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| Ek's Home | Forum | Chat | Electrical Links | |
| Subject - Cost of damage repair, and other mishap stories | |
| MONOLITH |
I have a specific question, and I also thought this would be an interesting thread to tell those stories of when you (or an employee) fell thru someone's ceiling, or 220 volt'd their computer, or some other terrible mistake you never forgot. Specifically I have a pricing question one of you may know. Last week while in an attic, I accidentally missed the joist, and stepped my 230 lbs (of solid muscle  )down onto the ceiling, and heard that horrible cracking sound that I will never forget. This is a high dollar fancy house with a very picky homeowner who sees every blemish.I didn't go completely thru, but I did push it down into sort of an X shape, with 4 cracks running outward. I'm sure you've seen it before. I took a drywall saw and cut away enough inside the cracks to push the drywall back up to almost flat again. Then I took that really lightweight (forget the name) patch stuff and tried to cover over the cracklines, complete with a coat of paint. Needless to say, it's needs another coat of everything. If I can't make it look right, I'll need to get a professional drywall guy in there, and maybe cut the whole 2 foot square out and put a new piece in. Anyway, the point of all this is, I asked a drywall guy today what he would charge; he told me $400 to $500 dollars.  I probably only made $250 in the house before I got intimate with the ceiling. My question is, have you ever had drywall repaired before, does his price sound right? Sounds high to me. And then, share your own horror stories. I'm sure we all have them. 
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| John A. Peters | The simple answer is to call two more drywall guys. I can tell the story about smoking a Sony TV and VCR when I have time. |
| John A. Peters | Prices vary by the state, the county, and also by the local company. It is tru that he may have to make several trips. |
| in2serenity | Sounds high to me, they have compounds that are ready to sand in 10 minutes. I would definetly get a few estimates. |
| Romex Racer | Once I 220'd a fax machine, so I had to buy another one. 
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| Wirenutz | MONOLITH, there may be the possibility that some may wish to take advantage of your contractors ins policy ~W~ |
| blackrd | I cannot believe that the guy would say $400 for a patch of that size. Any drywall guy would durabond it twice and be done within 2 hours of starting the patch. That guy you talked to is apparently used to screwing customers and forgot who he was talking to. |
| wilkie | I don't know about the patch price. Everytime I have had to bear the cost of the patch job, my 210 pounds of pure muscle made it all the way through and then some. My chiropracter made out alot better than the drywall man. On a funny note, last week I gave one of our techs a one dollar an hour raise; on top of all of his performance bonuses. I cut and signed the checks, and the next phone call I recieve is from him. Apparantly, he got " disoriented" under a house, and drilled a perfect 1/2" hole right through the customers hard wood floor. It just so happened to be behind a bedroom door, so I was able to stop by the hardware store and make it a door stop. The customer was actually pleased with the end result. We were very fortunate with this one. I lost 5 years in one day. I can't handle the stress of telling nice people we just put a perfect hole, in their floor. |
| kbsparky | He He ... Oh the adventures we have been through ...  The ONE ceiling I stepped thru was in a rental house that I was occupying at the time. It was one of those cheap 1x1 tile ceilings, with the furring strips. So cheap that those particular tiles were not available any more, so to make things match up, we had to replace the whole ceiling !! I ended up removing all those furring strips, and had a drywall friend redo the whole ceiling with drywall. Made a much better looking job, and got rid of all those compressed cardboard flammable tiles, too. I had to foot the bill, but my landlord was quite pleased -- I returned the house in much better condition when I left, than it was when I initially moved in As for the accident of putting 240 Volts on a 120 circuit when replacing a service, we did that one too. It was one of their kitchen circuits, and it fried a TV and their refrigerator. I called an appliance repair guy to fix the fridge, and he ended up replacing an evaporator fan. The compressor, it turned out, survived. As for that TV, it was basically brand new, so I went down to the store, and bought them another one, and took the fried one with me. I gave it to my brother who was experienced in electronics, and for about $.50, he replaced a blown fuse in the power supply, and got that thing working! Sheesh! Funny thing about that customer, though. They completely understood that "accidents happen" and the way that we handled the affair impressed them the most. They had us do their new house a few years later when they built it, for they knew that we would do anything to make things right. 
