Back from the first day of State of MA Building Inspectors Conferences

unions started out ok but now................
steve sounds like you live with the mob. you pay them or you get nothing.

worse here in buffalo, there's very little they acutally allow you to do yourself, almost nothing really. However, noone has the money to pay union rates for work- simple or otherwise; so what ends up happening is that everyone still does the work themselves, and doesn't get an inspection or permit. In some cases this leads to improper repairs or construction. Its a lot like prohibition, legal and reasonably regulated is better off than illegal and overregulated and everyone does it anyway with absolutely no oversight.

A co-worker of mine gave strictly "verbal" assistance
in helping his now "estranged" son-in-law with replacing
a simple bathroom light fixture. Needless to say, a nasty
divorce came down the road, and they called the City
Inspector on him for installing an electrical fixture without
being a Liscensed Electrician. Even though he didn't pick-up
a single tool or physically assisted in the job, he had no
defense. He was assessed $500 in fines, thank-you.....
Such is Life in the City......

hey elk your seminar sounds like the seminar that i have to do every time i renew my electrical license. you may not have gone thru everything you wanted but believe me there was alot of knowledge passed on. we have to go to a code seminar of 15 hours + 6 hours of professional development to renew. the class i go to is taught by a guy who is part of writing the code book.
in that fifteen hours he never gets thru all of his material on the code changes but there is alot of knowledge passed on. i think if you had a 8 hour seminar instead of what i think you said is 90 minutes you still would have something you missed.
i think it's a good idea to have certified installers and they should all attend code seminars to renew their licenses. every year something in the code changes and the only way some guys will find out is thru those seminars. some might find out the hard way when the inspector says to redo the job it's not up to code. but for those guys out there doing the job without a permit they never find out about those changes and can possibly kill someone.
yes i think it's a pain to have to take time off of a job or blow my whole weekend but in the end well worth it. for those of you out there thinking it's another way of someone making money and making the job cost more, how much do you think it would bring up costs 150 dollar seminar over 2 or 3 years.
me i'm a do it your self type of guy but i know when a job is over my head. i hope that there is something in the code for the homeowner to do his own work.
elk your efforts were well worth it and those guys now are changing things in their town to make way for the future of someone house and life.

keep up the good work

frank

I can only presume that the son-in-law was a lawyer.

No, just enbittered from the divorce, w/ a bit
of "sour grapes" prompting from his parents.

To dylan, The discussion update to this post was not the seminar I presented. I can assure you, all learned a thing of two during my presentation. I am still in a position of inspecting and being a contractor. Plus a very capable homeowner, that can do my own work.
Many in attendance were former contractor now inspectors, I'm am one of a few in Eastern Ma that still swings a hammer . I have kept up with modern framing and materials technologies. I can actually practice as I preach. I would never want to take away the ability of myself as a home owner, from preforming work on my home. The reason my seminar was so sucessfull, I weight all the possibilities, meaning was is enforceable, practical, and additional cost, and where compromises should be made. Each decission I look
at with 3 angles of prespective, homeowner, contractor. and inspector. My seminar was geared as what to inspect in practical terms.
For instance code says a bath fan must change the room air every 12.5 minutes. As you can see a bit of math is involved. Supose I provide you with a rule of thumb formular, where you can determine the correct size of the bath fan in seconds Up to an 8' ceiling for every square foot of floor space, the fan needs one CFM. 5/10 needs a 50 cfm fan or larger. You will not find this formular in any code book, but I have applied it for years and it is close enough for me to determine the right capacity fan. I try to walk every inspector, to look at what I see, with years of experience. Giving them complicated formulars they will never apply, is useless. Telling them to check the manufactures specs on ever stove's loading door specs is important. Some stoves are tested to and require 18" and not 16' in our generic code. Many never knew 18" was spected. . Did you know you common slant fin baseboard radiator provides 450 btus per foot? Knowing that one can size out the amount needed per room. 40 sq ft requires 1000 BTUS, plus how to factor in windows, its position in the run or zone ,is also critical for even distrobution of heat. I then gave then sample room dementions and required baseboard applications. I can not type the entire 180 minutes seminar containt here only to highlight what I tried to do

Good guess But I'm not in foxboro they are within a town or two

I admitted my ego was on a high Pride of accomplisment can do that to you sometimes. Back to work