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Contact: Manuel
Correia/Owner/Electrician
Mobile telephone: 981 2315 anytime
NEED TO REWIRE YOUR HOME?
Check this blog (click on the URL below) about what people are saying or have experienced!
http://www.houseblogs.net/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=387
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NOTE: As of today November 30, 2009 due to a shortage of workers we, temporary, became a smaller contractor. Therefore, we will only do selective REWIRING work and the decision may even has to do a lot with the type of building, customer's personality relating to stress limitations, customer's refusal of accepting CITY BYLAWS when we talk about REQUIRED SMOKE ALARMS THROUGHOUT OR 3 WAY SWITCHES OR ARC FAULT CIRCUIT BREAKERS, EXISTING WIRING REPAIRS elsewhere in the home which such wiring was installed by AMATEURS and which should have been corrected "YESTERDAY" and any other negative impression I may get from a non compliante customer.
The following sugestions below may make it even more difficult to do a rewiring job where the basic rewiring is ALREADY VERY STRESSFULL without having added problems attached to it! See THEM below.
There are likely over two dozens of scenarios when it comes to rewiring a home and I have not found anyone who magically can not cause the following problems or issues a home owner may face! By overlooking the following issues and others, parties may end up in court to resolve such matters!
This type of work, when it is extensive and done by most contractors becomes very intrusive to the occupants. It interfers a lot with the owner's daily activities and even the privacy at their own home! It may last weeks or even months - It depends on how it is set up. We can be quite stealthy most of the time, however, some don,t even appreciate that! We are very versatile in scheduling and acommodating our customers the best way possible chosen by our customers.
The following are some of the more important issues to consider:
1. (a) Has the home owner obtain OTHER ESTIMATES for EXACTLY the same work required?
1. (b) Should already have at least 2 or 3 estimates and have made sure that such contractors offer and promise to have written out a detailed and signed QUOTATION before beginning the work OR have an agreement on time + materials method (recomended at least for a couple of days or so). Recommended because you may not like what is going on in your home - never imagine it could create such a disturbance! This way you can terminate the work immediately - No strings attached. The electrical contractor can also do the same thing!
1. (c) Should have insured that contractors are licensed, carry liability insurance and are insured with whom? Do they carry 'Workers Compensation', do they take out their OWN PERMITS or ask you to take it out - (red flag!) Do they damand payment before starting - they should not!. Payments (other than a 12% confirming a contract deposit) should only be made for work or part of it which "IS ALREADY COMPLETED" Will they hire sub contractors to do the work? Will they use certified trades people to do the job or helpers or unsupervised apprentices! Will they issue receipts when getting paid! A home owner should demand references of at least 2 or 3 similar jobs contractors have completed recently - and definitively check with the B.B.B. and Manitobe Courts records available on line at:
http://www.jus.gov.mb.ca/Domain/FileSearch/SearchByOtherInfo.aspx
1. (d) Will the home be occupied during working hours and can residents stand the noise dust, debris all over the home during ALL working hours?
1. (d) Did the so called "home inspector" told you that you only have 10% knob % tube wiring - even if he told you you have 30% EXPECT it to be more likely 80% - and this is not the city of Chicago where you can pull out the old wiring and attaching the new to it and just pull! I had a home owner who told me that is what has to be done because his friend, an electrical engineer told him so!
*For your information, electrical engineers know diddley peanuts about what it takes to rewire a home!*
2. How much furniture do we have to keep moving around all day while trying to do the job? Moving a lot furniture around and extensive clean up or opening up holes in walls will cost a lot extra in time waisted! You should participate in helping the contractor. He may even give you hundreds of $ credit for that. (We do)
3. (a) Will the home owner open up the walls and ceilings in order to run new cables? (Some like to do it some don't)
3. (b) Will the home owner require MINIMAL surface damadges or MEDIAM damadges or EXTENSIVE damadges. It means needed openings all over in order to fish cables! There can be 3 or more 1 square foot openings for each item to be rewired! Sometimes channels have to be made in ceilings to reach the light fixtures. This decision of how much damadge is accepted is where the rewiring price easily doubles or tripples to rewire a home! NORMALLY Some one storey homes cost $5,000 - $8,000, a 2 storey from 10,000.00 - $14,000.00 a 3 storey can cost around $18,000 or more and some well over $30,000 to be rewired. Many 100 year old 2 and 3 storey homes along the Assinaboine river are typical examples of the difficulty and expense to rewire.
4. Who cleans up all dust in difficult hidden areas or on special equipment, on light fixtures, or who is going to protect delicate areas from dust? etc.
