> Because so few people know about it, "reputation managers" are charging people like $500 a pop to "remove damaging information from Google results." And ALL THEY DO is fill out that form for free. Someone tried to hawk this service to my husband after he came under attack.
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.
I'm pretty good with electrical diagrams and such, and I know exactly what one needs to do to stay about as safe as one can. I've fished (ethernet) wires before. I still hire electricians, because it's the only practical way to buy electrician's insurance for a project.
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.
Here in NZ, a lot of work on your own property is legal - even some relatively complicated stuff - but the catch is that you need to find a qualified inspector to sign off on it.
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.
What "freedoms"? That term is used everywhere and rarely defined well. The freedom to "do what you want with your own property"? That doesn't exist - anywhere! You need to follow the rules and the only way to make sure someone is doing things properly (or at least know how to) is either to have them be certified in what they do or have someone who is certified check their work.
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"?
>That doesn't exist - anywhere! You need to follow the rules and the only way to make sure someone is doing things properly (or at least know how to) is either to have them be certified in what they do or have someone who is certified check their work.
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.
I honestly have no clue what you're on about. There's nothing philosophical about this discussion - it's entirely practical. We don't want to get hurt by other people's mistakes, therefore we don't let people do things where that is a possibility without training or supervision by someone who is trained. You do not have the freedom to do XYZ when society has decided that if you attempt to do XYZ, measures should be taken to stop and/or punish you. The fact that you have the ability to do XYZ and that the authorities we have delegated to ensure you don't do XYZ are doing their job well is entirely besides the point.
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.
Back what up? I never made any claims about whether DIY is more dangerous or not. But the fact is that DIY or not, certain regulations must be followed when doing repairs - this is written into law in most countries. You're not allowed, for example, to hook up an oven to a 30A breaker using speaker wire. Because we can't trust that everyone will know not to do that, certifications have been designed to ensure correct knowledge and skill and those certifications are often mandated by law. You have two options - either get certified, so you can be trusted to carry out the work yourself, or get someone who is certified to at least look it over. Seems entirely reasonable.
> You have two options - either get certified, so you can be trusted to carry out the work yourself, or get someone who is certified to at least look it over. Seems entirely reasonable.
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.
Great point. My brother and I tried to get some type of electricians license in order to do our DIY work more "professionally".
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.
The prior owner of my house was very free with his exposed wire nuts and other sketchy wiring practices then. I’ll take some level of safety that my house won’t burn down or electrocute me over absolute freedom.
You should have a house inspected before you buy it. It's not necessary to monitor and restrict all owners to protect possible future buyers who don't want to inspect a house before buying it.
It was inspected and specifically called out by the inspector in the visible areas, but there’s no way to know the full scope of the issues unless the inspector were to rip open walls and stuff.
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 some splices from the 60’s that were completely inaccessible in a sealed attic that weren’t in junction boxes.
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”
You can do anything you want on your own property, but if said property burns down because of incorrect electrical work you did yourself, you might not get money from your insurance...
Where is this notion of "you can do anything on your property" coming from? A similar one is also "it's my car, I'll do what I want with it", etc. But all modification to both your house anr your car have a big possibility of puttinf others in danger. If you mod your car in a dangerous way or screw up your house electrical wiring, other unrelated people may get hurt - you don't have the right to do that!
Physics allows it? This in the same way one can commit crimes or at least that's how I read it. Clearly one can not do the things physics doesn't allow.
As you point out there are likely punitive consequences but those are after the fact.
Or they are just needed to ensure you are not accidentally making a future giant « why would I need a fuse here ? » barbecue that you may possibly sell to another person.
TBH the electricians I know tend to rely on their know-how to just do things right rather than on somebody else with the ability to sure in case it all burns down.
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?
No, that's just for incidental damage and probably legally mandated by your state. If your house burns down to due to DIY wiring, the insurance company won't pay out a dime (if the inspectors discover it).
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.
This idea that DIY wiring can invalidate your insurance policy is widely repeated, but I don't think it's true.
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.
There is just no way this is correct. First, most municipalities in America anyway allow a homeowner to do their own electrical work. You are required to get a permit for the work though and then have it inspected by the city inspector to verify the work was done correctly. 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.
> First, most municipalities in America anyway allow a homeowner to do their own electrical work. You are required to get a permit for the work though and then have it inspected by the city inspector to verify the work was done correctly
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.
I've read over my home-owners insurance policy very well. There are no provisions that say anything about "electrical work requiring a city permit shall be done by a licensed electrician".
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!?
I am curious about this as well. Is swapping out light switches and outlets something to be concerned about or is it the more major stuff like running wires, adding breakers, etc?
Hmmmm I'm not so sure. I'm in the UK not in the states, so the laws are different I'm sure, but in UK you only need a licenced electrician when adding/removing an electrical circuit and for any electrical work in the bathrooms. So say adding a new spur from your fuse box to add electricity to your garage or a garden shed - that sort of thing. Any work on existing circuits(adding sockets, light switches, new light mounts etc) is fair play and doesn't require a permission or any paperwork. Instead you just get an electrical inspection done and an electrician signs off on the house as a whole.
