Are we talking about that yellow wire? If so, what amateur put it in? Since this was not pulled in behind existing wall, it must be stapled within a foot of the box (and no furhter apart than every 4.5 feet other than that) which it looks like the wire is too tight to do. Further, if my eyes are serving me right, there's not enough wire left inside the box to be legal either.

You can use any listed staple, they sell them specifically for this purpose. Even the home centers have them.

Thank you, ronnatalie! The amateur was a highly-recommended licensed electrical company. (: So to do the job right, do I need to replace the existing wire with a longer one and staple it within a foot of the box? How much wire should be left inside the box? In other words -- when I email this contractor to correct the problem, what specifically should I ask them to do?

I appreciate your help! Thanks.

The wire needs to be stapled with 12" of the box and at least every 4.5 feet (it looks from eyeballing once they get a staple up near the box, that one more about halfway down will suffice, the hole in the stud it passes through counts as a support as well).

Each box where a wire makes a connection there must be 6" of free conductor where it emerges from it's cable sheath. In addition, it needs to be able to stick out the front of the box 3" as well. It looks to me like there's hardly 3" of wife in the run comming up from the top, total.

And it wouldn't hurt to put a metal plate on the stud where the wire passes through in order to protect it from nails or drywall screws.

The plate is required if the hole is within 1-1/4 inches from either face of the stud. This means if you hit dead center on the "4" side of a 2x4 then you can omit it. If you're off center OR the framing member is smaller (like a 2x3 which it appears these might be). You're going to need the plate. (a 2x3 is really 1 1/2 by 2 1/2, any hole big enough to get the NM cable through is going to encroach on the 1 1/4.

Thank you, weidmeister and ronnatalie!

I emailed the following to my electrician: "...The wire should be secured, but itâÂÂs too short and too tight to be stapled to within a foot of the box as it is supposed to be."

His response was the following:

"The reason we didnâÂÂt strap it within the box is you had no structural members to strap it to, thereâÂÂs nothing wrong with the installation we did; we could have someone put a 2x4 up there and strap it to that, but thereâÂÂs nothing unsafe about the wiring we did."

I'm in California, if that makes any difference. Your comments would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks again.

This post was edited by jacquelynn on Mon, Nov 3, 14 at 16:21

Your electrician is either a fraudulent liar or an blithering idiot. There is no exception int he electrical code because it is inconvenient to add the proper support or the fact that he screwed up and didn't use enough wire the first time.

Thanks, ronnatalie! I provided him with 2x4's and he used
one of them -- I wonder why he didn't use more!

Sounds like he was the cheapest price that came along. Maybe even a handyman and not an actual electrician.

Sounds like he was the cheapest price that came along. Maybe even a handyman and not an actual electrician.

Interesting comment since the poster said that the work was done by "a highly-recommended licensed electrical company" and the questionable work was pointed out by "a handyman"!

The results delivered by any tradesman will be limited by his abilities and by his willingness to bring those abilities to bear on the task at hand. Looks as if the willingness factor was quite low that day.

To use backwoods vernacular, my native language, "sometimes they don't do as good as they know how".

This post was edited by bus_driver on Tue, Nov 11, 14 at 16:06

"dennisgli" said:
"Interesting comment since the poster said that the work was done by "a highly-recommended licensed electrical company" and the questionable work was pointed out by "a handyman"!"

Highly recommended usually runs in 2 distinct packs around here.

1: So cheap that they are super busy, but never make a dime of profit because they don't charge enough. This forces them into doing shoddy work to make up for their lack of proper pricing.

2: The other highly recommended group is for their quality. Sure, they may be a little more expensive, but you get what you pay for.

Im thinking they hired the first example.

This isn't a case of shoddy work, it's a case of ILLEGAL work. The code requires the proper conductor lengths and supports for good reason. There's no excuse for this hack job nor for the bogus excuses given as to why it wasn't done right.

Call the electrical company you worked with and show them a picture of what was done and tell them to fix it.

I am a DIY'er and that looks like total horse manure. Looks like he tried to scab in a piece of extra wire out of the back of his truck/van that would have otherwise been headed to the scrap bin. I would not let that slide.

It is almost funny to think this install is being criticized so aggressively by everyone including myself. If it were fished in from box to box with the drywall already in place it would be a perfectly legal installation.

If it were fished, the STAPLE issue might be overlooked. There are other apparent issues. The wire is just too short (there appears to be less than 4" of it in the box. My guess is they cut a cable that was running elsewhere, removing the staples so they could get a few inches of slack which were NOT sufficient.

What appears completely idiotic is the wall appears torn up to the point of the next connect (the receptacle to the right.
It would take 10 feet of additional cable and some staples to do this right.

Yes, if they fishing, they didn't need the staples, but mighta coulda doesn't mean a lot.

Hi,

Just wanted to thank everyone for your valuable comments
and help. The electrician did come back to re-do the job
properly. I was smart enough to have my handyman here
at the same time, to supervise.

Thank you again.

Your handyman had to supervise your electrician. If that aint backwards, I don't know what is. Time to fire your "electrician".

That's what you pay GC's to do. I get testy when I have to go kick the subs to do their jobs when I'm paying a GC as well.