Is it safe for a general contractor to do minor electrical work?

[Retriever]

Originally Posted by jaymoney

Great story. Is there much relevance to an eight year old thread taking place in New Jersey?

Probably either zero relevance, or something very close to... zero.

[OldGeneral]

Originally Posted by jaymoney

Great story. Is there much relevance to an eight year old thread taking place in New Jersey?

Only for those still searching about the question, one of many constantly recurring questions.

[NJ to MA]

Originally Posted by bradykp

why would only a licensed electrician be allowed to do this? this is something you could DIY if you wanted to, quite easily too. you may want to use an electrician for piece-of-mind, but this is only a touch more complicated than putting a sconce on the wall or installing a cieling fan to existing wiring...

Only a licensed electrician is allowed to do this for pay. I have done plenty of wiring and outlets in my house and know code, but I am not licensed.

That being said, after I moved into my house, I found plenty of what I will call "questionable wiring" (wrong breaker for the wiring AWG, crossed hot/neutral lines, bad grounds just to name a few things) that left me SMH. So maybe not rocket science, but there are definitely some folks out there doing these things who are a few fries short of a happy meal.

And do you want to hear something else scary? When I bought my house, I asked the home inspector a question and it was obvious that he did not know the difference between voltage and current. Needless to say, he didn't catch any of the items I caught later.

[NJ to MA]

Originally Posted by Hal Jalikeakick

i've been in the insurance business for 22 yrs. in that time, i have yet to run across a policy (commercial or personal) that would exclude coverage for a fire loss caused by unlicensed electrical work.

fire is a covered peril on all virtually property insurance policies. the only exclusion are for those fires intentionally set by the insured (and unfortunately even this is very hard to prove).

They cannot deny coverage based on the fact that work was done without a license. However, they could very well deny coverage if they could determine that the fire was caused by work that was done contrary to code. There is a difference.

[jaymoney]

Originally Posted by OldGeneral

Only for those still searching about the question, one of many constantly recurring questions.

Funny, didn't seem to get a lot of questions for the past 8 years until you decided to grace it with your personal anecdotes about CA and rural ME magically apply to NJ.