zog
Senior Member
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
Another unecessacary death
- Thread starter hillbilly1
- Start date
- Status
- Location
- Massachusetts
renosteinke
Senior Member
- Location
- NE Arkansas
I'll defer to Hillbilly's take on the topic. I can understand his desire to not get to specific about the incident. I had missed my attention that this was something with which he was personally involved.
No sane person enjoys hearing of anothers' misfortune, and such seems to happen to folks without any rhyme or reason. Fate? Karma? More like the Devil rolling the dice, it seems.
I recall one job where the two-man roofing crew consisted of one responsible person, and one 'loose cannon.' Ironically, it was the 'professional' who died in a fall - having been caught by a gust of wind at the very instant as he transferred his tie-line from one support cable to another.
No sane person enjoys hearing of anothers' misfortune, and such seems to happen to folks without any rhyme or reason. Fate? Karma? More like the Devil rolling the dice, it seems.
I recall one job where the two-man roofing crew consisted of one responsible person, and one 'loose cannon.' Ironically, it was the 'professional' who died in a fall - having been caught by a gust of wind at the very instant as he transferred his tie-line from one support cable to another.
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- Semi-retired engineer
I heard a story from an electrician not real long ago. Seems that the company safety coordinator (another electrician) was working on the roof of his home with a circular saw (IIRC) and the cord got caught in the blade. He then rolled off the roof and broke his back. I guess he eventually recovered completely, but you have to wonder why the company safety coordinator did not bother to tie himself off when working on his own roof.
First guess would be that, like many in that position, they care not for safety. Their only concern is avoiding liability for the company.
- Location
- Illinois
- Occupation
- retired electrician
And we do. It's the exceptional case when we don't issue a work permit for the job. CYA for the foremen here. If they don't issue a permit and the electrician goes just a little out of scope... the safety guy comes by and the foreman goes home without pay. So they give out the Troubleshooting version of the permit that explains that the EL is supposed to LOTO before going further.
tallgirl
Senior Member
- Location
- Glendale, WI
- Occupation
- Controls Systems firmware engineer
I suspect it's more "the cobbler's children have no shoes".
I had a father-in-law once upon a time who was an electrician for a local manufacturing plant. Let's just say that the electrical work in his own home wasn't exactly professional ...
Twoskinsoneman
Senior Member
- Location
- West Virginia, USA NEC: 2020
- Occupation
- Facility Senior Electrician
He he... sad to say I've got some hanging wires coming out of the wall in my work shop with alligator jumpers hanging from some control wires that are "waiting for the electrician to finish it"...
I'd be appalled to see it anywhere else. :ashamed1:
weressl
Esteemed Member
I thought that you supposed to have TWO tielines, so you are never untethered.
weressl
Esteemed Member
Not being 'professional' is a rather loose term. Not meeting the Code requirement is a little bit tighter. Even the Code acknowledges, in certain cases, that some installation provisions are only acceptable if the provision has been provided by engineered supervision and/or it is under the maintenance supervision of a qualified individual/team.
Then there is the 'grandfathering' clause.
weressl
Esteemed Member
I did not see the facts of the case.
You are saying that all of us in the past decades that have worked live or directed others were irresponsible and careless?
Just because the guvernment decided that it is no longer safe, we all became dolts?
Do you realize that the overwhelming majority of the injuries and fatalities are due to violating basic principles of working live and the additional burden was put on qualified electricians by those unfortunate, but nevertheless irresponsible dolts who got hurt? (It is not akin to dumbing down education....)
busman
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Occupation
- Master Electrician / Electrical Engineer
I've said this before. If you want to stay in business in the residential market, then you have to work things live. There is no way to compete if you are going to call the PoCo and wait all day for a shutdown and reconnect just to put one new circuit in the panel. It would turn a $150 job into a $800 job. Nobody is going to pay for that.
The reality is that live work will continue in the relatively unregulated work of residential service. What I would rather see (instead of an unreasonable ban on all hot work) would be a stronger push for reasonable rules and use of PPE. I would be very surprised if anyone can find an example of an electrician with serious injuries from a residential accident (200A service or less) who was wearing level 2 arc flash PPE and rated hot gloves to the elbows.
The current regulations are like telling people who own cars that they can't drive them. It would be better to tell them that they MUST wear seatbelts, be sober, pay attention (no phones), etc. They are going to drive anyway, whether it's legal or not and if you're going to break the law, then why bother with any of the safety crap.
Just one man's opinion.
Mark
hillbilly1
Senior Member
- Location
- North Georgia mountains
- Occupation
- Owner/electrical contractor
Yes, it sometimes gets ridiculous, we have to wear long sleeve shirts all of the time regardless of what we are doing, I reckon it's better to have a heat stroke than to get burned. We have lost business because of our no live work policy, but the business we lost, nobody should have been doing live. One job was a 400 amp three phase 480 volt service, one of the phases in the CT cabinet was burnt. Limited amount of space to cut out the bad wire and splice new piece in, It was for a major retailer. I refused to issue the HW permit, the customer said XYZ company said they would do it. The other company did the job without incident this time, but with the heat damage, movement of the wires could have caused another fault in the metal nipples in the cabinet. Those are the accidents waiting to happen because common sense was not followed.
- Location
- Massachusetts
They will pay for that as soon as electricians put their foot down and stop allowing themselves to be taken advantage of.
As long as people have that attitude yes it will continue.
We have to change that attitude.
Hot work is not 'banned' there are some instances where it is still allowed.
Why should employees be put at risk just to save the customer some money?
I am not following you here.
In today's society driving a vehicle is pretty much mandatory, working hot is not.
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Location
- Massachusetts
I am not buying that, many fully trained, fully qualified, fully responsible employees have been hurt or killed through no fault of their own due to problems left by others before them.
There is no reason not to try to shut things down.
Furthermore, power line guys have a much higher levels of training, have much higher enforcement of safety procedures and still have the highest rate of electrocution.
So I think your are speaking from your wishes and not from facts.
busman
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Occupation
- Master Electrician / Electrical Engineer
Bob,
We'll just have to disagree. The customer is never going to pay $800-$100 for a $200 job. They just get a trunk-slammin handyman to do it instead.
As far as allowing risk to save some money, until separate disconnects are required at residences, someone will ALWAYS be risking their safety working hot. If there's no disconnect, then a lineman will risk his/her safety to pull the meter. There's not some magic button that shuts off the power so an electrician can work it. It's just shifting the risk to someone else. That's just the facts.
Mark
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- Semi-retired engineer
You are correct sir.
I think there are some things that could be done to make the situation a lot more palatable though rather than the goofy rules that were put in place with no regard to reality.
I think a lot of the issues in low risk settings like single family residential electrical installations could be resolved quite safely and inexpensively with some intelligent thought. But intelligent thought is rarely something the regulators use.
One thing that would make sense would be to require a seperate disconnect, either part of the load center (as I think is done in Canada) or outside. I think the N-G bond should always be made at this point as well. A simple code change that will probably never happen for whatever reasons.
I also think that the use of some indicator such as lights should be allowed to serve as the determination of lack of voltage on these type of installations. The risk is already low, and the risk of a listed assembly of this type failing in a way that is detrimental approaches nil.
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- Status