I'm renovating my house, and have had all new plumbing put in. We've not yet installed the kitchen because the interior needed to be gutted. For the longest time I just had a hot and cold water line poking into the room.
The plumber wanted to finish up our job, but I needed him to stub out the lines for the fixtures before I could install the drywall (so I could paint and have the floors redone so I could build the cabinet that the sink goes on so that the plumber could complete his contract). So he comes out and puts the bits on that come out of the wall that the fixtures will eventually link to.
I looked at it for 2 days before I realized he'd not installed any shutoff valves below the (eventual) sink.
I checked the State and International plumbing codes to see if he'd done correctly. My interpretation of both codes was that every fixture needed a shutoff, tho there were exceptions for bathtubs and showers (frequently a wall mounted fixture). Now, my kitchen sink has wall mounted faucets, but the exception specifically exempts bathtubs, not sinks.
So I called up the plumber to ask.
When I didn't accept his "Nope, you don't need 'em", and mentioned that the code seemed to say otherwise, I was cut off and told that I had no place nosing around in the plumbing codes, that he had 40 years of experience and he was doing it right and I was an interfering b*tch.
It was implied that, as a mere homeowner (and a woman, at that!), I am not allowed to do my due diligence and verify that the work being done on my home is to code, that it is safe, that it will be sell-able without costly improvements down the line.
So I'll let him finish it as he sees fit, and when the inspector comes out, I'll ask him (with copies of the codes in hand). If the inspection fails, the plumber can either do the work, or I can hire someone else to do so using the money he's still owed. And if the inspector passes the installation as-is, I'm going to the Inspector General. I either want the shutoffs the code requires, or a good explanation of why my installation is exempted.
(The punchline - tho it rather misses the point - is that I'm not-quite-an-architect (5 years college, masters degree, 13 years experience, but no exams yet). I work for a forensic architecture firm. We go out to buildings and determine what's wrong (usually: why they leak), what was built incorrectly, what code was in play at the time, and who is responsible for the situation. My day-to-day duties involve looking things up in various codes and manuals, and designing appropriate fixes.)
