I know a retired electrician. He hires electricians for anything nontrivial, for the insurance.
That said your broader point has a lot of merit. I hire plumbers for anything more complicated than snaking a drain, and it's because of their specialty knowledge.
The reality is that unless someone knows you and your work personally (friend, relative, w/e) it can be really difficult to find an inspector who is willing to sign off on some random persons work as there is a liability component (nowhere near as large as there is in the US, we have publicly funded "accident insurance" called ACC) in doing so.
That being said, anything I can legally do myself I do and I am sure to maintain good relationships with the inspectors I know.
If you screw up your electrical wiring, your house can catch fire. If a house is on fire, the neighboring houses are rather likely to also catch fire. Once you have a handful of houses on fire, all bets are off - the entire neighbourhood might burn. Still think you should have that "freedom"?
Dude, trust me. Yes there are building and electrical codes. Many are written in blood. The perception that there is no implicit freedom to be found anywhere is unique to our internet worked world where you can pull the tail of the invisible cat and have it yowl at the inspector in short order.
What you are probably struggling with, is the concept of the Social Contract's primacy. There are those that believe what is allowed starts with a yes/no from the biggest baddest enforcer of their idea of the Social Contract. I call these folks Hobbesian. Then there are those who see the Social Contract itself as something subject to the independent acceptance in whole or in part by independent, free-thinking agents. I call these folks Locke-ian. They are famous for the intellectual fireworks that get set off if you lock them in a room together to settle their differences.
The reality is, the truth is something more akin to: let's implement paperwork and objective inspections so people have a safe recourse, but leave the door open for people to do what they want with things they own, and only argue about the more philosophical notes when there is a clear and present breach of decorum by one party or another.
This arrangement tends to keep both parties reasonably happy.
People don't want to get hit by a car, so we've collectively agreed to require that all drivers pass an exam that proves they know how to drive safely enough to bring the risk of them running someone over with a car to an acceptable level. The general freedom to drive a car does not exist - we've collectively limited it to only those individuals, who pass our standard. Similarly, everyone does not have the right to build their own airplanes and fly people around in them, because those people could get seriously hurt - we have limited that "freedom" to only people who have proven that they know enough about how to build and/or fly planes to, again, decrease that risk down to an acceptable level.
Do home-owner repaired house catch on fire more often than houses repaired by licensed contractors?
My insurance company has never told me I can't repair my own house.
Easy to say things like this, but once you get out into the real world you notice a lot of America doesn't want to pay $150/hour to change a light switch...and has the knowledge to DIY it.
That it seems entirely reasonable is most of the problem.
Because people imagine that getting certified is a two week safety course, and that getting inspected is paying someone $10 to spend ten minutes looking over your five minute job.
But then the licensed professionals capture the regulators and the licensing requirement stops being about safety and starts being about gatekeeping, so getting licensed becomes impractical for anyone not full-time gainfully employed in that industry. And the gatekeeping and bureaucracy cause the inspection to require weeks to get an appointment and the payment of $150 over the replacement of a $10 light switch.
Then, you notice that the light in your living room flickers sometimes. You would be inclined to have your buddy the electrical engineer come have a look except that he's not a licensed electrician and you're not convinced that the lights flickering once in a while is a problem whose solution is worth $150. Two months later the light switch with the bad connection finally overheats and your house burns down. Or you're willing to pay the money but it takes 15 days to get an appointment and the amount of time you had before the problem became a fire was two weeks.
Making repairs to safety-critical things less accessible is dangerous.
I took household lighting classes at the local community college and our union electrician uncle helped use redo his house.
Impossible in my state to get a electrician license without doing 1+ years as an apprentice under a electrical company full-time. Once you get the "apprentice" license, you then spend another year or two under more supervision to become a journeyman.
At that point you are able to pull permits and work on your own. So 3-5 years working as a full time electrician. They expect you to learn everything on the job and eventually take a test.
More time to get an electrician license than to become a licensed police officer (250 hours of academy training).
Sweet. All of that to legally change a dishwasher in my house.
So all of the people on this forum spouting off about "certified electricians" are either part of the electrician racket themselves or have 0 actual clue what they are talking about.
Either way we got a good deal on the house and I’ve been learning a lot about how to fix it the right way.
There were also some hot wires just dangling out of a box in the basement, and a couple fried plugs, so I and I assume the inspector knew that there were bound to be more fun surprises.
It’s not like the inspector is going to say “well we better open up this wall just in case”
Ended up rewiring one of the bathrooms after what started out as “change a couple of switches and add a GFCI”
As you point out there are likely punitive consequences but those are after the fact.
I do have a so called "DIY insurance" on my home policy - if I damage something while doing a DIY project(drill into a cable or a pipe for instance) my home insurance will cover the repair. Is that not enough?
