You did what?

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EC - retired
POWER_PIG said:
I think the dumbest thing I've done as an electrician was when a homeowner told me her range hood was shocking her. The first thing I do? grab a hold of it.........it locked my jaws tight as a hat band!!.......She says "just had to do that eh?"

Did about the same thing with a fridge when I was an apprentice. Little old lady said it shocked. I licked both index fingers, touched one to the kitchen sink & one to the fridge. HS!!! Made up my own set of test lamps the next day.
 

fisherelectric

Senior Member
Location
Northern Va
In the transition stage between helper and mechanic my boss sent me out on my first solo job. My job was to disconnect a barn and some other outbuildings so the developer could tear them down. I turned off the power and removed all the wiring between buildings and was taking out the main feeder wires which ran past a pole and transformer in the field there. One of the feeder wires got caught in some branches and I was trying to get it out shaking loops up the line. It hit the transformer primary which blew the fuse and cut the wire I was holding in half. I never felt a thing, but every door on the nearby houses opened with people wondering what was going on. That was my first solo job.
 

acrwc10

Master Code Professional
Location
CA
Occupation
Building inspector
fisherelectric said:
In the transition stage between helper and mechanic my boss sent me out on my first solo job. My job was to disconnect a barn and some other outbuildings so the developer could tear them down. I turned off the power and removed all the wiring between buildings and was taking out the main feeder wires which ran past a pole and transformer in the field there. One of the feeder wires got caught in some branches and I was trying to get it out shaking loops up the line. It hit the transformer primary which blew the fuse and cut the wire I was holding in half. I never felt a thing, but every door on the nearby houses opened with people wondering what was going on. That was my first solo job.

I wonder how many times saint Peter has heard that ?
 
One of the most oddball job i ran into i was rather stupid .,,

when i was upgrading one service on one place and the HO asked me why the stove light went dim ?? i say Quoi ??

came up and take a look at it. one golden rules i broke on that one i unscrew the light bulb and somehow my right hand on the hood and my hip is on the stove next thing ZONK dang that really got me and cuss in french for while but i recollect why it got 240 volts on me it was ungrounded conductor [ that time in France we were upgrading from 120 to 240 volts L-N ] for somereason the HO ran the wire themself and that part got fix after that get a habit to get the voltmeter and test it.

Merci, Marc
 
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blue spark

Senior Member
Location
MN
Was finishing a new underground feeder to garage/studio. Everything was in and it was toward the end of the day. I had just finished setting the panel and was drilling from the inside out for the ground wire. Building had some older weird vinyl siding. I was using my Panasonic and a 8" x 1/4 jobber bit. Got through the OSB skin and thought I was into the siding but the bit just stopped. What the heck? Pushed a little harder and it finally went through. Suddenly I hear the boss outside screaming about something. I pulled the drill out to find the tip of the bit "white hot". I had just drilled right through the Sched80 and went through one leg and into the neutral. I had to take it all apart and redo. Luckily the ditch hadn't been filled and it was only a 30ft run.
Nice....:rolleyes:
 

electricman2

Senior Member
Location
North Carolina
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
The one I remember best was not spectacular and wasn?t even my fault but I had to take the heat for it. Removed a blank cover on a 4S getting ready to run a circuit for a ceiling fan in an office. When cover came off so did a wire nut with 3 or 4 white wires in it. My helper said "I smell somthing burning". I figured out pretty quick what was happening, The wire nut was connecting neutrals of MWBC. Before we located and turned off breaker, a computer, a wall wart for a printer and a surge protector strip were toast.
 

mivey

Senior Member
I remember installing a new computer in an office. I was told the old one had been damaged while some electrical work was being done. The best I could tell, the electrician had tried to work the circuit hot while installing a ceiling fan. He inadvertently opened a neutral on a MWBC and threw 240 on the equipment, burning it up. He claimed it was not his fault.:grin:

[edit: See #107. Seriously though, think about the customer perception. How many times have you been working on something and some non-related failure happens? The customer will always think you had somethng to do with it.]
 
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jrclen

Senior Member
I was called in to an industrial plant to run a circuit for a new machine. The maintenance guys were taking down some florescent fixtures suspended on sash chains and wired into the hex boxes for the HID lamp fixtures. The lights were on 277.