5. Who is going to rough patch all openings in walls and ceilings? Who will do the final sanding and final patching finish coats which takes 1 - 2 days to dry etc. Who pays for it, who is going to pay for patching materials and paint? Who is responsible to paint the WHOLE home? We do the patching, you will have to paint.
6. Who provides floor surface protection if and when required? We provide ssome protection.
7. Is the basement ceiling covered or finished? Is there an attic? Is the attic packed with insulation and or including even "Zonolite" Are there other obstractions? Is there a crawl space? is it packed full - no easy access? What can be done about removed and broken or cut out hard to match basement ceiling tiles or panel boards in walls etc.? These have to be removed or cut out! Will you remove them?
8. Can some light fixtures be re-installed on a wall instead of on the ceiling? Can switches be lower than the existing ones? (iliminates removing the old switch boxes which adds over 1/2 hour to patch etc - all this reduces costs!
9. The existing lights, outlets etc. are being rewired, however, how many extra are there to be installed which were not there before - other than the new REQUIREMENT 3 way switches, combination smoke alarms, GFCI protected circuits and ARC FAULT protected circuits and proper lighting at entrances etc.? We are not just replacing what was there - we are bringing all wiring to code which includes a lot of extra costly items.
10. (a) If required, who supplies the new light fixtures or fans or other equipment etc.? Will the estimate include the cost to re install light fixtures including those which don't fit in modern outlet boxes and which have to be modified and may take well over one hour each to do so?
10. (b) If working by the hour - will the home owner also pay for all materials & equipment and $170.00 + taxes for permit expenses - (includes time to travel there, waite, and apply for it? it can take over well over 2 1/2 hours!)
11. How is the premises accessed anytime during the day? Will the electricians have a key or other arrangements will be made? Who will pay the electrician while waiting, if for a long time, for someone to arrive to open the door?
12. (a) Can the work be continuous or stopped for some days and continued later? Is there a deadline to meet as per insurance? We are very versitile in this process. We may work 2 days and stop for 3 if you like.
12. (b) Does the home owner/s know that when working by the hour + materials any party is free to terminate the work ANYTIME without notice due to any unsolved ongoing disagreements, desputes if any etc.! This is good for the home owners after they find out that the nightmare is only starting and can not indure the stress for a long time such as the lenth of time if by a set price contract. We help and are versitile and sensitive in this areas. Most times we work at time + materials + permit expenses + taxes.
13. Will the home owner pay for part of the work (or time used up already on work) ALREADY COMPLETED - called progress payments - including permits expenses, materials and the 12% taxes? The number of payments depend on the size of the job. Remember that some homes may take one electrician well over 3 weeks to two months to rewire and others even 4 - 6 months IF AT A REDUCED working week! We will schedule the work according to your schedule. A break once in a while for a few days from the job is usually good for both parties. We know this from experience.
14. In case of a set price contract arrangement, can the home owner accept a trial run of about 2 days or so before an EXACT estimate is given? This will be done rewiring items with medium difficulty at $70.00/hr + materials + taxes + permit expenses (may apply) so that the rest of the work can be estimated properly and he/she may benifit more by whatever method is chosen rather than accepting a BLIND estimate and likely pay thousands too much? NO TWO REWIRING JOBS ARE ALIKE. We never estimate a rewiring job without an hourly paid trial run! It is the most fair way to both parties. The customer has nothing to loose - in contrary "a lot of valuable information to gain"! Some low life contractors ABANDON the work after 2 days because they find out they are loosing their shirts! - I lost a lot of money in the early years, but never did such a thing!
15. Has the customer decided a good scheduled time period to rewire and then double it - just in case unpredicted problems arise? Rewiring is very unpredictable on how long it will take! We will not rush the work when the customer is getting inpatient - we do it right and it takes much longer to do it right! - it is the customer's responsibility to deal with this very STRESSFULL situation which we warned him/her about before we started! The best way is discuss it and we will re schedule the work in a different way.
16. Or the customer would like a big NAME FLASHY CONTRACTOR to show up in a new flashy vehicle, sweet talk to you, then quote big numbers, makes the owners look more impressive in the neighbourhood, get 4 wall and ceiling butchers and do the rewiring quickly, get paid, ignore you complaints, get out and then, in many cases, get their big lawyers to handle your complaints such as the many issues I have mention above?
IMPORTANT: I tried to use everyday language or expressions so you understand better what I have been talking about, as above!
To be continued........
