On Monday, February 24, 2014 20:22:56 a l wrote: > Greetings, > > Firstly I do greatly appreciate your contributions and drive to improve > SynHak. While I am sure many members could and have wired things correctly > I have also heard, perhaps erroneously, of times when people wired circuits > safely but still in a manner not up to code for a building and purpose that > we work towards. It's unreasonable to expect someone who doesn't do it for > a living to know what is code and what is not.
I don't paint for a living. Is it unreasonable to expect me to do an exceptionally good and professional job painting murals? Building workbenches? Writing Python and Javascript? Administrating the entirety of synhak.org including keeping everyone's private information private, server expenses low, and infrastructure secure? That is an absurd statement of what is unreasonable. As far as murals goes, I don't know how often you paint or your painting experience so I can't comment on your ability to successfully complete a mural. As far as keeping synhak.org up and running, it is reasonable to expect you to be able to do that.You work with computers for a living so the languages you chose to keep it running would be ones you're comfortable with. It is also non-life threatening infrastructure so if it goes down chances are someone won't die. > > I do not trust all of the wiring people are modifying, I know of at least > one incident where the potential for grievous bodily harm was narrowly > averted. This was the fault of the previous tenants who cut corners when > they removed an outlet they no longer needed but did not bother to remove > the live wires, instead opting for simply lopping them off flush with the > floor but still exposed. How can we be sure no other conditions like this > exist? We never will. It is impossible to know. It's easy to know get someone to inspect it. Even one of us could spot things that are outright dangerous. We might not be qualified to fix them, but finding shoddy work is fairly straight forward. That situation you described was a one-off and completely unforeseen incident. I want to avoid unforeseen incidents. I also want to avoid foreseen incidents. We've since taken extreme caution to locate any other such anomalies. As we should, we're no use as an infrastructure provider if our infrastructure may kill you. Normally when you're moving into a building, you don't expect a live conduit to be chopped off at floor level with the power still live. Especially if its been like that for a very long time, as surely someone else would've discovered it before we did. How might you suggest it have been avoided? By getting things inspected. We probably could have convinced a friend of the space to do it for a case of beer. > > I have not threatened to call an inspector any of the numerous times I > have voiced these concerns. You misunderstand my concern for the safety and > liability of SynHak and its members for the will to bankrupt it. On the > contrary I want to minimize risk to SynHak and prevent bankruptcy from > completely avoidable causes. We have become significantly higher profile > since last year, all it takes is following our lists or googling for more > information for someone to discover things are not how they should be. > The cost of doing things right has been used as a reason before and it's > just as faulty now as it was then. Is getting electric installed expensive? > Sure! Is it cheaper than getting dropped by our insurance? Absolutely. The > consequences of not doing this correctly are too high to not do it. You are absolutely correct, and I welcome you to show where hiring a full electrician fits into our meager funds instead of having skilled professionals do it for free. I'm sorry but none of you are registered licensed and bonded electricians so you are not professionals. This does not mean that the quality of work you do has no chance of being up to code. This does mean that if anything goes wrong the insurance will not cover it, they will likely drop us, and it will destroy SynHak. > > I wasn't commenting on the operation of the panel in the basement, just > stating that there was a panel in the basement whose cover was off and I > was unsure if it was energized or not. > > Andy, > Just because I call someone an amateur does not mean I think they are > unskilled or completely incompetent. It means they don't do it for a > living, aren't licensed for such work in the city, and probably don't know > every piece of the NEC, which could lead to scenarios where their wiring is > safe but not up to code. You don't need to be paid to be a professional. When I'm not getting paid to write code, that doesn't suddenly mean that my FOSS contributions are from an "amateur". I treat all my work with the same care and responsibility as if I were getting paid. That's actually exactly what it means: adjective: *amateur* *1*. engaging or engaged in without payment; nonprofessional You're mistaking my pointing out lack of credentials with someone's lack of ability. There is a difference between *gratis* work and work as an amateur. You went to school to work with computers, have a degree, work for a company programming for a living. All of us take great pride in the work that we do, so it comes off a bit dismissive to have it compared to that of an unskilled, clueless newbie. If you could provide some supporting statements that the work people have done is of poor quality or not to code, your message won't come across as hostile. I'm not even sure why you quoted my message at this point, you've ignored most of it. I'm not saying amateur work is unskilled, sub-par, faulty work. I'm saying it is a gigantic liability issue with the potential to destroy SynHak. I'm not exactly sure how calling peoples mistakes out will come across as less hostile, but as you wish.Admittedly the mistakes I've heard about are not catastrophic but at the same time these were things that would have not been up to code and in the event of any electrical issues caused us a lot of insurance woes. 100's of feet of plastic conduit was bought, prepped, and some installed before someone who knew the applicable code pointed out the violation. 10's of feet of the wrong wiring were bought to run inside the conduit, again the violation was pointed out by someone who knew the applicable code(Craig I believe caught this). Again, I'm reasonably confident that most of the SynHak community would be able to connect hot to hot and ground to ground without starting a fire. But the point isn't shoddy workmanship. It's about following the rules, and not exposing SynHak, INC. ,or its member on whom we depend, to liability. regards, Andrew L
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