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.
I would say that the difference between your example and these reputation managers is that they are often themselves directly responsible for the problems they create:
Yep, the reason they are so effective is because they own the very website that is spreading the slander. So you're really just indirectly paying the website who's blackmailing you to remove the blackmail.
> People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all.
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).
My view is that if the only reason you are doing something is because of the insurance implications, then you've surely made the wrong decision.
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.
Nobody's interests are less aligned with your own than an insurance company's when it comes time to pay out.
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.
> 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).
The GFCI didn’t go off so I don’t think I touched the ground wire. I wasn’t myself grounded but I grabbed the outlet as I pulled by grasping the sides and my hand completed the circuit between the live and neutral wires. I am generally really careful about this kind of stuff but this was a complete surprise with the wiring of the place.
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.
Wouldn't plugging in a small appliance (electrical toothbrush, phone charger, alarm clock, etc) be enough to tell you if a socket is live? Why have an extra device unless you need to do actual tests (ie, check what the voltage/current draw is)? Plug in something with a power indicator before shutting off the power, and check it before you start working.
The metal inside the socket that completes the circuit with the male pins can age and get bent, losing contact unless the plug is at just the right angle or the pins are bent in the right direction. It's unreliable and unsafe. If its your house and you're intimately familiar with the state of the sockets, it's slightly less unreliable and unsafe.
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.
I generally agree with you, but electric work is different. Except if you’ve wired your whole house by yourself, having someone qualified and legally responsible for rewiring is important. Even if their own work is minimal, they also take responsibility for not fixing the previous work if there was anything that should have been noticed, and it’s a role you can’t take.
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.
All parties related to a home (owner, occupier, bank, insurer) have an interest in the asset they have a stake in.
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.
> My view is that if the only reason you are doing something is because of the insurance implications, then you've surely made the wrong decision.
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?
I see those as separate. Paying someone to take on risk I see a clear argument for.
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)
This is a good point, and also a general fact of life I think. Society is not just modeled by laws, but also by influencial groups.
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.
That's a good, concise description. My particular beef with this happening with respect to insurance is that it "nudges" us to all be risk averse and boring, and artificially prioritize safety over all kinds of other outcomes.
You are right on the distortion. Even safety can be kind of out of the wibdow with people taking their insurance's approval as a GO sign for otherwise detrimental behaviors, like building houses in submersible areas.
> insurance won't let you do anything risky, and won't pay if you do.
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.
Without trying to sound snarky, I feel like maybe you haven't had to deal with insurance companies for anything substantial. A lot of them go out of their way to say no to as much as they can, and you need to fight with them to get them to change their decision.
> A lot of them go out of their way to say no to as much as they can, and you need to fight with them to get them to change their decision.
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".
I have never had an insurance company flat out deny a claim. The only back and forth i generally have is on how much as they try to pay as little as is allowed.
> People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all.
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.
Let's say someone wants to replace a lightswitch. Google/Youtube will show you how to do that safely in a matter of minutes.
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!
I paid a gas plumber full rates to in effect remind me where the tap is for the fill line for my boiler.
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.
Professional hide-and-go-seek is a painful reality. The lost server, lost VM, lost power outlet, lost cable drop etc. It’s usually funny in hindsight but painful at the time.
Huh, never heard of a manual one of those. I have some little widget that automatically refills the boiler when there's a pressure difference in the wrong direction I guess.
Yes, the modern solution to this consists of a pressure-reducing valve (refills when pressure in the boiler system drops) and a backflow preventer (for the safety issue).
I assume the point was that anything negative about you ends up on Google it can lead to mental issues and in a worst case scenario you might take your life so its better you hire a professional to scrub it for you.
> People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all.
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")
Agreed, my favorite example of this is how people pay like $100 to get a tax-ID number for their new business, which is free from the IRS and with accidental form choices being consequence free, because they think its fraught with disaster or just too obtuse
I think you meant that although it's easy to trivialize what an electrician does, in practice there's actually a lot of skill and experience in it. (I could be wrong, although it's always funny to see how what was probably an off-hand comment causes people to go down such a rabbit hole).
You can get books that teach all the basics, for example there is one called Wiring A House that is pretty good. Then you can usually contact your local building department for the city where you live to get specific questions answered. Unless you live in a place like Chicago where all wiring needs to be in conduit and then that’s a whole different story.
Usually visiting your place of local government / library and asking for a copy of local building codes will get you a hard copy at not much more than cost to photocopy.
These typically reference model codes that are often proprietary. You may still be able to get them from a library but if your question is along the lines of "how many receptacles can I put on one circuit" you need to look in something like the International Residential Code[1], not in your city/state statutes.
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.