You need to be worried for your childs safety if they attend a Private Pa. School

If you have a child who is in attendance at a Private , Charter or Special or Emotional Needs
School in Pennsylvania you need to do some investigation as to the safety of the school .
As you can see in these pictures in a school in Washington County there are major building code violations which would close a commercial building yet this is an old school being operated for private students which has just once again passed inspection. Notice the blocked exit path way with fold up table and chairs the plastic Styrofoam above the ceiling to block air drafts because the ceiling is being used for environmental air the combustible wood above a ceiling being used as an air scoop and of course all the wrong non plenum wire above the ceilings and of course a Big Integration company here in Pittsburgh who contributes bucks to this program had his guys come in and pull all the correct wiring I had in for a camera system and replace it with the wrong wire when they upgraded it and they wonder why there no longer used on main campus besides the fact they charge big bucks for worthless and hazardously done work. There the goof balls who ran the extension cord wire inside the wall to power a fire alarm booster .Then again why would I expect differently the big Pittsburgh integration company was started by a former Pittsburgh fire alarm expert employee. Then there's a 1920's fire system which was not even operating and only couple of battery smokes protecting the students for fire protection,till I put a very basic fire system in to protect them.
Yes look at all the stuff and debris and materials stored everywhere in back rooms away from prying eyes and before this was a private school it was serving as an Day Care / head start center.

But remember this is Pennsylvania where we allow local fire dept's. do the annual inspections dept's. who in most cases do not have the required training of an experienced code enforcement officer.
Who would have caught all these penetrations thru fire walls and combustible materials. When the old boiler stopped working and was replaced by gas fired units above the ceilings.
a heating system from what I can tell was never inspected or approved by state or any other code agency.
but hey this is Pennsylvania do what you feel like no one will ever inspect or hold you accountable for your actions until its too late and you have lost your child and then its duck and cover your ass.

SO WHATS GOING ON AT YOUR CHILD'S SCHOOL ?

WHATS GOING ON AT YOUR CHILD S DAY CARE ?

YOUR LOVED ONES PERSONNEL CARE HOME ?

YOUR LOVED Ones GROUP HOME ?

YOU BETTER FIND OUT BECAUSE THE STATE IS NOT INSPECTING FOR LIFE SAFETY ISSUES IN THESE PLACES AND YOUR LOVED ONES LIVES ARE IN JEOPARDY!!!!

Ignorant Lazy roofers put mall workers at risk

What you see on the left is a set of deck nails which are used to secure the metal sheeting used on a flat roof to the roof beams .

But where I found these busted off ones is disturbing I was working in a mall in beaver county pa.
Installing a camera system and these came falling out of the suspended ceiling and it is a good thing I had my safety glasses on as I could have seriously had my eyes injured because of the negligence of the roofing contractor who worked on the roof and did not clean the ceiling and remove all the screws after what most likely was a re roofing job.
every tile I opened I found screws and I removed them as i found them or after the fell on the floor. Mall maintenance people where there while i was and observed the same problem while replacing water stained tile and where suppose to come and vacuum them all off the ceiling at some point .
this incident with these screws should never have happened if the roofer used good and proper techniques but as you can see the just did not care to.
I am sure the mall will not be using them any more either.

Quick Wire Quick fire instead of quick connect fittings going away there increasing

At left is a typical example of resistance heating caused by wiring inserted into a quick connect device on a Duplex receptacle which allows 14 or 12 gauge wire to be pushed into the back of the receptacle instead of having to be wound around a screw.
In this case in a 15 year old house the wire was not properly installed and as a result you can see the resistance heating which caused the lights to go out and luckily a fire was not a result.
back in the 90's UL and other agency's looked at the problem of these quick wire terminals and instead of redesigning them or banning them made manufacturers design them so only 14 gauge wire could be inserted but this did not solve the problem I see and get just as many calls for problem receptacles.
What they should have done is banned them out right there are side pressure plate receptacles that work just as well but as usual UL and NFPA and every one else bent over and let the home builders continue this poor practice of hurry up and get the plugs wired.
The problem is only getting worse as more products are coming on the market which supposedly do not have the same problems the quick wire receptacles do. I say bull shit it all comes down to who wires it and if its a lazy electrician no matter how well the quick wire is made he will not follow instructions and do it properly.
and as a result we will keep seeing problems with these quick wire connectors.
But for you the consumer you have no choice as long as we keep putting profit over people.
and Home owners keep trying to cut costs by speeding up jobs the quick wire connector will be around.

