Floors and Ceilings
To the Editor:
I agree with your comment on the need for a floor for the onsite industry (“Installing Time Bombs,” Onsite Installer, August 2007). I would gladly take part in a national certification, not only to increase my ability to handle the situations we encounter here in Kentucky, but to help set me apart from the completion.
The problem we have here in Kentucky is that inspectors don’t have enough authority. Let me give you an example. Here where I live, we have an installer who, after many warnings, had his license revoked. He is still putting in systems on existing homes without permitting or inspecting.
For new construction, where permit and inspection are needed for an occupancy sticker, he tells the builder he has his license — he cleared up the problem. He had one of his workers go take the test in a different county. That worker then comes back here with a license in hand, and the inspector can’t refuse a licensed installer from getting a permit.
Even if he knows it is wrong to sell this guy a permit, he can’t prove it. When the local inspector took the license of one worker, this installer sent another to get certified. The inspector and I have discussed this many times, but he has no recourse.
He took his license, and he has told the other guys that if they buy the license for him he will revoke theirs. But this is a waste of time, because everyone knows there is nothing else he can do. The inspector is at wits’ end, as are most of the other installers.
Revoking the license is all the inspector can do. He cannot legally stop this installer from doing what he is doing. Without some sort of recourse strong enough to deter doing it illegally, here we are.
I know you have heard these stories before — probably worse. However, your article said we should hold people who perform a service that affects public health to high standards. Maybe we need to push for inspectors to have the authority our plumbing inspectors have. They have the authority to have the sheriff arrest a person doing work that the law requires be done by a licensed plumber.
Will this solve all problems? No. Will all the standards we can think of solve all the problems? Not without a way to enforce the issue. There has to be a balance of achievable standards, which reputable installers will be glad to comply with, and some sort of enforcement code that will enable regulators to govern our profession.
As of right now, I don’t know what that balance is, but I would gladly sit down with a group of installers, inspectors, state officials and others to come up with a way to do this. Your last paragraph said a lot. We have people here who want to do away with onsite altogether and put the entire state on central sewer. Do we want them setting the floor for us? Or the ceiling?
Jeff W. Harrod
