Wiring & Plumbing: How much does this add?

[MarkP]

It would be interesting to know what the statistics are for those places where owner-builders are permitted to do their own electrical work. Is there a measurable increase in deaths due to faulty wiring? I doubt it. Many people do wiring on their house after the contractors have left.

[Seeb]

I think the answer is to have all work inspected the same, homeowner and contractor alike
I have seen permitted work from licensed contractors that you could tell didn't meet the code from the driveway

[ericlp]

Hopefully your not including the cost to set up catchment in that figure. Or the SSP fees etc...etc...

Add another 10 grand or so depending on power pole fees, and how nice of a 10K gallon container your looking at. The cost of living in paradise. Funny you can install your own catchment tanks and plumbing to the pump and so forth just stop your plumbing before you get into the building. Sad...

[kalakoa]

Actually, you're not allowed to install your own catchment tank either; off the top of my head, permits attach at a depth of 18"...

Seeb has it right: everything should be inspection-based. There are still some places where the unlicensed homeowner can do their own electrical work; if the inspector finds it satisfactory, you get your sticker and the power company connects you.

Counterexample: there's lots of obviously unsafe wiring in downtown Pahoa that's "not to code"... but that's just fine, somehow.

It's often cheaper to go off-grid than to pay the SSPP and buy the poles. Which is fitting, somehow.

[seekir]

Yeah, I don't see much danger in a handy amateur wiring a house before it's inspected and HELCO hooks up. My experience with a Hilo electrical contractor (their name is Hawaiian for "Moses") wasn't too impressive: generally surly "journeyman" who wired an exterior light switch so that it shut off interior outlets, wired my 110V water heater to 220V and fried it's element, bored a hole for the HELCO hookup mast through bird-block and metal roof and failed utterly to make the hole water-tight so that my main breaker-panel was soaked the first time it rained, and discarded jam nuts from my overhead interior lights that locked the threaded center tubing for the glass light cover retainers (unscrewing the retainers when these nuts are absent causes the threaded tube to also unscrew so that the simple job of replacing bulbs becomes a nightmare). $5000.00 to wire a 720 square foot cottage and endure this guy's attitude and sloppy work. To be fair, I understand this character was fired.

[kalakoa]

...and the punchline: the "apprenticeship" requirement tends to keep "outsiders" from getting licensed, regardless of skills or exprience.

[mailes]

Yea, try getting an Accounting apprenticeship here to take the exam for the CPA license. Forget about it...for me anyway!