cschmid
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern cold country
I bet if you ask, every single electrician thinks he/she is qualified (Few are), and they will all say they are good. Everyone will think they know how to work live safely, always have always will, and as long as they keep thinking that there will be thousands severly injured and hundereds killed every year.
I guess you cant teach old dogs new tricks.
I guess you may not beable to teach old dogs new tricks..yet as an old dog better teach the young the truth and maybe they will get to teach their young new tricks
I had 2 near electrocutions on my job last week both excelent mechanics 30+ yrs experience follow osha rules as best they can. One backhoe broke a streetlighting pipe pulled out of the handhole back into the pipe. Went to pull the wirenut back out of the pipe and a bare bad strip on the copper was in between the wirenutted wires. Kneeling on moist ground finger got caught in between the 277v conductors. Was like a snake on a barbeque grill. His partner tried to pull him off first time he got hit badly too. He got back on his feet and got a good running start and knocked him free saving his life.
Wow man this is going to be educational section now. Zog is a smart man in this arena. I am going to rely on some help here though.
In a "perfect world" we would work on everything de-energized. We all know that is not possible. While the 70E "technically" applied to all electrical work, not all of it really does. The electric shock stuff applies to all, easy enough, wear glove, use insulated tools, etc...
What gets everyones panties in a bunch is the arc flash part. There are certian energy levels where an arc is not self sustaining. Lots of variables on this level, hard to determine, and the current guidelines (IEEE 1584) are suspect. What the 1584 says is that an arc flash study is not required for equipment <240V fed by a transformer <125 kVA. That eliminates a ton of stuff that most electricians work on. Note, is dosent come out and say there is not an arc flash hazard at this level, but rather you should use the tables. Looksat the tables and for most of the stuff most people work on it is HRC 0, that just means wear fabrics that dont melt and safety glasses. The stuff everyone has been required to wear by OSHA since 1981. Nothing new.
95% of the people complaining about the 70E requirements have no idea what they are.
95% of electricians dont work on the high energy equipment that will put you and everyone else in the room in a casket or burn center if you make one mistake.
Someday the 70E will change the scope to eliminate most of the stuff found in resi and light commercial, once the research has been done to know where to draw that line. There are some very smart people working on this, millions of volunteer hours, millions of donated dollars for the research and testing. Give them some time, they will make this all easier. Until then, tune up your spidey senses.
P.S. Those poeple that make stupid comments about the "people making the rules not having any experiiance", are the clueless ones. These people are trying to save lives, your lives, they are way smarter than you and are donating thier time.
Now there is a some good words of knowledge their. lets see if i can build on them now.
okay here goes I do not have any access to my nfpa 70E manuals or to OSHA docs on the road. only can use viewer online and that would mean a word for word retype and at 30 words a minute that is not going to happen. so If all you experts want to chime in and put the cut and pasted text in please feel free too.
We are talking live work here are we not???
Live work is covered under chapter 4 of NFPA 70E which is electrical safety in the work place correct. this chapter does not talk about good electricians or even experienced electricians. It does not use the terms journeyman or even master electricians. It uses the terms Qualified person and what I would like to see is what all of you think qualified is.
So if anyone who has NFPA 70E on disk would care to cut a paste the exact wording for me on the qualified person section that would be great.