Another Excellent Job ? By the suposed Fire alarm experts In Pittsburgh

Yes this article to the left I wrote few years back about how the G-uys totally and completely messed up the inside of a church my wife and I belong to.
Is hard to believe yet this mess passed inspection In Pittsburgh at the time when the state was going thru new state wide code changes .
Can you spot all the NFPA Fire NEC Electrical Code violations in them.
Well this is what passes for a fire system in my area. dam shame all that money for this mess.

You have to be a Sick Individual to screw with some one going thru Colon Cancer

last year I posted about people going around claiming I was dead from Colon Cancer . Well it seems the rumors will not go away.
I walked in a business the other day I have not been to in over 2 years and the employees nearly had a cardiac . They heard I had died .
Wow how that hits you when you hear it. But I can believe people when they really thought it happened.I recently had to renew my drivers license and woman doing the photos asked for another ID since I had changed physical features so much from my last license which was taken in 07 When I was going thru Chemo.

Well it has been 4 years since I was diagnosed and still I keep running into things sick Individuals tried and did do to me including making not so kind posts on different internet forums and groups.
The latest group I found my name being used is for Fire Investigators and I had to ask the administrator to remove all of the posts.
Yes friends I trusted to run my business and where here in my home using my computer instead where screwing me the whole time trying to steal my Alarm accounts and spreading rumors. I only have couple hundred accounts but there good high quality commercial and industrial accounts which could kick off significant recurring revenue that's why they want them. But getting them and keeping them is a whole different story.
Then I run into other interesting things on the internet too when I find people using my company name and saying they worked for me as investigators,technicians etc.
funny I'm a sole proprietor.
I do occasionally have people help me but I have not had an employee since 1989 other than a few sub contractors who have worked with me over the years from time to time and they get 99 forms .
Yea I find out all kinds of stuff all the time how people are screwing me and taking work away from me because they resent the fact despite all that has happened to me I still manage to get out few days a week and work in the field I love. Then there are those racist sick individuals who believe I am Jewish by how my last name is spelled . Sorry My grandfather and grandmother came from Ukraine/ Austria where not Jewish and there buried at the Ukraine catholic cemetery. The name misspell which we believe correctly should be Markowich was changed when my grandfather came thru Ellis island shortly before WWI as a young man. In fact I know Jewish individuals who have the - wich on end of there names we always laugh about our grandfathers getting in the wrong line on Ellis Island.

I get phone calls all the time from people who tell me rumors being spread about me etc.
because there are those who are jealous and envious of the fact I have appeared or was mentioned in several alarm and electrical trade magazines and I am such a little nothing company. Hey its no big deal want to apear in a magazine get off your lazy fat ass and write an article or two and submit them and they will gladly use them if there any good. That's all it takes it is called effort and integrity or did the ones defaming me forget that.
Now really what can me and my little company due to an industry that there so afraid of me.
Is it because I try to do the right thing everyday and do a good days work and show pride in my work and try and promote good work ethic if that's what scares them then they really must be sick.

It does not takeTerrorist just an idiot to blow up a Shopping Mall

I was working on a Sunday in a mall to install a camera system while a store was not busy to only walk into the back storage room to smell Propane Gas I get hold of the manager and tell him its propane . He thinks it is sewer gas. I say no it is propane it has a very distant acrid smell to it plus there was a propane tank in the store when I was there yesterday. Well you guessed it the tank from a forklift that was being used outside to load shelves etc into this new store was being stored in the back room so no one could mess with the fork lift was in fact leaking. Luckily it had not yet gotten to explosive levels and I was able to turn it off and take it outside all the while smelling propane all thru the back hall.

