Installing Dimmers Live?

[busman]

A friend of mine called last night. He had installed 3 dimmers from the same store (single pole Lutrons). None of them would work. I installed a used dimmer off my truck and it worked fine. I thought it might be a bad batch of dimmers. I called Lutron and asked if this was possible. Lutron asked if they had been installed with the power on. I said I didn't know. Lutron said that this will destroy the dimmer. I'm not in the habit of installing devices live so I never knew this.

Turns-out that my friend did just that and killed 3 dimmers.

Just wondered how defective my education was that I got 11 years in without knowing this?

Mark

 

[iwire]

Members, as some of you will notice this thread has had many posts removed. Almost all of them talking about working circuits live. How each of you chooses to work is of course up to you.

However OSHA prohibits live work in all but a few situations.

That being the case and the fact that newbies to the trade come here to learn the right way to work we are not going to advocate working live here on this forum.