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Some contractors...
Should be jailed, never mind put out of business.
As I explained here: http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...ead.php?t=3517 I am the MD of a company that supplies and installs generators.
About 2 months back, I received a call from a lady, she bought a 5kVA unit from a "large and reputable" company that offered a 12-month warranty on the installation. They came around, claimed that a 5kVA was sufficent, and installed it together with an AMF. Said company (im not gonna mention names, I don't like bad mouthing the competition even though some deserve it). To cut a long story short, after a couple of weeks, the unit burned out, so badly that even the AMF was reduced to carbon. She wanted us to go and fix the problems as said company refused, claiming it was not the unit's or the installation's fault, but abuse from the owner.
We kindly declined, in my experience fixing other people's problems leads to disputes, and since it's not our equipment to start with, and can fail again once fixed, it ends up giving our company a bad name.
Last week she phoned me to have a full quote to install a new generator, and replace the AMF switch. So I sent out our contractor. Firstly, the generator was wired up to the DB board in a way that it supplied the entire house, inc several geysers. Obviously whoever did the installation didn't bother to test the current draw when everything was on, which we did. It was in the region of 11kVA! no wonder the poor 5.0kVA melted.
We supplied a 6.8kVA generator, after the client decided that a 12.5kVA was out of her price range, and isolated all the large current drawing equipment off the generator side of the DB board, this meant that the requirement had dropped from 11kVA to around 4kVA when everything other than geysers and stove where running.
But to our amazement, we discovered that the wire coming in to the old AMF panel (which I failed to mention that said company was sued by our client for damages, and came to remove said burned out unit and AMF panel, leaving un-insulated wires exposed..)was tapped directly into the main feed cable from the municipality pole into the DB board, with no form of protection whatsoever! If anyone was unlucky enough to come into contact with this piece of cable(approx 30m BTW), they would have been toast.
And this job was commissioned by a large company, to a qualified electrical contractor? The mind boggles!
As I explained here: http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...ead.php?t=3517 I am the MD of a company that supplies and installs generators.
About 2 months back, I received a call from a lady, she bought a 5kVA unit from a "large and reputable" company that offered a 12-month warranty on the installation. They came around, claimed that a 5kVA was sufficent, and installed it together with an AMF. Said company (im not gonna mention names, I don't like bad mouthing the competition even though some deserve it). To cut a long story short, after a couple of weeks, the unit burned out, so badly that even the AMF was reduced to carbon. She wanted us to go and fix the problems as said company refused, claiming it was not the unit's or the installation's fault, but abuse from the owner.
We kindly declined, in my experience fixing other people's problems leads to disputes, and since it's not our equipment to start with, and can fail again once fixed, it ends up giving our company a bad name.
Last week she phoned me to have a full quote to install a new generator, and replace the AMF switch. So I sent out our contractor. Firstly, the generator was wired up to the DB board in a way that it supplied the entire house, inc several geysers. Obviously whoever did the installation didn't bother to test the current draw when everything was on, which we did. It was in the region of 11kVA! no wonder the poor 5.0kVA melted.
We supplied a 6.8kVA generator, after the client decided that a 12.5kVA was out of her price range, and isolated all the large current drawing equipment off the generator side of the DB board, this meant that the requirement had dropped from 11kVA to around 4kVA when everything other than geysers and stove where running.
But to our amazement, we discovered that the wire coming in to the old AMF panel (which I failed to mention that said company was sued by our client for damages, and came to remove said burned out unit and AMF panel, leaving un-insulated wires exposed..)was tapped directly into the main feed cable from the municipality pole into the DB board, with no form of protection whatsoever! If anyone was unlucky enough to come into contact with this piece of cable(approx 30m BTW), they would have been toast.
And this job was commissioned by a large company, to a qualified electrical contractor? The mind boggles!
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