Restaurant plumbing corrections

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Tom Sawyer

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Having spent some time as a state plumbing inspector I can tell you that his reaction is pretty typical. They all talk big right up until they are standing in front of the judge facing a $5,000.00 fine then they are all " I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'll never do it again"and wining like a little girl. Lol. I'd also bet that there was never a permit or an inspection done either. He's another typical unlicensed handy hack that thinks he's smarter than everybody else. Sooner or later though it will catch up with him. Possibly when his latest job goes bad and causes the lawyers to step in. At that point anything the inspection department throws at him is small potatoes.
 

Themp

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For some reason this crazy thread was interesting for me. That said, does it really take 8 years to be a full plumber allowed to work on residential and commercial jobs in California? I assume there may be union requirements also to follow. This seems to restrictive. Now if we put unions a side, why cannot a 2 year technical school let you do residential work and maybe 2 more years as an apprentice for commercial? Or if you can pass a test speed things up.

I remember a very old thread on this forum about a guy who wanted to get into the plumbing trade and had to work his way through the union process. From that thread it looked like he was never going to succeed as the union had control of who gets what and who works. I see no reason for this.

The IT post was a small stretch for safety. But, I have worked in the computer programming business for 35+ years for a large company that produces a lot of code. This code could cause a lot damage both in human and financial losses. But no apprenticeship is required to write this code. I have worked with programmers who had no programming education but are brilliant in design and implementation of that design. And then I have worked with college educated computer science majors who have no clue on good coding and testing practices. And as programming has been now moved off shore to China and India, it is a crap shoot on what you get. But, I can say they are learning and will eat our lunch.

So, if you want to be a plumber you should be able to do it in a reasonable time frame and not be controlled by artificial procedures and process. The original poster on this thread wants to be a plumber you can 'hear it' in his questions. If the inspector let it happen then it seems ok to me. As one of my favorite movies, Breaking Away, said: Son: I did not know everyone cheats Dad. His father responds: And now you know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJETB-MfpnQ
 

Tom Sawyer

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Most states have a four year program. Four years in the apprentice program @ 600 classroom hours along with 2000 OJT hours which translates to working under a master plumber for 4 years, 40 hrs a week. The electricians do roughly the same thing although many states have increased their classroom hours. So 4 years is the average length of time required. It's just like everything else these days. Everybody wants what they want right now. Nobody wants to wait and nobody wants to pay their dues. It's endemic of this generation that feels entitled to have whatever they want without having to prove their worth first.

After 10 plus years of little or no enforcement, my state now has a new plumbing board, populated with folks that have no tolerance for unlicensed plumbing. We have been aggressively prosecuting non licensed work like gang busters and we have a judge that is throwing the book at the perps.
 
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Gary Swart

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The gentleman from North Carolina who sees not reason for the "Union Process", has no clue to what the awful union does. Yes, they insist that jobs be done by union members and the fight to make sure union members receive decent pay and benefits. But, in return, the require their member a qualified in their trade. This mean that when you hire a union tradesman, you can expect quality work. A hack wanna be can't just walk into the union hall and pay his dues and receive the benefits. This is of course why most southern states have a very low wage scale. They are largely non-union.
 

Terry

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does it really take 8 years to be a full plumber allowed to work on residential and commercial jobs in California?

Nobody ever said it would take eight years to be a four year journeyman. I think there was a poster that counted four and then added those four again. It's always been four.
Math is helpful in the trades. Maybe a person having trouble adding would need eight years. :)

I will say this about some things mechanical. When I was young, I was able to rebuild car engines using a Chilton book. It was a predesigned object with parts and a book to explain how to take it apart, and put it back together again.

Most things in the trades don't have that. The installer "is" the designer.

Because I could rebuild an engine, didn't mean I knew how to make it out of molten metal. It was a predesigned kit that I could work with. Engineers had made all the construction decisions at the factory. It was just nuts and bolts after that.
 
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hj

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When I started in the business, the apprenticeship was a 5 year progeam, BECAUSE the apprentice worked 4 day OTJ and one day in school. It was not a "five day classroom" which would have taken less time for the "book learning" but lost the REAL experience of putting it into practice on a daily basis. I addition, I got paid my regular pay for going to school, I did not have to pay tuition to do it. There are a lot of plumbers who learned on the job and are worthless for anything other than "bull work" working on new jobs, and others who know what's "in the book" but are completely useless when it comes to applying it themselves. Both of these types need a foreman to guide and direct them.
 
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