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Comment by aidenn0 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone I know who does blue collar work echoes what you said.

It's pretty broken on the other side of things too, presumably because the work sucks so much and is so variable that they are incentivized to milk every penny from those who appear like they can afford it.

As a busy professional homeowner that is well-paid, I would gladly pay 50% more than the current going rate in town to know that a decent, workmanlike job would be done.

The quality of the work is completely decoupled from the rates charged though, which kind of makes sense, as there are plenty of people in town who need HVAC/plumbing/electrical &c. work done who can't afford to pay over the going rate.

It took me a decade to find a plumber that is honest (luckily they do decent work as well, but honest was hard enough of a bar to reach).

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I hear you on this sentiment. It got so bad I asked my Wife's cousin who is the trades(master electrician) to teach me electrical. After a few tries(and many facetime troubleshooting sessions with him), I can replace any outlet, wire a celing or wall lamp inside/outside. Get GFCI outlets set up, also set up, 3 and 4 outlet setups(3/4 legged). I swapped out every single receptacle in my current house, upgraded a ton of lights, got things to code(GFCI on all kitchen outlets now) and saved thousands by doing it myself. It makes me feel pretty proud and its something(unlike software I have written) that will persist for decades.

Are there no regulatory or insurance limits for this that apply in your case? I would like to be able to do similar level of electricity installations in here, but I like keeping insurance cover even more. Save $$$ only to lose $$$ $$$ on fire?

Local codes could vary widely, but there’s a concept of “light electrical” which allows unlicensed people/handymen to do certain jobs. Replacing lights, plugs, and switches typically fall under that. Generally, if a permit is needed a licensed person has to do the work.

Our town has a “homeowner” exemption that lets homeowners do such work to their own property and they are exempted from the rule that otherwise requires licensed contractors to perform that type of work (mech., plumbing, structural, electrical). However, homeowners are still required to get permits and have inspections performed to close those permits. You can imagine that capable homeowners often honor that rule in the breach unless changing something more than cosmetic (e.g. making a change that could not go unnoticed at sale time).

This is true in NH statewide, under the “Homeowner’s Exemption.”

I just wanted to chime in here as an ex-industrial electrician that also held an electrical contractor's license for residential work before getting into software.

People do their own electrical work all the time, and the insurance company doesn't know (and probably doesn't care).

The reason they don't care is: unless you have a > 100 year old house with knob and tube wiring, you have to go to _great_ lengths to set it on fire with electricity. Like, you have to be deliberately trying to burn your house down (we're talking connecting a hot and a neutral wire next to a gasoline soaked piece of wood and turning on the breaker).

For the most part, the biggest risk to doing your own electrical work is getting electrocuted, and 120V usually won't kill you (but it does hurt).

I had GFCI installed on all the breakers in the breaker box, so there wasn't a need to use GFCI outlets.

This really isn’t that hard to do for us techies, even without being taught, just download some guides and watch some YouTube videos. The real problem is that your work probably won’t be inspected, which is a problem in some jurisdictions.

I did my own upgrade to Lutron smart switches, and…it was easy (just turn the fuse off first!) but…I will probably have them redone when I rewire my kitchen someday.

The simple case in which you have a home where everything is more or up to code isn’t hard. The complexity comes in when you’re unwinding decades of other people’s hack jobs (the case in most real homes I’ve come across). I agree that the basics are worth learning though!

Stick the right wires into the right holes isn’t hard, the hard part is winding up and fitting wires into the small box the original electrician set up! Electrical is is easy, but the polish and craftsmanship is hard. Yes, I could wire, but never as nicely as a professional.

I second the guy above here: The problem I see most often is that when you have to modify existing installations, parts of them will have been done by people who didn't know what they were doing, and if you aren't sharp (a professionally trained electrician) you may not notice subtle signs you are working off something that was not originally done correctly. It may not originally have been a problem (ie triggered something), but when you then modify further and for example draw more power, and you don't realise part of the original wiring was done the wrong way, you suddenly have a fire hazard. In my current home, we had a wall that would 'get hot' in a certain area, and it turned out part of the wires used in the wall were too small to carry the current now going through them. That part was clearly not done by a professional.

