[quesera]

I'm sure that's true.

And it means that you do not know how to do electrical or plumbing work.

That's fine! But take it from someone who does: it does not take years of training to be excellent at it. Household electric and plumbing is extremely straightforward. Commercial can be much more complicated! And if you run into any semi-complicated stuff, like say a bathroom below grade where you need a toilet to flush uphill ... you learn it from the vast resources available, or you call a plumber for that bit. Simple.

Similarly, if you ever are not 100% certain of your own work, you call a licensed tradesman for the inspection. Note that this is not always allowed -- but where it is, everyone agrees that it makes total sense.

[hondo77]

Household electric doesn't necessarily take years but it takes longer than 60 days of YouTube videos.

[quesera]

I learned it in a few days of work. You could too. I don't recommend YouTube though!

The most complicated thing is knowing the code, which boils down to just a handful of simple rules for residential stuff. Most importantly: look it up, don't guess. There's a right way to do everything, and it's never the hard way. There is very little variance or judgement call involved, the code is quite clear and specific.

Doing it right might take additional materials or time though, and that's fine.

[XorNot]

Just want to say the push back you're getting on this topic is one I've experienced everywhere - the actual work of the trades is basically treated as an unknowable black magic which only it's arcane practitioners can do.

Which I think is partly held up essentially by the "dodgy tradie" stories which are routinely passed around but get re-interpreted as "it's very easy to do <obvious stupid thing>" when the stupid thing is something like "don't do a wire run from 10 short pieces of wire you have lying around" or "PVC pipes need to be glued together to not leak".

[ty6853]

I built my entire house shell from 3 hours of larry haun on youtube in russian and almost nothing else with no experience. Just watched I then copied everything. The hardest part was getting a hold of a 6 ton backhoe for a day to dig the footings, which I also learned to use by pure experimentation about 15 minutes before I dug my foundation.

[s1artibartfast]

I think 60 days is excessive depending on your prior knowledge. If you understand voltage current and resistance, you can read the electrical code book in a day. Most of it will be irrelevant. Home wiring is almost entirely outlets, junction boxes, and running Romex. You can teach someone to do 95% of it in a day.

It's the edge cases that are time consuming to learn. Understanding each case that could come up on different types of builds, in different scenarios, is an important skill to be a proficient electrician that can walk onto a unknown job site, complete it, and leave at the end of the day. It makes sense if you are running commercial job sites where time is money. It makes sense if there is a failure or upgrade needed on an operational structure.

If someone is smart and time is less critical, it is only moderately slower to learn the edge cases as they come up.

I did the gas, electricity, and plumbing install for my Mom's kitchen, and I did it to the State building code. I did it in one week and with no prior training.

In a lot of ways, the certification process for contractors mirrors that of our white collar workers. Someone might spend 4 years getting a computer engineering degree, learn a dozen languages, study English and art, only to code basic tasks in CSS.

Even simpler, barbers don't really need a 1000 hours of certified coursework to do a buzz cut, or even your 50 most common haircuts.