Walked into a new build yesterday and saw the worst wire mess I've ever come across

I was doing a final walkthrough on a 4,200 sq ft house in Beaverton before handing it over to the homeowner. The builder let his electrician run all the low voltage stuff and it looked like spaghetti thrown at a wall. No clips, no ties, just wires hanging everywhere behind the panel. I spent 45 minutes cleaning it up just so I could feel good about leaving my name on it. Has anyone else had to redo someone else's lazy work before the client even moves in?

2 comments

2 Comments

craig.reese7h ago

Tell the builder straight up they need to put a clause in their contract about wire management or this keeps happening. I always snap photos of stuff like that before I touch it, so if something goes wrong later they can't blame me for the rats nest. Grab some adhesive cable tie mounts and a bag of zipties, knock it out in under an hour. Makes a huge difference when the homeowner pops the panel and sees clean work instead of that chaos. Saves headaches down the road too when someone actually needs to trace a line.

the_tara1h ago

Woah hold on, I gotta push back on this one a bit! You're basically asking a builder to micromanage every single trade on site, and that's just not realistic for most jobs. In my experience, the sparky who did the rough-in knows their own work better than some random GC clause, and if you start adding wire management into every contract you're just gonna make bids go up for no real reason. Plus half the time the "mess" you see is just temporary anyway while they're still finishing up, and by the time the drywall goes on it all gets hidden behind a cover plate. I'd rather have a fast install that works than a pretty panel that took twice as long and cost the homeowner extra money for zip ties and mounts they shouldn't have to pay for.