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You should be ashamed!!
02/06/2009 - By Tony Buried JB's in the walls
found in the walls
This story was sent in by a ElectriciansWorld member to share. You won't believe where these splice boxes were found, and how!! In this million dollar Rumson home.
We were asked to remove two front fixtures from the house so they could be refinished and then re-installed. They were two large custom designed metal fixtures with brown lamp cord coming from the socket and running along the bottom of the fixture to the mounting bracket. The large mounting bracket was only about 2" wide and was designed to secure to the house, there was no canopy or box mounting hardware, just the tail of the lamp cord hanging off. It was mounted with 4 large screws and a 5/8" hole was drilled into the siding for the wire to penetrate the house. We scratched our heads a bit to figure out how we could remove them, since the wire was obviously spliced somewhere. We checked inside and then in the basement but couldn't find any jb's. So we unscrewed the fixtures and cut the wires. The carpenter had crafted wooden panels and trimmed around them so the cedar siding could butt against it and the fixtures could mount on the flat surface. We were able to remove the woodwork only to find that the wires still went inside the sheathing. Luckily, since we had the woodwork to cover this, we cut a 6"square hole in the sheathing to gain access to inside the wall. On the one side we found an old work box buried with the 14/2 romex splicing the lamp cord and a blank cover. However, on the other side we found a metal heating duct in the wall, the electrician, if you can call him that, decided it was a good idea to poke a 1" hole in the duct to bring in the wires and cut open the heating duct on the inside to fit the jb. Then he spliced the 14/2 with the lamp cord and duct taped the jb closed, then left it inside the ductwork. I guess he didn't have a blank for it! He left the gaping hole in the ductwork. We just could not believe the effort involved to do such bad electrical work! We assumed that he drilled a hole for the wire then mounted the fixtures on the house to cover the hole. Then went inside while the walls were open and buried the jb's.
The scariest part about this whole story, is that this house was recently finish new construction, worth about $3million. The young couple that lives there now has two infant children. I just don't know how guys that do crappy work like that can sleep at night. Although, the homeowner did tell me that she knows who the electrician is that did the work, and if they ever have any electrical fires or major electrical issues they will go after him.
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