Luckily this time no one got hurt but it could have been catastrophic.
First off you are never to store any type of flammable liquid or gas in a mall period. with out very specific permits and rules and special storage facility the person who brought the tank into the storage room could have been charged with a felony criminal charge of Risking a Catastrophe. under Pa. law
2nd what ticked me off the most a mall cop shows up while i am carefully moving the tank outside and opening doors to get fresh air in the store wanting my truck moved . What for its Sunday I was in a loading zone I was legally parked. Well this was enough I had the good little Nazi Ass hole Mall cop call his supervisor to the rear of the store hall and confronted him and his good little Nazi with the fact there all worried about how my truck was parked but never noticed the Propane smell from the tank that was leaking since Saturday or the fact the storerooms hall was blocked etc etc. Well all of a sudden my truck was no longer an issue as a mall management person showed up and was furious with his mall cops he uses and the store manager.
Because yes in deed there could have been a catastrophe and why was a store allowed to store stuff in a hall way and block an exit door.
So as you can see there are plenty of idiots in this world in the retail arena just another reason I choose not to shop in malls and do not feel comfortable in most of them knowing the code violations which often are ignored and the long amount of time it takes to get to an outside exit at most of them upwards of 150 feet or more.When I have trouble walking as it is.

Enviromental Air Cielings a Bad ideal which is a Health and Life safety Issue

About 40 years ago an Architect got the bright idea what if we use the entire ceiling above a suspended ceiling as a return air duct instead of having to install all that metal return air duct.
While it might have saved money initially in the long run it has turned into a public health and life safety disaster .
You can tell these type of ceilings by use of white and silver plastic open egg crate as its known ceiling tiles which allows the return air into the ceiling which is then drawn to a large duct in roof heating cooling unit.
While you save money on the duct metal it also completely changes the codes by which all other piping and electrical work must now be done.

Because of potential acrid smoke that can kill that can be caused by wiring and plastic plumbing pipes in an environmental air ceiling these items can not be used all wiring and pipe must be metal encased or other wise encased with in drywall or the use of very expensive plenum wire must be used and you guessed it after the inspector leaves any thing goes and cileings get filled with all types of wire which are not permitted creating a very dangerous life safety issue of deadly acrid smoke,should a fire break out.
When they built Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Fraser twp Pa. a few years back they used the wrong piping in the ceilings and as a result all the stores in one area just had ceiling grid up till all the correct metal piping was installed. What a night mare for the contractor who misread the plans

Then you have the health issues the ceiling tiles end up with a thick coating of dust on them and when you go to lift them out after a few years its dust everywhere and people end up getting sick from all the dust. What a health mess for any one with asthma.
In short the initial cost savings end up costing way more than any initial savings. especially when you figure in all the increased costs of plenum wire and pipe. actually there is no savings yet they keep insisting on putting in these ceilings knowing all along codes will not be followed and lives will be put at risk but the code making bodies can care less. Which is owful nice of them.

The Fire Alarm Experts In Pittsburgh Strike yet again

I was recently hired to take over two senior citizen apartments Fire alarms after the owners became disgusted with the high prices and poor service from a big mid regional alarm company here in Pittsburgh which goes around calling it self the " Fire Alarm experts in Pittsburgh " Well as we will see once again there any thing but.

Upon opening the Silent Knight 5208 fire Panel an excellent panel by the way. I notice first off it is wired wrong with Romex instead of Armored cable or conduit but the biggest problem where is the ground wire?
One of the single most important items to insure this panel operates properly .
no ground its wrapped back around the connector. not providing the surge and electric shock protection and other functions needed by the panel. When I get into the programming no wonder it was always taking forever for fire dept to get the call only one account phone number entered and panel set to rotary dial and many other features screwed up as well. Then looking at the system why was a smoke detector not put in the storage area corridor if ever there is a place a fire will break out its in the storage corridor in an apartment building.and this also serves as an exit route.
Yes another totally screwed up install by the G-uys but remember there the Fire Alarm experts
When the Fire Marshal came down to check what was done he told me he was glad to get rid of them from these buildings and he could not believe all the stuff i found wrong I needed to correct to get the panel running correctly ,yet there was a stack of yearly papers saying everything was tested and working properly.