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NOTE: Assessing or choosing to do or not to do a rewiring job also depends on many other factors which are not mentioned above. These are found by intuition or just by talking to home owners. Most important, type of personality matters the most. Also if a home owner keeps downgrading our best honest economical opinion or assessement of the work, or keeps diminishing the work bylaw requirements (the whole job could even disappear!) - for example: puts on a debate about requiring or not requiring" say - a smoke alarm or a required 3 way switch or why an ARC FAULT circuit breaker is needed, why smoke alarms all over etc." or even starts to suggest how to run cables or has some other opinion given by some unscroupolous handyman or friend or even from an ENGINEER or someone else from another planet, he or she is dropped out by me emmediately even before an estimate is done!
Therefore, as a reader by now you may already have discovered, we don't dwell on promising you the world or the stars or that we do "big or small jobs, or do it at cheap prices" or anything else the likes which goes with that sort of chatter bla bla many motor mouths many offer.
There are motor mouths car trunk slammers who are stuck in the 70's with their prices at $12.00 - $18.00 (some at $35.00) per hour and ask you to take out the wiring permit and start to butcher your home. Just make sure that their own home is paid for and worth more than your own and you and your family are still around if such a loss was a fire!
We offer you REAL information on real consequenses which may occur and REAL risks to be aware of and REAL costs you may face to have a propper job completed, inspected and certified and such work should last over 100 years and not 100 days as usually by the hundreds of handy/people in this city.
I put a lot of effort and time in preparing estimates or explaining everything to you all for your protection and benifit. You can compare it to what others have to offer. I may not be chosen because of the cost etc. For this type of work, we are accepted only 2 times out of 5. However, your lack of response either way after a reasonable time has passed would be considered extremely rude. At least write back and say thank you for your time!
To be continued.........................................
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The following is some advice for new electrical contractors starting out.
A seperate webpage topic for this subject will be created here very soon.
Beware! There is a very small percentage of customers out there who like to exploit contractors. They come up with a lot of tricks to fool you. You could play dumb - it helps a lot because then they get to go on and on and you learn a lot more about them! Just be a good listner.
Some will start with some of us who advertize in newspapers and smaller medias, because they expect extremely CHEAP prices and are hoping you are desperate for the job! But then they are smart enough to realize that you may be just a handy/man or something. They under estimate you quite a bit. They will do a lot of "cross examining" (as if I don't notice it myself!). A lot of times their intention is even to "deny paying you" when the work is done or trying to make a DEAL when you are finished or they will mention paying by cash or saying that they will have a lot of other work soon or they may play the work down so you fall in a trap (one being a signed contract) one which you will soon realize you are loosing your shirt! Others will ask exactly how you are going to do this and that - they want to know all details so they can learn more do the work themselves!
Important! Don't do anything elegal such as get paid by cash without receipts or not taking a permit out for that small amount of work - later they will demand a permit at your own expense! Don't be a "good Samaritan" and start fixing other staff around the home because you feel it is not safe - You will not get paid for it unless you do the propper SIGNED CHANGE ORDER etc. Remember, the inspector may find things that need repairs (which you overlooked in those few minutes when doing an estimate). He may say all he likes until getting blue in the face but "you only do what is WRITTEN on the permit. He will have no choice but start to write out a "Violation Notice" to the home owner and NOT TO YOU!
Although I may advertize in such smaller medias myself, I can detect such customers in about exactly 2 minutes of talking to them! They can be even extremely rude such as I had a few months ago (an older couple - husband and wife) in very affluent neighbourhood - half a million dollars home do just that after I spent numerous hours on an estimate including guiding them on safety issues, approved short cuts to save money etc.. ( I sort of felt sorry for them having their insurance cancelled unless the knob & Tube was removed). I Never heard from them again - no communication whatsoever.
That home would have been one of the most difficult homes to be rewired. They had a drawing from some electrical engineer indicating the circuits etc. I never seen such a mess and misleading information! They were thinking that there was only 2 circuits of knob & tube to be rewired (trying to downsize the work as if I would fall for a CHEAP CONTRACT) however, there are at least 8 circuits to be rewired. - Some reasons of difficulty were that the home is built like a tank! has brick perimeter walls, very old light fixtures to re-install back, plaster ceilings in the basement and all over, miles of obstractions - pipes etc. in the basement, tons of furnature all over, could not manage (OR AFFORD) to have the OLD FUSE PANELS changed or a new service installed long overdue!.
Later, I found out, they obtained a HOME OWNER'S WIRING PERMIT and very likely hired a hack to do the rewiring and likely using some of my best suggestions! However, when I happen to drive by I just look to see if the place is still standing! I predict in 2 years something will give!
Such attitudes of such folks caused me, from now on, to charge $80.00 for a rewiring estimate! - something I have NEVER done in 30 years.
One final note: Most people are quite honest and are fantastic to work for and usually you can tell very quickly.
I hope you, as a contractor, learned something from what I mentioned above.
Quite a bit more to come later.
TO BE CONTINUED.........