Electricians have liability insurance provided by an organization specializing in policies for practicing tradesmen. If an insurance company fails to disqualify a homeowner's policy and pays out, it will then go after the electrician and his insurance to recoup their losses. Residential electrical fires are extremely preventable so insurance companies almost universally refuse to insure homes with DIY electrical work because the homeowner is the one liable.
Homeowner's insurance routinely covers preventable disasters. Did you leave a candle on or a heater plugged in and start a fire? Did you not cut down a tree that was looking unhealthy and it fell on your home? These are all situations where your insurance would pay a claim. The cases where they would not pay a claim are more along the lines of "deliberate arson".
You may well need to certify that work is permitted in order to get an insurance policy.
Relevant reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/doe...
They allow them to change sockets and light switches. Anything requiring a city inspector is literally the same thing as getting a licensed electrician. Municipalities have a lot more insurance than an electrician does, often unwritten by the same reinsurers as the electricians.
> But second and maybe more importantly how would you ever be able to get insurance on an older house. There may have been dozens of different electricians and homeowners that did work over the years. Who would the insurance company go after if a problem occurred.
The insurance company goes bankrupt and the state bails out the homeowner. That's why we have electrical contractor surety bonds.
Do you have any evidence to point to where someone changes a dishwasher or some other small electrical project, and later insurance denies a claim?
I can imagine scenarios of gross negligence (wires run all over exposed, gas leaks, etc. etc.), but if we are talking small mistakes by homeowner during a un-permitted DIY project, I have a very very hard time believing insurance is going to scour the rubble to investigate...like literally how to you prove that!?
Like someone else said - when you buy a house you don't know how the electrical wiring was done and by whom. Paperwork is required only for the things I mentioned above - new circuits added after the house was built mostly. And even then someone would need to prove that it was done after construction.
So even if the insurance company wanted to deny a claim due to a DIY fitted socket....I think they would struggle, as there's absolutely nothing forbidding me from installing one, and most importantly - my contract with the insurance company doesn't forbid me from doing so.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/24/technology/on...
I guess this is more analogous to flipping someone’s breakers in their house and then charging them to flip them back on.
The ultimate reason people pay electricians is liability. Unlicensed work is an easy way to invalidate your homeowner's insurance, lose everything, and get sued for any damage to your neighbors' property (by their insurance company, no less).
Nobody's interests are less aligned with your own than an insurance company's. There are lots of legitimate reasons to hire an electrician, but making decisions solely based on what someone who wants you to perpetually give them money whole finding reasons to never give it back is never good practice.
Investigating a case is expensive, let alone litigating one against someone with their life's assets on the line, so it's in their best interest to prevent the event they're insuring against from occurring. They have the most accurate up to date data on real world outcomes so especially in professional circumstances, it usually pays to follow their advice.
Yup. They know having an electrician do all the work minimizes the risk of you needing to get payed out, so they want it so.
But the insurance doesn't care about your additional cost, since it's your cost, not theirs.
They don't go "cost of professional < additional risk * potential damages", they go "additional risk * potential damages > 0".
Then again, electrical work can be life threatening, so the potential damage is rather high.
As a DIYer, I was shocked to find what the previously hired professional electrician left for me: a secondary panel for the whole structure that controls exactly one outlet. The sub panel was apparently not fed from the main panel, but rather from a panel in a different building, so simply switching the main breaker of the breaker panel to off did not turn off that one specific outlet, you know the one I was trying to replace. Why that one outlet (GCFI in the bathroom) required it’s own sub panel was not clear at all but my left hand was numb for a few hours. Thankfully it didn’t go further than that (maybe a few copies of me in the multiverse died but not this one).
This is why you always test an outlet with a lightbulb before doing electrical work.
Honestly it didn’t actually do much beyond just small muscle twitches in my hand. I only realized what happened after I let go of it and my hand still felt a little funny. Definitely do not recommend but at least it was a 240V outlet or anything like that.
The EM coming off AC mains makes a non contact detector hard to fool and it's such a simple device that even cheap knockoffs are reliable.
On insurance, as you say their interests are opposite, and you need to be defensive about how to deal with them. Not having insurance on a house is not an option, so making sure you have a standing ground when shit hits the fan is pretty reasonable in my opinion.
Home electric is one of those things that many people claim to know and understand. The reality is that most people are clueless, and can and do make mistakes. If you ever bought an old house, you get this — there’s always some dangerous cob job hiding somewhere.
The evil insurance company doesn’t want to pay when you are seriously injured in a fire. You probably don’t want to get injured. In the end, interests are aligned.
In this situation, I am paying someone else to assume risk for me. That is, I suppose, a type of insurance, in a very broad sense.
