Now, where were we?

Hmmm, Yes. Now I remember. Missing Electricians and matters of that sort. Needless to say, eventually the electrician did show up and do some work. He then for reasons that to this day I shall not ever quite understand stopped and requested that I, ask had previously requested, come in and install the outlets. Now, while this is something I never actually requested, it is a good thing that he in fact did stop, as the scene I beheld upon coming to the job site was rather odd indeed. Multiple lines seemed to have been run were in the job specifications I requested only one, and no termination of any sort had been done. Essentially what we had were boxes installed in the wall and about eight inches of bare wires poking out. While it remains for some other to question the qualifications of this contractor to do the job as specified in the plans, I do have to state matters as they were, and this is what I found.

A)     Were I had specified a quad box with a 40A four pole twist-loc receptacle, I found two open boxes, no receptacles of any kind, and eight wires poking out which thank God, were not live. I actually specified the receptacle by part number, and laid out a schematic for how I needed it to be wired, with essentially two 110VAC 20A lines, a neutral, and a ground, five wires total:

-          Line one

-          Line one neutral (tied to line two neutral)

-          Line two

-          Line two neutral (see line one neutral, above)

-          Ground

Since both neutrals would be tied together, they both used a single pole on the receptacle.

B)     I know, I’m getting very technical here, but the point is that I included every little detail, there really was no reason for any competent electrician who was willing to sit and read the spec to not be able to complete it as requested. None the wires were labeled, something that I abhor. As a result it took a bit of tracing with my meter to figure out what the electrician had done. He had run two complete sets of 220v lines up to the balcony instead of a single pair of 110v lines capable of handling 40A but each controlled by a 20A breaker for safety, since they would be running inside a single conduit (for those who don’t know what a conduit is, it’s a sort of protective pipe with wires inside).

C)    Ok, this is more lines than the job required, and there are way too many holes in the walls at this point for my tastes, but I know now what is there and I can work with it, I discuss what will be needed with the facility’s maintenance man, and he feels secure in his ability to install the receptacle as requested, on to the stage power:

-         I had requested two 20A lines for power amplifiers run to the stage, terminating in a similarly wired four pole twist-loc receptacle that would be located underneath the stage platform. Since this was an area to which there was access, and the immediate location of the receptacle was within three feet of were a slide out rack assembly by RaXXess would be installed, the location itself would not pose code problems of any sort.

-         What I found instead, was two sets of three phase 220VAC lines, and worse still, the boxes had been placed in the front wall of the stage in the precise location were I would have to cut the hole for the slide out rack assembly. No, not in the middle of the hole, but exactly were the cut was to be made. I had specified all manner o details including the location of the receptacles and how high up from the floor under the stage they had to be. Somehow the electrician seems to have confused the rack cutout diagrams and put the receptacles there instead. Needless to say this resulted in having to move the rack itself a few inches over, which meant having to remove some structural support, and replace it with additional wood beams supported from behind the rack.  After figuring all this out again with the facility’s maintenance man, who at this point was proving to be a jack of all trades and a godsend, we hammered out the details to finish the wiring, set a schedule, and ditched the electrician.

The travails of having others do the work for you, let me tell you…

So to summarize were we were at this point in time:

a)      The desk/rack into which the mixer, and all outboard gear would be installed was late, lost, found, and finally delivered weeks behind schedule

b)      PayPal crushed the cash flow to this job by freezing the account into which the funds had been transferred, this was during the first week of the saga of the disappearing desk

c)      I was currently desperately trying to catch up on late order for equipment, only to find that some items were no longer in stock. What joys I shall to tell you of in my next Blog posting!

Total time behind schedule as of this point- three weeks, two days. Oh well,…