The maintenance guy went up in his lift after turning off the circuit he wanted to work on. He left the rest of the lights on. I wondered if he knew about the shared neutral he was about to open. But I minded my own business. About a minute later I heard a bang and saw a flash and suddenly the entire 100 x 100 foot area went dark. Then maintenance guy was on his way down with the lift, white as a ghost.

I walked over to the 480/277 panel and found the main tripped. The maintenance guy asked if I could go up and see what he might have done wrong. He said he just grabbed a yellow wire with his leatherman tool and all hell broke loose. It was obvious he didn't want to go back up there.

When I got up to the box, there was his leatherman, welded tight to the box. The other end was still clamped around the wire he bit into. It wasn't the wire he had turned off. I had to wiggle pretty hard to get the leatherman loose. Afterward I suggested to him that leathermen are a great tool for a tackle box but not so much for electrical work. Then I explained to him how lucky he was.
 

220/221

Senior Member
Location
AZ
When cover came off so did a wire nut with 3 or 4 white wires in it

I have been there and ALMOST done that. The wire nut didn't completly come off but was loose enough to send a quick 240 to the fax machine and shut it off.

No smoke, no foul. This was in the same building that 20K worth of equipment was toasted by a failed wirenut connection.
 

dlhoule

Senior Member
Location
Michigan
Newly wed. It'll be 49 years in June for me. Talk about luck, I was 17 when I married the most wonderful lady in the world. She had to be to stay married to me.
 

mpoulton

Senior Member
Location
Phoenix, AZ, USA
MWBC takes out financial data center

MWBC takes out financial data center

We had just finished a new headquarters building for a large credit union, which includes their new data center. They host all of their IT services in-house - their website, their online banking, the ATM network, their internal teller network for all the branches. Everything state-wide runs through that room. Next to the room is a closet with the Qwest fiber termination equipment for their internet connection. The Qwest equipment is fed by a pair of 30A twist locks, each it's own dedicated circuit, that supply a pair of redundant power supplies in the cabinet. That way either circuit can fail and the equipment stays up. It has 90 minutes of battery backup just in case. Well, the twist locks got wired with a shared neutral, and the wirenut came loose in the middle of the afternoon about a week after the data center came online. Both power supplies shut down due to overvoltage (no damage thankfully), and the clock starts ticking on the backup battery. Every time we open the cover on the box, the neutral comes back into contact and it works normally. Every time the cover goes back on, the wire moves and it goes out. We figured it out with about 15 minutes of battery remaining!
 

Brady Electric

Senior Member
Location
Asheville, N. C.
In 1974 I had a helper cut in a old work box for an outlet just inside a carport
I gave him my sawsall with a long blade which we had been using. Drew the outlet box in and told him to cut it in.
I came back later and he had cut the hole all the way threw to the outside.
He said I shouldn't have given him such a long blade
So to fix the problem I just installed a GFCI outlet on the outside
That's the dumbest thing I have ever seen.
Semper Fi
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
You guys are a hard act to follow!

I was a first year apprentice and just bought a new pair of Klein linesman's. Yep, you guessed it, I managed to cut into a live line the first day I used them putting a notch into the cutter bit. The next day we were at lunch and me and another guy had put our linesman's on the table. When it was time to go, the guy asked which was mine. I picked up the closest one to me and looked for the notch. I told him I could tell these were mine because of the notch burned into the cutter. All at once, every guy at the table pulled their linesman's out and said 'like this?' Everyone at the table had notches burned into their pliers.

I have notched several cutters over the years and it always seems to happen the very first day I own them.

They make great wire strippers though!
 

Lithium1994

Member
Location
Waterbury, CT
I gotta say the rifle had me on the floor laughing. HAd to be down south somewhere.
Read all the posts and nobody has fessed up to falling through a ceiling, well heres mine. Two months into my first electrical job, slow day so my boss says lets do some work at his house. Running a tsat wire from the attic AC unit into his bedroom and I am in the attic. Well you guessed it, I sneezed and went through the rafters. But its not over, he was standing underneath me and I kicked him in the head with me steel toes. A year later and I still have a job, very forgiving man.
 
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