IES Residential, Inc

Description of Work: IES Residential, Inc . Is the electrical company that is hired by Gehan homes to install the electrical wiring and alarm systems in Gehan homes. In my living room where I have my entertainment center...I have a LCD TV, Direct TV box, a PS3 and a cable modem and router and two lamps that have either a CFL bulb or a LED bulb. and that is it. In the past two months, my circuit breaker has popped at least 20 or more times...as much as 5 times in one day. I have a high end surge protector to protect my electronics. IES has sent a few electricians to come and correct the problem...changing out the circuit breaker etc...they can't figure it out or don't know without tearing out the sheetrock and inspecting the 14/2 romex. I was informed today from Jeff Story from Gehan homes that IES ( Robert Wright) will not be sending out anymore electricians to help me fix this issue. This is a brand new home, only 14 months old. I should not be going thru this. I have not changed any of my gadgets. What I have now is what I had when I moved in. They went as far as to blame the PS3 for causing the short. I even put the PS3 on a special surge protector made by the same company that makes the circuit breakers for the panel box. So I called Sony and talked to their tech support and they say that is untrue and false. The problem lies with how the house was wired and why did they installed a thin wiring like 14/2 instead of 12/2 the technician asked me... Gehan response to me was this " It meets code"...that means that they put the bare minimum to pass. Almost like your child getting "C"s in school. Just enough to pass. My concern is this...80% of home fires are caused from faulty electrical wiring or improperly wired homes. How many times does a circuit have to trip or fail before my house burns down to the ground or even kill me and my family in our sleep? IES Residential I "give up" or don't care attitude is shameful and honestly pretty pathetic. ** Gehan Homes in all their wisdom decides to install 14/2 wiring on a 15 amp circuit breaker. By NEC (National Electrical Code) code, you are only allowed to load the circuit breaker to 80% of it's rating. So on a 15 amp circuit breaker that is 12 amps. There is a simple formula that electricians used called the PIE formula...it basically goes like this... Watts divided by volts will give you amps Watts divided by amps will give you volts Amps times Volts gives you wattage. Why would Gehan and IES Residential decide to put 14/2 wiring in the living room? The entertainment hub for the house? People are not downsizing their entertainment equipment...they are super sizing everything...does that make sense? Keep in mind other home builders and in the city of Austin Texas required 12/2 wiring on 20 amp circuit breaker. So who is the blame? IES Residential or Gehan Homes for being cheap and trying to cut corners. ** Keep in mind that anytime a contractor tells you that it meets "CODE"...that basically means it meets the bare minimum safety requirement. It does not exceed it or go above and beyond. It just means that gave you the bottom of the line. I had a brand new home built from the ground up and IES installed the alarm system plus all the electrical in the home. Here are the issues and why I gave this company a "F" rating: From the beginning, IES electricians made several mistakes that had to be readdressed and fixed: Failure to install an outlet for built in microwave oven...so they had to come back and fix that. Failure to install a door bell...so after they found out the forgot, they had to bust out the brick work and install a doorbell. The door bell is cheap and they forgot to secure the doorbell to the brick. It took Gehan Homes and IES a few months to finally secure it properly. Pan light above front door. Basically whatever electrician that installed in...crushed the can and damage the cement board in a fashion that the whole unit and cement board had to be replaced. The alarm system they installed, when I closed on my home not one person from Gehan or IES even bothered to tell me where the instruction manual was located or even attempted to help me set it up. On the outside garage lights, the junction box on the left they stripped out the threaded well because they used a cheap plastic junction box. If you over tighten the screw that mounts the light bracket it will strip out. Well once they stripped the thread well...the electrician tried to Jerry Rig the thing by putting in a long 3 inch screw to hold it in place. When that didn't work...he basically used silicone caulking and glued my garage light in place. Gehan homes only gives you 4 hours in their design center to pick out and design your home start to finish. That is not alot of time... I paid for a extended 30 foot covered patio and decided to have 2 junction boxes wired for future ceiling fans. I told the IES rep at the time to space the junction boxes 10 feet apart that the spacing is even. That way you have 2 junctions boxes spaced at the 10 foot mark and 20 foot mark on the ceiling. Which would be idea and be aesthetic pleasing in regards to function and physical symmetry . They forgot to do that and the junction boxes are not located where I asked them to be. When I asked to see the electrical schematics...they made no note of my request. I paid extra money to have CAT5 boxes installed in several places in my home, IES installed regular telephone jacks and had to come back and redo everything. In hindsight, it tells me two things...one that the workers are not properly briefed, not paying attention to the electrical schematics and that the supervisor that is in charge of supervising the whole process isn't paying attention, over worked or doesn't care. During the building of my house, Gehan replaced the supervisor 2-3 times. Bottom line, I have a home that may be a fire hazard, disrupts my life to the point that I can't even enjoy watching a movie or football game or spending quality time killing zombies with my son and daughter on the PS3. Each time the circuit breaker pops..it takes several minutes for the Direct TV box to reboot and reconnect to the satellites. Imagine that happening when you are trying to watch the Super Bowl. My advice to all of you reading this: Stay away from Gehan Homes...too many headaches and all they do is make excuses...this is a new home...they like to cut corners and put in bare minimum and hide behind the statement " It meets code". If you have a house built from the ground up...insist that you get 12/2 wiring, have a dedicated GFCI circuit installed next to the water main in the event you plan on installing a water filter or water softener later on. So if you want a "C" average home builder that is going to give excuses and do the bare minimum to pass...go with Gehan. I am sure you will regret it later. You have been warned. Don't hire IES Residential to do anything regarding electrical to your home to include installing a alarm system. They jacked up and messed up so much it is scary. I will say this...the electricians where very friendly at least.