Customer chewed me out for not using rubber grommets on a pass-through

I was running cable in an older house in Cleveland last month, just fishing lines from the basement up to the second floor. The homeowner walks in, sees my hole where I drilled through the floor joist, and goes 'you didn't put a grommet in there? that's a code violation waiting to happen.' I mean, I've always figured if it's a clean hole and the cable isn't moving, you don't need one. But he was a retired electrician and showed me how edge damage over time can fray the jacket. Now I carry a pack of those rubber split grommets on every job, even on low-voltage runs. Has anyone else run into a homeowner or inspector who called them out on something you thought was fine?

3 comments

3 Comments

elliot_miller2222d ago

You ever have a buddy who thought he knew everything until he got caught slippin'? I got a friend who does low-voltage stuff, security cameras and whatnot, and he swore up and down grommets were just for high-voltage guys. He ran a big job in a new build, no grommets anywhere, and the inspector failed him on the final walkthrough because a couple holes were a little rough on the edges... cost him a whole weekend to go back and fix every single one. Now he's got a whole bucket of those split grommets in his truck and won't shut up about them either.

brooke7122d ago

Grommets are the kind of thing I used to roll my eyes at too, until I had a nice little wire turn into a chewed up mess from a rough hole. Now I'm the one with the bucket in my truck, probably looking like a nut every time I pop one in. Guess we're all just a couple of hard lessons away from becoming the guys we used to make fun of.

cole_robinson21d ago

Man, ain't that the truth. I had a buddy who used to call grommets "training wheels for real electricians" and then he ran some speaker wire through a cheap metal panel in his garage. That wire was toast in like two months. Now he's got a whole ziploc bag of rubber ones in his glovebox like he's running a tiny hardware store out of his Toyota. It's funny how fast the universe humbles you.