Well on some part due diligence by the homeowner is needed. I was reroofed about 5 years ago, reputable company, great price, They went above and beyond repairing a broken kneewall for a dormer, and replacing bad boards, but in my final inspection I saw the bathroom vent fan was not connected to the former roof vent. The guy said stick a nail up through the hole and we will reconnect it. They put in the proper pieces and the job was done, I am not blaming them for missing it but saying stuff happens, and information and knowledge is important.
@VDCdriver
No, the builder’s name was Barna.
Maybe a cousin 
@LewisCannon…or at least they subscribed to the same construction principles…
With all the tales of electrical shenanigans in homes I suppose that brings up 2 assumptions.
- Many of the news stories about home fires “due to unknown origin” are cleared up.
- Code enforcement people are out to lunch all of the time.
Code officials are on their toes around here(but one reason is because of the small population),but beware of a Jackleg contractor with cheap kids for help(you dont want your house to be the guinea pig everybody learns on) and less face it,sometimes you cannot get good help or even anybody willing to do the job to your specs,if I want something outside the norm,its because I think its to my advantage,I hate someone trying to talk me out of an improvement or heavyup I want to make,truthfully I tend to overbuild-but the results have been very good-Kevin
It’s nice when you find someone you trust. Our place is less than 20 years old, but has had problems from the beginning. The original builder, who seems to have had high standards, went bankrupt and the bank brought in a cheapskate weasel to finish it up. So some things are beautifully done, and others are just stupidly wrong.
It’s clear the powder room was designed to have pocket doors, but the second builder changed that, so now we have a door swinging into a tiny room so you have to worm your way past the toilet to close the door. But the stupid part is that his change left the light switch behind the door. You have to close the door to get to it. To get around that difficulty, the builder turned a switchplate in the little hallway outside the powder room into a double switch, one for the hall light, and the second for a ceiling light in the powder room. That’s fine for us, but we always have to explain it to mystified visitors. We also have a lovely collection of dented kitchen appliances. What a cheapskate. The only one that seems fine is a trash compactor we’ve never used. For a place built in the nineties when mandatory recycling was already required, a trash compactor seemed a very odd feature, especially when he was busy buying damaged appliances to save a few bucks. The trash compactor is now used to hold two bins for our recycling. Very handy.
We also had a very leaky sliding glass door leading out to a terrace. When it was finally decided it needed replacing, I heard the builders laughing like mad when they came to remove it. It was held in place with three screws. No flashing, of course. If one of us had leaned on it hard, it would have fallen down.
We now have a carpenter/handyman who is wonderful. He can’t do the big jobs, but he always gives us the names of good people he’s worked with. He’s the guy everyone needs, but they’re so hard to find.
I keep getting lost. I was looking for CarTalk and keep getting redirected to some home improvement (or home dishevelment) discussion board… 
On that note, I would add that soon after we moved into our current house, our heat pump unit died. I didn’t know anything about these things (nor did my home inspector, I guess), but apparently my compressor was married to an inappropriately sized indoor unit. They weren’t even the same brand and had different “tonnage” ratings or whatever. The guy who came out to install our current system said it was kind of like asking my Escort to pull a semi. My real estate agent suggested going after the home inspector. I didn’t have the energy for that. As is, means “as is” and buyer beware is always the rule.
A '79 VW air-cooled Beetle was towed to us one time after a long established VW shop threw in the towel after failing to get it running. The '79s are AFC fuel injected and they had swapped the motor out.
Getting into it a bit, I found every single wire on the fuel injection system had the 2-wire twist and electrical tape applied to it. On those cars the F.I. wiring is not color coded; they’re all white.
Apparently one white wire to another white wire was good enough no matter where it came from or where it went.
When told there was no way of giving an estimate and it would be a by the clock job to sort out they balked and had it towed away. I have no idea whatever became of that car or it ever ran again.
During the beater car shopping that ended with the Neon (which is part of what started this thread) I went to look at an Escort. It would have been great. I can now fix them with my eyes closed and have mountains of spare parts.
