escape tunnel" that wasn't noted on the drawings it looks like a pretty good plan. I actually cutting off one side of the existing footing or was it originally formed off-center like that? If I had done the design I probably would've used 8" instead of 6" CMU and probably would have used #5 verticals (especially if I'm with using 6" CMU). I'm assuming the drawings are stamped by an engineer of record?
 
Well the plans states there is an existing footing where obviously there is not because there I a pipe where there should be what appears to be calling out a continuous footing. Cant quit tell if that is a footing above the pipe or not. Either way that is a wall collapse waiting to happen.
 
Well the plans states there is an existing footing where obviously there is not because there I a pipe where there should be what appears to be calling out a continuous footing. Cant quit tell if that is a footing above the pipe or not. Either way that is a wall collapse waiting to happen.

and the person that gets hurt is the mason?

so if this fence is on the property line what does the neighbor have to say?
 
A contractor built an addition of two bedrooms and two bathrooms. They did a nice job and it only took 1.5 months, which is fast around here. The owner decided to do a service panel upgrade on his own.

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what does the neighbor have to say?

Plenty. He was washing his car when I arrived. He told me that I took his parking place. I found that to be odd enough but then he said that I better not let his wall get damaged. I hadn’t seen the wall. I’ll park on the other side of the street from now on. If the wall makes it through the construction...wait a few years for it to find the angle of repose for CMUs.
 
For obvious reasons, California contractor license laws stipulate that a general contractor (B) shall not have a contract for single trades such as roofing (C-39) unless there are two other trades as well. This supposedly protects the other license classifications from the B contractor in that the idea is for the B contractor to hire the other contractors for specialty work.

Well we never figured that out. So we issue permits to anybody with a license as long as they take out permits for other work.

The situation in this case is a re-roof (building permit), two receptacles (electrical permit). two hose bibs (plumbing permit). The B contractors' plan was to replace two receptacles and the washers in two hose bib faucets. I explained that those items do not require permits and since he has permits it must mean that new receptacles and new hose bibs will be installed where the owner wants them.

Here is a receptacle:



The outlet box is not secured to the wall. It didn't fall off so I assume there is Romex holding it. My non-contact tester did not detect voltage.



So the guy that did this called to complain about the corrections that I left at the site. He was especially upset about the AFCI requirement. He commenced to shout and demand and state that he has never done any of my corrections before. In a stern tone I told him that he will now. He asked for a manager. Next was a trip to the woodshed because I was "rude". When will they understand that I suffer fools poorly and I don't much care what they think about that.
 
At least your state has contractor license laws. But I wonder too if contractor license laws really make a difference.

As someone who has worked in PA where there is no licensing and Florida where there is strict licensing, yes, there is a difference in many ways but not in all ways. Whenever you have good quality building code enforcement, you have better contractors. Whenever you have weak code enforcement such as multi-discipline inspectors or simple ignorance, then you still have many of the same problems. When your state license is highly valued and difficult to attain, you are more likely to protect it by making sure your work is done right. In PA, however, you just move on to the next town when you are a bad contractor. There are a lot of guys that live in WB or Scranton and never worked in those cities because they have actual competency based licensing.
 
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