Oh ya, there are tons of things that can go wrong, but they are all well know, it isn't like having the right gauge of wire for amps is a huge trade secret. But the electrician is more likely going to know (a) be careful and do things right, and (b) do them efficiently/effectively/etc...

> That part was clearly not done by a professional.

It totally could have been. But it definitely wasn't inspected by a professional.

My house is old - 100 years or so. And I have uncovered so many hack jobs it's not even funny. Any time I open something up to fix or update what I think is a small thing I uncover new surprises that often turn those small jobs into capital-P Projects.

That said, I bought the place as-is and will probably end up selling it that way someday. I know enough about electrical work and codes (and where to look them up) that when I do something, I am confident that what I do is bringing things more up to code than they were.

And that's my logic - I may not be getting a permit every time I do some minor upgrade or change, but when I do something, it ends up in better shape than it was when I found it.

(seriously...the number of times I've found romex or old conduit wiring just wire-nutted together in the wall or between joists makes me wonder how this place hasn't burned down already)

Where does on look up electrical codes?

I couldn't agree more with this! so much bad stuff to un-wind and hacky stuff from the previous person who (badly)wired the outlets and other stuff I swapped out.

> As a busy professional homeowner that is well-paid, I would gladly pay 50% more than the current going rate in town to know that a decent, workmanlike job would be done

Without forcing consolidation, how would one do this? (Preferably, something which can be enacted at the state level.)

Reviews don't work. Optional, high-barrier certifications? Competitions?

The ol' fashioned grapevine. Aka word of mouth. Aka the original social network.

>Without forcing consolidation, how would one do this?

Use the wildly popular technique that has taken over the assessment of everything else too big to measure: the random sample. Every registered technician will enter each job performed into a lottery, which will be reviewed by a qualified analyst. A single bad finding shouldn't ruin anyone, but a good record keeping methodology with appropriate sampling and a suitable penalty for failing to register a job — registration will likely be demanded by consumers anyway — should effectively weed out any laggards.

I am not aware of this being implemented for any home maintenance, but this is how hospital accreditation is done. Every now and then The Joint Commission shows up and inspects stuff.

> registered technician will enter each job performed into a lottery

One difference between trades and medicine is paperwork. I have hired for jobs without contracts being signed or receipts produced.

Why not make it optional? Registered work gets randomly inspected. Unregistered work is not. The customer pays up for the privilege. Perhaps include an adjudication framework if the inspected work is found lacking.

Make friends with a real estate agent. The ones I know all have a collection of contacts of people they need to get a house fixed up for sale.

That's where I've gotten my best recommendations indeed. For a couple of things though he's just said "yeah, I'm looking for one too"

The only tractable Prisoner's Dilemma is the iterated one...

You can simplify the problem to "find a good general contractor." (not that that's easy)

They know good subcontractors.

The incentives are at least somewhat better aligned for the sub- general- relationship (I might need a plumber once a year, but a general needs one a lot). However, there's still issues of finding the good ones in the first place, and it's often more "I've known Joe since the 3rd grade, so I know he's at least not going to totally screw me over"

Mine came from an interior designer.

I gave my story to Janet in The Big Bucks (minus the fact that he was married already!) so you can read about it there. The Walt character isn't really him but I did borrow some details.

Interestingly, I gave the book to him and he loved it. Then he gave it to a contractor friend, and HE loved it, too.

The hell of it is that when you DO finally find tradespeople you can trust, you hate to tell your friends about them for fear they get too busy to fit you in when you need them again!

I loudly tell all my friends about them, for fear that I'm not enough to keep them in business!

This. I make the intro and the trade people remember me as great customer that gets priority if needed.

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