It was a fine little car that ran and drove and shifted well. There was some ugliness to the body though. Some not so great aftermarket paint. A bit of red showing under the white paint here, a little green under the white paint there… Then I noticed the line of rust down behind the passenger’s side door on the rocker panel. On closer look it was bulging out a bit and had a hairline crack in it.
So I went down under the rocker panel to look. Youch! What an ugly bunch of welds along the pinch weld. And yes - it seems that the original car was white. But the entire rocker arm and B pillar were welded in from a green one. The driver’s side doors were both from a red one. I suppose for a dirt cheap beater car I could live with it if I knew the body shop that did it, and knew that they were good. But this wasn’t done by a good body shop. I thanked the guy and went on my way.
Sounds like a death trap…
A dealer I worked for once took in trade an older Pontiac Grand Prix with new paint. It looked great and drove out fine so onto the front line it went. It sold very quickly “AS IS”.
A lot of the older cars he sold as is had no warranty but he was good about taking care of problems on his dime if something cropped up.
A few weeks later the purchasers brought it back with a complaint of “Drives funny”.
I jumped in, pulled out of the lot, and my heart went into my throat. It took both hands to make it half a block where I managed to turn it around and creep it back to the shop.
Once on the rack I found the frame on the right front had been broken completely apart in a collision and someone had just butt welded the split back together. There was almost an inch wide gap where the weld had given up and the entire right front suspension was just wallowing all over the place; even by hand.
The boss just bought the car back from that couple with a full refund and I’m not sure, but I think he ended up selling that car to a rebuilder who hopefully did a better job than the last one.
That’s frightening, OK. Enough blame to go around, but I’m glad you got in that car when you did as it sounds as if the thing could have fallen apart at any time. And good of your boss to buy it back (not that he really had any choice.) It would have been better if he had given it at least a quick lookover, though I’ve read enough stories on here to assume nothing. Even though the jerk who traded in the car probably didn’t realize it would go right back on the lot, he still must have been a piece of work (exchange ‘work’ for noun of your choosing) to have traded in a car that dangerous. I guess he could have acquired it in that state, but that new paint suggests otherwise. Ah, well, nobody hurt.
It’s pretty common for a dealer to unknowningly accept a flawed car in trade. Some flaws are unknown to the car owners and in some cases they know and try to cover it up.
With trades, most of the time they’re just given a cursory quick look-over or maybe a spin around the block at most. Sometimes, they don’t even get driven around the block.
That same dealer also took in trade a very low miles Chevy Caprice that was slick and sold quickly.
Some weeks later electrical problems started showing up and the purchaser brought the car back.
Another guy who worked in the shop with me got the job to sort it out. While tracing wires he removed the kick panels and carpet on the drivers side and discovered that the car was actually two vehicles. There was a weld completely across the car right behind the firewall where the front half of one had been mated to the back half of another. The dealer decided to buy this one back also.
I bought a pair of Geo Metros and I planned to make one my beater car and sell the other one. One had a decent body but a dud engine. The other had the rear hatch cut out and spray painted camouflage to make a small pickup truck type thing. It also needed work but the engine ran well. They welded angle iron in back and used plywood and Plexiglas for the back window. My initial plan was to transfer the engine from the pickup to the good body and fix the junker enough to just sell it at a later date after giving the old engine a valve job. They were both 1994’s with the exact same original configuration so the one made a great parts donor when I realized it was beyond repair.
They hadn’t done any waterproofing so all the water just pooled in the underbody and rusted it out bad. The front end was shot and the A-arms were about to separate from the subframe. This part is known for rusting out on these cars. The rear control arms were also bolted to rusted cracked metal. How I drove this home without it falling apart is beyond me. Anyway, it quickly became obvious that it was not worth fixing and I decided to pull spare parts and scrap the rest. I junked it and I found al kinds of odd rigs while tearing it apart. The seats were held up by brackets screwed into the plywood that held the back window. The brackets were made out of old twisted horseshoes. Anything safety related was bad. This included brakes, lights, suspension, etc. I have no idea how it passed inspection in the past.
