A rich town where everyone just afford compliance with everything all the time isn't very illustrative. I bet nobody there drives cars on bald tires or pays th

A rich town where everyone just afford compliance with everything all the time isn't very illustrative. I bet nobody there drives cars on bald tires or pays their babysitter off the books either. In places where money doesn't grow on trees harder decisions have to be made. Situations like "do I hire a real electrician to install my heat pump and get forced to bring my panel up to current code at great expense or do I hire someone to just install the heat pump on a cash basis or do I replace my existing system like for like" become more common. I agree code is stupid simple if you're building cookie cutter stuff. It can get very, very, annoying when you're dealing with systems that have N generations of changes and/or are trying to be minimally invasive. Would you rather take a hole saw to the main beam of someone's house or have a sink drain that's a hair too flat for a portion of it's run?