I recently saw some work done by a home heating oil tech on my mother's heating plant and raised Cain to bring the very unhappy tech back. Here's what I demanded corrected:

A new circulator pump was smaller than the original and the flex conduit didn't reach. They ran new wires (with paper wrapping) from the relay box through the conduit, then unprotected through the air, then into the pump knockout, no fitting, no strain relief, no ground bond.

The flex conduit didn't reach the power box on the new oil burner. BX was run from the fusebox INSIDE the existing flex, both wrapped with electrical tape where the conduit ended, BX run into the burner junction box with no fitting, no strain relief or ground bond. The BX was draped on the basement floor even though there is a drainage sump less than twelve feet away.

When rewiring it with flex conduit and fittings (which I provided!) he planned to open a new knockout on the burner junction box without closing the old one.

When wiring the pump with either #16 or #18 (I'm not sure which; there are 2+3/4 amp slow-blows on the pumps) he twisted and taped the wires, then put wirenuts on top of the tape. I've never seen this, but can't say it's wrong. Is it?

Thanks for your advice. (I have no problem cutting the power and fixing the wirenuts if I must.)

You should have asked "what's right"... and the answer would be "nothing" Where did you find this guy?

The burner/plant is under a maintenance contract with the oil provider, who is in turn contracted by a fuel co-op. The fellow, who seemed reasonably intelligent once he finished berating me for describing the work as "substandard" and "not to code", insisted that he'd been trained by a master electrician. His boss, who came to see the work first, seemed surprised that someone objected. (This doesn't say anything about what he thought about the work.)

Did you offer him some "Bubble gum and paper clips" to replenish his supplies?

I was glad enough to get the work corrected; snark would not have helped. I'm not an electrician. I did study the NEC sections relevant to residential work twenty-odd years ago to be sure that the work we did on some remodelling would pass inspection, and I seem to remember a provision reading "all work shall be carried out in a neat and workmanlike manner."

Unfortunately there are some hacks in every profession. These people give professionals a bad name. I'm glad you were able to have everything corrected to your satisfaction.

A call to an building or fire inspector would have changed their tune!

Good catch on the shoddy workmanship. Besides workmanship like manner, I am sure several other codes were violated regarding how the system was wired.


And great that you demanded it be done correctly.

Not sure how far you want to go with this. Someone needs to get this installer reported.

Any chance you can provide pictures of what you have?

In this day and age of everyone having at least one digital camera around the first thing I would have done is take a bunch of pictures. This gives you evidence as to the unbelievable sub-standard work you described. That coupled with their shocking attitude would have pushed me to take things further, like the building dept and PSC.

I have pictures. I didn't want to bring the inspectors in because I have several other things that need to be corrected in plain sight in that basement, including wiring that was done before we got the house, that somehow we've never gotten around to correcting. I did sent the pictures to the fuel co-op to get their attention, though they are business types, not technical safety wonks.

One of those things is the lighting, which I why I have another question here on wiring. (Hint, hint.)