I redid the good car and got it going well. I redid the entire front end on it too during the engine swap job, did the front brakes, and such. I came to realize that I had taken both front wheels and one back wheel off one day when I had to take the other rear wheel off. There were three lug nuts because one of the studs was twisted off. I went to loosen the remaining ones and the studs snapped off with practically no effort. I guess they were overtightened severely but I had been driving around in a Geo Metro with one wheel hanging by a thread. Not good. This ended up with my doing a complete rear brake job on both sides as well since the shoes were pretty worn when the drum had to come off.
As for the household stuff, I have seen it all too. Some that come to mind right now include the “wiring” I found in walls of a house I used to own. It was just one of those cheap white or brown two wire extension cords. I am guessing it was the 14 or 16 gage stuff. Yes, they had used it as wiring behind the walls. I had some plumbing issues too. They has used those cheap supply lines for the sink and toilet. I guess they are a flexible PVC or something and there is no webbing or mesh for reinforcement. The ones under the kitchen sink were leaking. They had repeatedly patched and added on to these cheap lines instead of removing the old ones. I had like a 6 foot coil of added on supply lines and couplers leaking under the sink on both the hot and cold sides. I simply removed all this mess and replaced it with one quality supply line. I don’t know why they didn’t do this themselves. Also, nothing had a shut-off valve in the house so I had to turn off all the water each time I did this. The shut-off in the house leaked a little so some water would pass with the valve was closed. This was a pain but I was able to work around it by turning on the lowest faucet in the house so the water would drain out there and not where I was trying to work. I had to turn it off at the street to put a shut-off valve on that sink. I later had a contractor replace the inside valve when I was having some other work done as it wasn’t a big deal for them.
Oh, I forgot about the toilet that started an entire bathroom remodel! How could I do that??? The house was built in 1960 or so and had some older original fixtures including the toilet. The toilet was fine except it had this odd type of float that rides up and down on a rod. This rod has a rubber plunger on the end like a flapper in a modern toilet to serve as a stopper. This always gave me trouble and I hated it. There was no good way to align that rod perfectly and it always leaked and ran. I finally got sick of it and went out and bought a new toilet, wax ring, and everything needed to install the toilet. I went to unbolt the old toilet and couldn’t find the bolts. I couldn’t figure out how this thing was held down but I had lived there like 5 years. I started pulling on and rocking the toilet and it just came up off the floor. They had simply set it on the wax ring with nothing to hold it down. Well, it had leaked some and rotted out the subflooring so that had to go. The bathroom was old and dated anyway so this became a convenient time to have a complete remodel done. Anyway, this was a pretty bad one.
Also, how can I forget about the 1978 Jeep that came with my new property. The PCV valve had been plugged up with a .410 shutgun shell and the nipple on the intake had been plugged with a .45 ACP brass casing! This is just the start of the problems with that one.
@ OK4450
With all the tales of electrical shenanigans in homes I suppose that brings up 2 assumptions.
- Many of the news stories about home fires “due to unknown origin” are cleared up.
- Code enforcement people are out to lunch all of the time.
I thought the same thing about your #1. #2 I’m not so sure I agree with. Many people do these things and never pull a permit or have anyone who knows anything about it check their work…They don’t call them “farmer jobs” for nothing
That is definitely the case. I am by no means a licensed electrician but have tackled many jobs by myself. The good news is that I try to leave the scene safer than when I started. I use proper junction boxes, wire nuts, correct polarity, grounding, and the like. No twisted together extension cords in the walls as wiring for me!
You cannot fault the code enforcement people on jobs they are completely unaware of. I know that in some cities and counties the permits to make sure things are up to code also get passed to the tax assessor with the planned modifications/upgrades so that they can increase taxes on the property if they feel it increases the value of the property. This is one reason people do things without the proper permits and inspections as they don’t want their taxes to go up.
