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Thread: Too many cables in conduit

  1. #11
    Gold Member Sparks's Avatar
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    That is exactly why I chose to offer legal solutions. Experience comes with time and when starting out all of us had to turn to people with more hands-on experience. There is always a legal way, but when pressed for time and not having the years under your belt yet, it pleases me that advice is asked for, rather than choosing to maintain a "do as I please" attitude. When I take a new guy in the first thing I say to him is that he forget all he's learnt. I will teach him the correct way. The first time he takes a chance he is out. You cannot apologise to someone who is dead. I insist that I be asked when they are unsure or do not know what to do. Believe me, either they are gone the first day or they become "good".

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  3. #12
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    i think people are going to be too scared to ask questions on this forum,in case somebody bites their head off.

  4. #13
    Gold Member Sparks's Avatar
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    I think the air has been cleared now, I also feel that way when I see some peoples' work, but on the other hand they have to learn somewhere. I prefer being asked as opposed to a chance being taken and a lethal mistake being made out of ignorance or inexperience. I myself have learnt a lot on this forum and wish I had more time to spend here.

  5. #14
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    Yes you are right, the guy did ask for advice.

    You either try and do it to the letter and never get any work or you use a bit of common sense and , as long as its safe in your own opinion, you have to what you need to do to make it work.
    This statement got right up my nose because the terms "common sense" and "safe in your opinion" are a little too loose for my liking. "common sense" and "safe in your opinion" are views that get people killed. Many people use their "common sense" and have their kids stand on the passenger seat of the car at 120km/h because they believe that "it is safe in their opinion". It is the same problem, if your "common sense" reasoning has never had to deal with a child going through a windscreen then how common is your "common sense really" By the same token, if you stuff the entire conduit full of cables and the client's son decides to install a computer centre in the basement with floodlights and printers and stuff what then? How can your "common sense" foresee that the guy won't do that. What about if the guy decides to fix the lamp and gets it wrong etc. The point is that the regulations are there to protect people from using their "common sense" which generally has dire consequences if the "common sense" sits in the head of a person that lacks experience.

  6. #15
    Gold Member Sparks's Avatar
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    I agree with you but if someone is drowning, I will try help even though I cannot swim, despite growing up on the coast. I do however absolutely LIVE for deep-sea fishing

  7. #16
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    I agree with you but if someone is drowning, I will try help even though I cannot swim, despite growing up on the coast.
    I will only do so if I can negate the risk to my own life. There is no sense in throwing yourself in the water if you don't know if you will be able to get back out. I am not averse to helping people, I will stick my neck right out if the situations demands it, but one has to calculate the risk. Do you swerve when one person runs across the road and then crash into another car killing 5 occupants... these are tough split second decisions that we are faced with sometimes, my view is to take the lessor of the evils...

    "Common sense" is a very dangerous idea because it is mostly dependent on past experience, thinking laterally and being able to projecting an outcome, as they say, "you don't know what you don't know". Inexperienced drivers think that it is common sense to slam on the brakes if something happens (especially those who drive with ABS) but once you've aqauplaned an out of control car with its brakes locked and wheels pointing west, you learn that your "common sense" needs to be adjusted for wet weather driving (and ABS does fail too)

    I don't know, I don't have the answers, $h1t I don't even know which questions to ask, I just think that we have to be careful about knowing our own limitations and reasoning abilities. Like I said before, rules are there to protect us from our own individual versions of "common sense" Too many car crashes and air crashes occur due to the notion of "common sense" but I must confess, there are people that have such an acute "common sense" due to experience that my little mind just boggles. Remember the pilot who ditched the Airbus A320 in the Hudson river after a bird strike, now that is what I call "BALLS powered by common sense derived from applying a calculated risk to a terrible situation by using years of experience" No textbook will teach you to do that. That guy proves that people are able to apply "common sense" extremely well provided that they have the knowledge, experience and balls to back it up. Hats off to that guy

  8. #17
    Gold Member Sparks's Avatar
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    Diamond Member AndyD's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave A View Post
    It's a pity some posts in this thread were withdrawn by the poster concerned. It would have been interesting to hear an intelligent solution suggested to the problem posed.
    I think there will be many relatively straight forward solutions, there's usually more than one way to skin a cat. The problem is they'll all cost money and they'll all take time. At this stage in the game, if there's only a low profit margin on the job and there's a dispute brewing with the customer it's a tricky decision whether to throw good money after bad.

    Quote Originally Posted by adrianh View Post
    do a quote, stick to the quote and handle all additions as seperate issues.
    That's exactly the way to do it. It's always the 'oh, while you're here' kinda jobs that cause the problems and the OP was a prime example of that. We always keep the extras separate from the main job and we'll only do extras if there's a separate signed order/variation order. Also if they want to contest the cost of the extras when they get the separate invoices it doesn't affect getting paid for the main job.

    I think experience is the thing that prevents you ending up in these kinds of situations in the first place. Skill, knowledge and a good measure of diplomacy is what will help resolve them when they do occur. From the OP I suspect there's more than just the regs issue and too many cables in a conduit going on here. I think there's other angles at play where either this is just a symptom of a deeper problem between customer and contractor or maybe the customer is just one of those skelms who looks to make disputes in the hope of avoiding having to pay.
    _______________________________________________

    _______________________________________________

  10. #19
    Gold Member Sparks's Avatar
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    It is for that reason that I use specified quotes with a clause stating that "no changes to the quote will be considered unless agreed to and signed for by both parties".

  11. #20
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    Look, all I was saying is that I don't think that there will be any detrimental effect of putting the cables in 50cm, length of conduit, especially when the cables are not even loaded to a third of there capacity. Loaded cables give of heat the space allows for dissipation of heat which is the purpose of having 45% space. The circuit breakers I have used make it impossible to get he cables even closely to fully loaded or to teh point where that may have heat to dissipate.

    I think that the electrician who my customer has now called in will pull those cables out and put them in a big junction box above the ceiling and double up the circuits which I think will be have a more detrimental effect than leaving the cables in the conduit now.

    Customers will not let you smash there freshly painted wall be re-chased.

    No its not about making a quick buck, its nothing to do with "that'll do". I can honestly say the job is work of art, if I was wiring my mothers own house this is the standard I would have done it to. Cables clipped, spaced equally, no twists in the cable, all nicely dressed in, all the down lights lined up perfect.


    Electrician are up against other electricians who cut corners. Example, I quote on a shop and I spread the lighting load, for an example, over 4 circuits. Its good practice even if the load is low enough to be put on one circuit. The other electrician will put all the load on one circuit and make savings on cable and the protective devices. In the unlikely event there is a fault on the circuit, doing my way at least the other 3 circuits stay on but the guy who cuts corner, even though it may done to the book, the whole shop will be in darkness. The client doesn't generally know or worry about this until there is problem.

    Of course I'm not going to put a stove on 2.5mm cable and no I didn't leave lighting cables in metal conduits without running a separate earth cable.

    Oh, and the non paying client would not let the an inspector from the ECA, which I had arranged, to come in and inspect the work I had done.
    She is just a simply a thief.

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