(https://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/djmillerbucket/oddsnends2/electricalnightmare.jpg)
I'm not sure where I found this fine example of the electrician's art. However, more interesting things found by home inspectors may be found on the This Old House website.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,1220600,00.html
Snuff Box
(https://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/djmillerbucket/oddsnends2/electricalnightmare2.jpg)
Bathroom, no GFCI
(https://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/djmillerbucket/oddsnends2/inspection-nightmares-01.jpg)
Interesting Chimney
(https://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/djmillerbucket/oddsnends2/inspection-nightmares-06.jpg)
Note the light and the shower head; then the light switch
(https://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/djmillerbucket/oddsnends2/inspection-nightmares-12.jpg)
And lastly... an ordinary joist hanger and ACQ PT wood in a wet place...
(https://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q75/djmillerbucket/oddsnends2/joisthanger.jpg)
Interesting stuff Don. I have never chewed tobacco but then I didn't know how handy the used containers were.
Boy....I hate to admit this :-[ but I've made junction boxes like that before. I still have one in my shop that the lathe is hooked to,,,,made from a couple of conduit connectors and a plastic file folder box.
Hell....the lathe doesn't know it's not UL approved.
The problem with the bathroom plugs above ... I would have used at least 2 six way plugs there --
You can get box extensions to stack on a box like that. I wonder if that would make it legal? Seems it is so many cu. in. per so many wires.
Yep, the rule is so many wires per so many cu. in. Box extensions and a cover plate should do the job... but that mess is just too many for one box. How'd you like to be the guy trying to sort out a problem?
Maybe legal, but I wouldn't want to fix it. :-/
When we bought our first house, the guy who owned it had a lot of furniture in it, so it was really hard to tell what all was going on with the wiring...and unfortunately, we were dumb enough to get an inspector who was buddies with the guy selling the house! In the upstairs, it was carpeted with some of the cushiest carpet I'd ever felt, even though it looked pretty worn out. On the night stand and the dresser there were thing like phones and alarm clocks and a radio on another dresser, so we ignorantly supposed that there were outlets that couldn't be seen because of the massive furniture. In the smaller of the two rooms upstairs, there was one outlet. There was an AC unit in the window beside the bed. Well, to make a long story short, the guy moved out and we closed on the house, and the first thing we did was to rip out the carpet upstairs. We closed four days before Christmas, and my husband (then my fiance') had to be out of his apartment into that house by New Year's. So, we went down with a box of pizza and a bottle of RC as soon as we'd closed and started ripping the old carpet out of the upstairs to make it liveable for DH, who has really bad allergies. There were four layers of carpet, each on top of the other (thus the cushy-ness), many of them pieced together with duct tape and remnants of random carpet pieces. Under the first layer, we found a heavy-duty extension cord, and it was then that reality hit us... the guy had run an extension cord from the ONE outlet in the upstairs to power everything: AC, alarm, radio, phone, computer, etc.!!! ::) Even worse, he'd run it under the carpet and connected all his necessities in one big clump of electrical mayhem directly under the bed so that we couldn't tell until after his stuff was gone. (I guess that explains why he didn't take the AC out of the window for the winter...) Anyway, we worked from around lunch time until 11:30 at night on just getting the carpet out and cleaning the upstairs to the point of being liveable... One of the two small heaters downstairs was not working and the other didn't have a blower, so it was cold enough to see your breath... I felt really bad leaving my husband-to-be there, kind of afraid the house would randomly ignite and burn down around him. Ahhh, the good ol' days... :)