Appreciation post: the electrician who walked my framing at 6am and saved me a $2,400 change order
Three weeks ago I was wrapping up a 4,000 sq ft addition in Grand Rapids and feeling pretty good about the schedule. My electrician, Dave, has been doing this for 28 years and asked if he could walk the framing before the rough-in. I said sure, thinking it was a 15 minute thing. He spent an hour and a half up there with a tape and a marker, then called me over to the master closet wall. Turns out my framer had boxed out a chase that ate the whole run for the main panel feeder, and the only fix was either rerouting through the garage soffit or moving the panel. Dave sketched two options on a scrap of OSB and told me the panel move would cost me about $2,400 in extra labor and materials. We went with the soffit route instead and it cost me a case of beer and a Saturday morning. I have been running jobs for 11 years and I still forget that the trades see stuff we do not because they are looking at different lines. Anybody else got a go-to sub who basically acts like a free second set of eyes?