Burning Down The House

JamesNLA

So as this Fall AYSO season is going, and yours truley is the head coach for the 4th year now....I get a voice mail from my team mom telling me her kid isn't going to make it to practice today....Something about a fire and the fire department won't let them back in, but they are ok.

So after finishing another tankless install today I get to practice and she was calling me over and over again. Finally call her back and I asked what was going on.

She lives/owns a condo which is a 4 unit structure. One of her neighbors is a home owner (vs. renter) and decided today he was going to replace his own shower valve. This guy apparently used "a torch" to try and cut through the pipe. He stated that he thought if he held the flame on the portion of the pipe he wanted to cut, it would just cut it...like a plasma cutter would. This moron left the flame on it so long that the pipe was glowing and it ignighted the stud in the wall.

So he attempted to spalsh some water on it, but he had shut water down to the entire building, not his unit. His unit was a total loss as was another neighbor. My team moms unit was damaged as well. Fire got her master bath and another wall....Fire department (God love them boys) opened up her roof - and all the walls on the affected side making her unit almost a total loss after water damage. The HOA for this area doesn't allow HO to do work on their own units...must be contracted from a list of approved tradesmen. I asked if he got arrested...nope, but the HOA people said he is going to get hit with fines so large he's probably done for. The most expensive fine will be the fact he shut water down to the entire structure, she didn't know how much.

It truley amazes me how ignorant some people are...people very easily could have been seriously hurt or killed by the actions of a stupid stupid man.

Anyone else on here make the evening news recently??

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KillerToiletSpider

Does he realize he is going to get sued blind by the other three condo units in the building?

__________________
A flush is better than a full house.

GregS

I'm guessing his insurance wouldn't cover that.. unless he has 'dumbass insurance'. So he'll have to sell his condo and fork over the cash, but I'm guessing that won't cover the costs. Just how does one get blood from a stone?

JumboJack

Man,that has got to be expencive!

thom

likely state law will protect his condo in bankruptcy. After that, he will probably sell out and move just to move away from the area.

Everyone will get their house fixed. At least as fixed as they make them after a fire. Lilkely no one will get anything else.

mdshunk

I hope Pasquale reads this.

For the want of a simple 80 or 100 dollar service call to a plumber, the nit-wit burns the place down trying to change a stupid 5 dollar shower head. My own upstairs tub spiggot is dripping right now. It's a Gerber. I could probably fix it, but I really don't want to. I know some of the Gerber cartridges can be a treat to get slid back in. The plumber is coming on Tuesday afternoon sometime.

GregS

Plumbing scares you too eh? People ask me to hook up fridges and dishwashers all the time, and while I can do it, I always decline as a single leak is an expense that would drown me

KillerToiletSpider

Gerbers are easy, the worst thing you can do is put it in upside down, if it is a washerless model. Jado's are a complete pain in the ass, and Dornbracht's aren't much better, and I think I would rather have weasels rip my flesh than work on a Waterware thermostatic valve, it has to be the most poorly designed thing I have ever seen.

__________________
A flush is better than a full house.

Tom R

I did have to put out a small fire once myself (must've been a good 20 years ago), - - the plumber was just letting his flame burn right up against an unprotected floor joist in the basement while sweating a fitting, and it caught. I was working on the exterior-entrance basement stairs when I heard him yelling frantically. While he screamed and ran in circles, I cut the main in the basement back on and ran up and got a hose through the window and was able to put it out with minimal damage (no phone service available at the time).

It was my job (basement remodel with bathroom), - - and although the homeowner obviously wasn't too happy, - - he was the one who had insisted he get his own plumber. The guy was somehow licensed, - - but what a hack.

Stupid is as stupid does.

crb555

We recently took over a job where the original plumbing contractor burnt down the building, and the GC had to rebuild.

This was a college dorm building, and the original plumbers insurance company defaulted, it is now in court, the fellow went bankrupt over it. The poor GC is taking it on the hoof, to date they have shelled out over 5 million rebuilding the job, with no payout. The States position was that while it was terrible that the subs insurance wouldn't pay, the State did not have a direct relationship with anyone but the GC, whom they held responsible for the building. Fortunately, it is a large GC, the do about 80 million a year, and can absorb it without terrible problems.

Of course, the original fellow had no business doing the job to begin with. First off, he had taken the job for over 150,000 less than our initial bid, then proceeded to ignore specifications calling for things like husky no hub bands, he was trying to use type m copper, etc. The engineer for the job, which I am good friends with, said that the plumbing was in the process of being condemned before the fire.

Crb

MechanicalDVR

It must be the rule of three's or something. We are on a boiler room redo job where another contractor won the bid to change out all the zone valves in the crawlspaces of the housing project. Well, I walk out of the boiler room to see cops and fire trucks all over the place. Seems the plumbers set the floor joists and insulation on fire in an entire building. They were using acetylene torches, with no fire extinguishers or water of any kind in sight. From what I saw all the zone valves are hung about 12'' from the bottom of the floor joists, so I have no clue how they managed to get the wood going.

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JumboJack

All the plumbers we use keep a spray bottle handy when sweating near wood.Never had any problems....

Grumpyplumber

Soldering water lines is one thing.
Installing/modifying gas fixtures another thing altogether, it's in the news every year.
Families die in their sleep.