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| SR Scott | The only time it happened to me (attic down through drywall ceiling)was during an extremely profitable day when one of our guys did it at my house. Was trying to keep him busy and wanted to replace fixtures in my second floor ceiling with cans. "Accidents happen though", I thought. That was until I peeked up into our attic later to help and watched him navigate the joists: HE WAS JUMPING FROM JOIST TO JOIST, (24" spacing), hoping he landed squarely on the next one. Wow. Started watching "The Apprentice" so I could have the perfect voice inflection when I said "you're fired". |
| MONOLITH | quote: I just didn't want you to think it was my unbalanced beer belly that was the problem.  Actually, this is me, I've been a weightlifter since I was 16. That's how I got the name Monolith. I'll be 39 next month.  The guy that told me $400 is coming to look at the ceiling today. I'm definately going to get a second estimate. One of the biggest goof ups I had was on a commercial job. Actually, it was in that 3 story nursing home that's in that pic in the union/non union thread. I had this one guy working for me that always did electrical rooms, setting the big cans and such. He hooked up a transformer that fed the 120/208 to the third floor. He accidently landed the C phase secondary on the neutral bar, and vice versa. When we fired up the transformer, I looked down the hallways at the wall sconces. They had those little candelabra bulbs in them. They were glowing so bright from the 208 you couldn't look at them. Fortunately we shut it down before any bulbs blew or ballasts fried. But the bad part was each patient room had a $150 controller above the ceiling that tied to the patient bed to control the lights. You know those buttons that clip to a pillow, or are directly on the bed post so the patient can turn lights on and off? It's a Low voltage xfmer so there's only 24 volts at the bed, etc. We fried 35 of them on that floor. $5200 mistake. Then there was the time I was carrying a 2000 Amp piece of main switch gear across a parking lot with a Lull, and dropped it on it's face and snapped the main breaker handle off. Oops.
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| cvelectric | The story SR Scott told sounds eerily familiar to me. About 23 years ago(as a 2 year appr.) I was pulling wire in my bosses attic when my foot missed and my leg went completely through the drywall. It seemed like it took a while before I could get my leg out as it was somewhat stuck and I was in an awkward position. When I finally got out and looked through the gaping hole I saw my boss looking up at me from behind his drywall covered desk! When I went down, to get my walking papers, I was surprised at how calm he was. He just told me not to worry about it and that it was just drywall. (true story). This incident occurred after I had made some other fairly costly mistakes. I guess he just felt sorry for me, as my father had died recently, but looking back I think he was just a really good person. I have always viewed him as the best boss I ever had and I wrote him about 6 years ago and told him how much I appreciated his understanding and compassion when I really needed it. I am now an EC (one man show) and when/if I have employees I hope I can afford to be half as understanding as he was. |
| SR Scott | Well, atually didn't fire that kid, that was a joke. He did end up quitting about a year and a half later to work closer to home, (lives in Wisconsin an hour away). We still hire him when his company is slow and his dad still hires us to do work down at his Illinois office. We still laugh about it . He only weighed about 280 then and he did go all the way through. But it was a mistake and not the worst one we've made by a long shot. The worst goof up ever in this company was mine and it was much, much, much more expensive and embarrasing. When you blow an 800 Amp main at an attorney's office in the middle of the day, now that's a mistake.
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| John A. Peters | When hiring or working in attic, the first time with an electrician, I like to know that they have already put a foot through a ceiling, then I know I can trust them to not do it again. The ones that have never done it, will do it on your job eventually. |
| MONOLITH | Heh. That's actually a good point John.
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| luckyshadow | Did you ever talk a customer into something and have it end up costing you ? I Did . I was doing a finished basement with a full bath. I talked the homeowner into a recess light above the tub. Well as I prceeded to mount and wire this light I dropped my linemens , Put a real nice chip in the bottom of the 1 peice fiberglass tub/shower. That "extra" ended up costing me $150.00 to have it fixed. |
| Romex Racer | That sux. |
| John A. Peters | Yep. The fact that the earth's gravity is so much stronger over an fiberglass tub, combined with Butterfinger effect, caused a good idea to go bad. :-) Maybe you should invest in a full set of tools made with the new light weight helium filled spenders. |
| kbsparky | In reality, a heavy canvas drop cloth folded over a couple of times and placed in the bottom of such structures before entering can prevent a multitude of sins ...
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| luckyshadow | Trust Me I won't EVER work over a tub without something in the bottom(besides my linemens). I won't even change the bulbs over my tub without placing towels in the bottom of the tub. Goes to prove that some times the best way to learn is to be hit where it hurts - The Wallet ! The hardest part of the whole ordeal was explaining to the homeowner how I made such a "Rookie" mistake |