Surprise Meeting With The Electrical Inspector

Th 7/23/15

This was the day that Ernie and I would move the eight stand-alone bookcases to the new house. I called him Wednesday after the book club meeting and he told me that he had another job Thursday morning, but he would meet me at the house around noon or 1pm.

I started the move alone around 8am on Thursday. I moved six of the cases to the patio before I picked up the van at 930am at U-Haul on Bruns Lane. I moved five of the cases and books for those cases to the house before he joined the move around 1pm.

At 11am I was muscling one of the cases into the bedroom when I heard a knock on the door. A guy walked in from the breezeway and asked if I was the contractor and I told him that I was the owner. He was kind of brusque and surly and acted like someone was trying to pull a fast one. Eric arrived about five minutes later and got caught up in a lie. Eric thought that I was aware that I was supposed to be doing the work, but he never made this clear, and I had just told the inspector that I had a contractor do the work. But there was no way in the world that I could have convinced a five year old, let alone this city inspector, that I had done any of the work. The upshot was that the job was shut down until I got a city permit.

Around 430pm, as Ernie and I were at the house finishing up for the last haul of the day, Lucas Patterson, the electrician showed up. He came to pick up his equipment and was mad at Eric for the way that he handled the permit. He thought that he was off the job, and Ernie volunteered the services of a Jacksonville electrician that he works with. As the dust clears, it becomes obvious that I shouldn't have involved the city inspectors in any of this. Now, it's going to be more expensive.

On Saturday morning 7/25 Eric called and said the permit issue has been resolved, but the job will now require arc-fault breaker switches that are four to five times more expensive. This might add a grand or more to the total price, but I contacted Lucas later and found that it will only be an additional three hundred. Lucas will call me back tonight with the final cost and the job is to be completed by Monday night, and the final inspection will occur later in the week.