However, I am not in any way relying on my interests and the other person's to be aligned, except in the sense of performing the work they are legally contracted to perform. All I am doing is asking this person to assume some risk for me, in exchange for which I provide them a fee.
Short of "take on all the risk yourself", which, even if perhaps desirable (I'm not sure …), is often not feasible, what is a better approach here?
Its specifically the "do it this way because insurance wont cover you otherwise" that I'm reacting too, because I think that had caused a lot of damage to society. Effectively nobody is taking on risk under the model insurance companies push - insurance won't let you do anything risky, and won't pay if you do. That's why I say it's a losing proposition to have your behavior dictated by an insurer. (Probably a prisoner's dilemma really, because inevitably some group gives in, then makes to worse for everyone)
If your company gets banned by visa/mastercard for dealing with porn, you’ll steer away for anything porn related.
You know banks won’t give you a loan for growing legal weed, if your goal is actually to make money you’ll grow other fancy aromatic plants instead, etc.
You still can push through, but getting nudged is not new, will never stop, and most of the time reflects your societies values anyway.
This is the part that is outright fraud. A legitimate insurance policy is literally a cheque; if something happens, you deposit it in the bank and get you money, and it's the insurance company's responsibility to prove that your claim is not covered by the policy written on the cheque. The insurance company does not make a decision about whether to pay.
I am aware of that; I'm pointing out that their being able to say no (rather than the cheque being valid by default and claim being paid out without the insurer's involvement, and the insurance company having to go to court to recover the money after the fact) is fraud, precisely because it enables them to "say no to as much as they can".
Not really.
People pay electricians for their experience and knowledge that give them the tools to solve complex problems, simply, without messing up your wiring, causing a fire, or blowing something up.
Removing a link on Google, on the other hand, involves clicking on a link and filling out a form. You don't need state licensing or problem solving abilities to fill out that form. Any "reputation managers" out there that are doing this are essentially defrauding people, and it's shameful.
People pay because they're afraid of at least one of (a) their ability to be sure they're getting the right instructions, or (b) their ability to execute. In the electrician example, (b) could be substantial if you don't understand electricity. "Electricity can kill you" is basically the home-maintenance version of "the internet is confusing" that would prevent someone from wanting to find this Google form themselves.
In the "reputation manager" example, (a) is going to come into play more, I bet. A good "reputation manager" probably isn't going to just fill out one form on google, I imagine there's a lot you could do to cover Bing, wikipedia, and various other sites and services. I don't know where employees go to get background checks, for instance, but maybe I need to have that covered, too. So now the problem still parallels working with an electrician - how do you know if you found a good one? Lots of handyman/contractor horror stories and scams out there too!
Over time a boiler that isn't meaningfully "leaking" will still gradually lose internal pressure. Once the pressure inside the boiler is less than outside the boiler even when the water inside is hotter, that's not good. Eventually the system won't work and shuts down for safety, but before that it'll make a lot of noise while running. There's a pressure meter so you can see what's wrong if you don't understand boilers. My meter said about 0.4 bar. So that's too low, now I just needed to re-pressurize it.
The regulations here say that, to avoid mistakes resulting in stagnant water flowing back from a boiler tank into the fresh water system, the two mustn't be permanently connected. So there'd logically be an input, you connect a temporary hose, re-pressurize.
In practice, nobody does that, the installers will run a permanent line, in defiance of the rules, and use a tap, now you can re-pressurize by turning the tap.
Except, many years after moving in and setting up I'd forgotten where that tap could be. It wasn't where I expected to find it, and I could not think there else they'd have put it. So after sleeping on it and still not remembering I called a plumber. Not an emergency plumber, but still plumbers aren't cheap.
The plumber also couldn't immediately find it, it wasn't where he first looked either. But I can't actually tell how much time he spent "pretending" to look versus how long it really took him to discover it. Because it's embarrassing right? Even if the customer is up-front about the nature of the task, "It's under the kitchen sink - behind this panel, here" (yes, that's where it actually is) doesn't feel like a real job worth £80 or whatever it was.
My Grandfather used to tell a story about an old aeroplane that wouldn't start. They found a retired engineer who agreed to come out and look. Did so, had a listen when they tried, And nodded to himself.
From his toolbox he removed a hammer and smacked the engine once sharply. Suddenly it started right up. Magic
He presented them with a bill for £205. "That's absurd, all you did was hit it with a hammer!".
"Ah yes", the engineer replied. "It is £5 to hit the engine, the other £200 is for knowing where to strike"
(This would typically be as part of a discussion of the meaning of "knowledge is power")
[1] https://www.iccsafe.org/products-and-services/i-codes/2018-i...
While that sounds like a high price, and you usually don't want to just hire the first person you see advertise a service, the concept of specialization there, and some people just not wanting to devote the time to becoming experts everywhere, seems perfectly fine and normal.
People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all.