Also, I thought of a couple other ones. Get on Youtube and type “how not to tow a small car” without the quotes. I have to laugh at this one having a Geo Metro myself. I would post links but my posts get filtered when I do that so you can find it with these directions.
Also on Youtube, type in “snow car towing” without the quotes and click the first link. This one appears to be a Geo Storm.
Also on Youtube, type in “car tree removal fail” without quotes. You will see a light blue GM car on the first link.
@TwinTurbo, I fully agree that many people do things themselves (I’m one of them) and around where I live it’s pretty much a free for all.
My point was about wondering where code people are in places that are regulated. A friend of mine in a neighboring small city put up a 24 X 30 shop in the back of his house and had to get a permit from the city.
This put him on the list for a number of inspections during the process.
Had to have the concrete pad inspected before framing, then the framing inspected before utilities, then the plumbing, then the wiring, and on and on.
On the subject of the biggest WTH I can’t really think of one particular incident that trumps all. It’s more of a collection with some worse than others.
Some of the worst (or rather, more embarassing to the profession) involves mechanics.
The need for a permit really varies with the city you are in in Minnesota. In Minneapolis you can’t hardly do anything like put a door in without a permit. The smaller cities are not quite as stringent and usually only require one for structural, decks, roofs, etc.
I tend to do my own work and I’ve gotten a permit several times for an addition and changing a window to a walk out. I actually found the inspector helpful in answering my questions on how to do the job right. No hassle at all. I’ve had a couple houses built too and was fairly involved in the process and really haven’t had any problems. I try to learn what I need to know about the trades involved and do the job right and slightly over-built. Of course sometimes we unknowingly screw up.
You have to remember though that the job of the building inspector is not to insure good workmanship, but rather to adhere to the codes. The blocks may not be straight, but if they are down to the frost line, there isn’t much he can say. A wall might be crooked but if the studs are properly fastened and enough of them and meets R19, it passes. That’s why I don’t buy other peoples houses and like to be involved when mine are built.
If I knew more I would tell it, After winning the lawsuit the couple did find a house in the country and I lost touch with them. The only part that I know that I left out was that the hardest part of winning the lawsuit was finding the sellers to have them served. They were doing everything they could do to hide.
Back in the late 70’s a coworker of mine worked for a Chevy dealer here in Pennsy. One day he was trying to fix a rattle heard over bumps, coming from the right rear area of the car, an Impala recently bought new, so still under warranty. It didn’t add up that the sound was coming from where it was–the hollow body area making up the right rear quarter panel. I think the customer was in the waiting room, so the foreman brought him out to get permission to cut a hole in the quarter panel far inboard so it wouldn’t be noticeable. Then, they figured, they could eyeball the area.
They found a coke can laying in the bottom of the quarter panel cavity that must have been making the rattle sound over bumps. My friend says when he pulled the can out he noticed words written in magic marker: “Ha ha, [expletive] you, buddy!”
A bored assembly line worker must have put the can in there before the panel was welded up.
Mt friend swore this really happened & I have no reason to doubt him, given the behavior of SOME auto workers back then!
Back when AMF owned Harley Davidson the treatment of employees was pretty bad and quality suffered. Acts of sabotage were not that rare.
One involved a new Super Glide that was uncrated and had a note taped on top of the gas tanks.
“I get paid X amount of dollars to xxxx things up. How much do you get paid to find what I did?”.
They had to practically tear the entire bike apart before finding a 9/16 wrench stuffed into the gears in the transmission.
Fomer U. of OK and NFL linebacker Brian Bosworth worked during the summers at the OKC GM plant while he was in college and said it was common for workers to sabotage cars. Mostly they would hide bolts, nuts, or whatever in obscure places and create rattles which would aggravate the customer, and indirectly cause the mechanic a lot of grief trying to find the problem.
The irritating part about something like this, other than sticking the customer, is that the assembly line worker makes good money for screwing it up. The mechanic having to sort it out under warranty makes a pittance for doing so.