I just watched this episode of Dream House that raised some questions.
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/shows_drh/e..._47389,00.html

The owners had hired a general contractor to take care of the new
construction and remodeling, and the husband and wife were taking care
of the demolition themselves to save money. Neither had any
construction experience at all. If people want to take risks, well,
that's their business and their limbs and lives at risk, right? But
several questions came to mind.

The general contractor, framers and HGTV personnel were on site while
the husband and two buddies (again, no experience at all), were
demolishing the roof. To say they were clueless and operating in an
extremely unsafe manner is an understatement. Which made me wonder.

With all of the construction experience on site, how is it that no one
advised the owner on the best way to accomplish the task? The narrator
kept repeating that it was highly dangerous work and that the owner
could not afford to get injured, yet no one offered even the most basic
advice in demolition. It was almost as if they turned the clueless guy
loose doing dangerous work because it made the show more exciting. It
seemed to me that if an accident did happen, there would be a fair bit
of exposure on HGTV's part - contributory negligence or something like
that.

It also made me wonder about the OSHA safety regulations and how the
show limits its liability. The owners of these shows are getting paid
somehow. Whether it's free appliances, an appearance fee or whatever,
so a case could be made that they are in fact employees of HGTV. In
that case HGTV is required to obey OSHA regulations and is liable for
any violations and accidents due to their flagrant
risk-taking-for-TV's-sake.

Beyond that, how is it that the GC or one of the framers didn't offer
some basic demolition advice? Basic things like don't stand under the
deck when you're knocking out the posts, don't start demolishing a roof
from the bottom up, etc. Construction people love giving demolition
advice, particularly if it is going to save someone major amounts of
wasted time and potential catastrophic injury. So why not on this TV
show?

R