On Oct 14, 5:56*pm, wrote:
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 RicodJour wrote:

About the comment of using a stud finder as a foolproof method of
finding wires, and scanning everywhere before nailing. *As Roger
mentioned, there's a top plate running along the wall, and there are
(toe)nails attaching the stud to the plate. *Nobody except a
blithering idiot would run a wire in a location that would require
them to drill through the (toe)nails. *More likely the wire was either
set into notches, or just draped or stapled up in the soffit.


And the "contractor" would still have known there was a possibility of
hitting wire if he had used his scanner first. The wire may not have
been running along the plate at all - it may (and most likely was)
have been coming THROUGH the plate to go down to a switch or
receptacle in the wall - and the nail ANYWHERE but where he put ir
would have been a total non issue.

You're putting another layer of drywall or paneling over an existing
wall. Do you scan the entire room to locate the wires? Do you scan
every stud and joist along its entire length? How long does that
take? What about if there were a pipe in the wall? A wire that
wasn't live until a switch was flicked on?

Contract law is full of cases that were determined based on
"reasonable expectations". Code is full of requirements that dictate
where and how wires should be run. In the vast majority of cases its
not an issue as nothing ever happens - even if the wires are run
incorrectly. You're backtracking and cherry-picking this one example
and using it to make a blanket statement that would suck down a lot of
time with very little benefit. If 100 carpenters didn't scan the
walls, probably one or two would hit a live wire, none if it were run
correctly. So to prevent the one occurrence you want all 100
carpenters to scan all the walls all of the time. Please. Why not
just recommend using construction adhesive to attach the trim? That's
even safer!

Knowing there was a live wire in the immediate area, the nail would
have been moved 3 or 4 inches one way or the other and no problem..

Hey, any hints on who won last week's big game?

The fact of the matter is that someone ran a wire where it shouldn't
have been, or the guy installing the trim used too long of a nail.

When working in older homes in particular, you ASSUME there is a wire
there untill you prove to your satisfaction there is none. With
today's low-cost technology *readily available there is NO EXCUSE for
a contractor or a handyman to EVER put a nail , a drill, or a saw into
a live wire.

I've been swatting nails for 35 years. I've never hit a live wire. I
also have never used a scanner to scan all the surfaces. If I did,
guess who'd be paying for my time? Every job I did I'd have to charge
for that 'extra' service, and it would only pay off in extremely rare
cases. I'd still get paid.

This all goes to risk management. Do you want to pay up front to me,
whether or not there is a problem, or, _if_ there is a problem pay to
fix it? A case could also be made that hitting the wire is doing the
owner a favor by locating a shoddy wiring job.

R