Now THIS was funny...........

[Mule]

how about working on stuff that has NO current behind it?

Yea, your right, its a bad habit, and the older I get its a worse habit.... and I need to be teaching my aprentice better habits as well....I couldnt live with my self if something happened to my son in law as a result of my actions...couldnt face my daughter.

A couple of years of boxing lessons is what perfected my snout. Ive got to stop leading with my face they said. Amateurs are all headhunters only three rounds to ring the bell. Ouch!!

Sorry I couldnt resist, I read your post and looked up at that picture and it came over me....

 

[LarryFine]

A couple of years of boxing lessons is what perfected my snout. Ive got to stop leading with my face they said.

Yeah! Who's ever heard of cauliflower nose? :-? D)

 

[220/221]

if i told you i played russian roulette and didn't kill myself, would that be funny? because that's basically what just happened here.

Exaggerate much?

I accidentally strayed lightly across the tip of the wire and got a tiny buzz. There was no way I could have gotten hurt seriously much less killed. I could have made twenty trips to the panel (I was troubleshooting) but that's just silly.


The key to working hot is to stay insulated and/or never grip anything hot. If you simply touch it you will pull away pretty quickly. If you have a grip, it will just get tighter.

 

[iwire]

Exaggerate much?

I am willing to bet that many more people are killed by contact with 120 VAC then are killed playing Russian roulette.

There was no way I could have gotten hurt seriously much less killed.

Oh, I see now, you are either a machine or superman.

I could have made twenty trips to the panel (I was troubleshooting) but that's just silly.

No, shutting it down would be smart, or at the least some basic PPE if you insist on working it hot.

The key to working hot is to stay insulated and/or never grip anything hot. If you simply touch it you will pull away pretty quickly. If you have a grip, it will just get tighter.

Potential Darwin award winner here.

 

[iwire]

The more I thought about this the more steamed I got.

220/221 you should work alone, you have no business having employees with your own lack of basic safety so apparent. I am sure you pass on your total disregard for safety on to your employees.

Statements like this ...

There was no way I could have gotten hurt seriously much less killed.

... regarding 120 VAC are just plain wrong.

If your employees where kids they should be taken away from you.

 

[hardworkingstiff]

... regarding 120 VAC are just plain wrong.

I have to agree with Bob. If it was not this way, there would not be requirements for GFCI devices.

 

[iaov]

I work on things hot on occassion however I never lose sight of the fact that this stuff can kill me!! Someone gets killed by 120 vts every day in this country. All you need to do is brush it.

 

[TOOL_5150]

I would rather punch myself in the nose, than work on something hot. I will die one day eventually, like all humans - but it wont be from electricity. I prefer to have a long life, as we dont live all that long in the first place.

~Matt

 

[Sparky555]

Very low levels of current cause muscles to contract. You die if the current causes your heart to stop beating. Beware of shared neutral wiring that will leave a live neutral.

 

[Karl H]

I don't care what anyone says,when someone punches themselves in the
face and I see it, I'm going to laugh every single time. I did it twice,
once when a rope broke on a wire pull,the second was my reflex
from a static shock closing the door on my truck.

I didn't say anything about working on energized circuits .

 

[Electron_Sam78]

I've had the tendons in my hand or wrist pop or slip and it feels an awful lot like getting hit with 120 sometimes. It's funny when you jerk your hand back because of that and the remember oh I'm working on putting a new plug on a disconnected appliance.

 

[hillbilly]

This is not electrical related, but I was unloading some scaffolding that I had rented, so it's work related.

The owner said to just "pile it out back near that old shed", so I proceeded to do just that.

It so happened that there was a big Bumble Bee nest in the ground next to the shed under some old lumber.
I threw the first piece off, and the sky filled with bees.
One bee in particular buzzed straight at my face and landed on my nose.
Out of reflex, I swatted the bee, and bloodied my own nose in the process.
I got stung 3 times before I could escape.
The bee that I swatted didn't make it, and also didn't get a chance to sting me, so I did get some revenge.

steve

 

[prh1700]

There are times in this trade where troubleshooting requires a circuit to be hot. And there is a safe way to do it. But there are always risks. It is what we do, and accept it.
And it is something we always have to be seriuos about when we are doing it. I remember as an apprentice, one of the journeymen grabbed a wire he knew was dead, and started with the shaking, etc.... Well, one of the new, green apprentices grabbed a piece of 2x4 lumber, and with his adrenaline pumping, came down across the journeyman's wrist, breaking it real good.

 

[tonyou812]

Troubleshooting tripping residential GFCI in a garage this AM.

It's about waist high with a couple of boxes in front of it and some golf clubs to the side. It's a little awkward but not as bad as a kit countertop recep.

Wires are all twisted up. Line in pair was identified by the ground wire wrapping around it tightly about 6 times. Two lines out. I decided I didn't like it so I remove the recep and start untwisting the mess. I am aware of the hot wire but didn't take two seconds to put a nut on it.

My hands/arms were in an odd position untwisting the ground and my hand made slight contact with the hot wire. I jerked back and hit myself square in the nose with the back of my hand. My eyes were watering and I could feel the blood starting to trickle.

No one was around to witness this event. I walked to my truck for a paper towel and after about 30 seconds I realized how funny it was.



The problem was a neutral to ground fault in the front patio recep. On installation, the ground wire was probably very close to the 3/8" of exposed neutral on the backstabbed recep. The recep must have shifted over/back a bit when somebody used it.

OMG that was to funny,you made me pee my pants a little....I think we've all been there. you were so lucky no one saw that.If it were some of the guys I work with you would never hear the end of it.

 

[buddhakii]

A guy I worked with opened the back door on his van and it was a little sticky. He jerked it open right into his mouth and knocked out his front tooth. OUCH!

 

[220/221]

The more I thought about this the more steamed I got.

220/221 you should work alone, you have no business having employees with your own lack of basic safety so apparent. I am sure you pass on your total disregard for safety on to your employees.

Statements like this ...



... regarding 120 VAC are just plain wrong.

If your employees where kids they should be taken away from you.

Wow, that's kind of harsh.

Your rather strong opinion is flat out wrong. I'm glad you are not in charge.:grin:

I never suggested that 120V could not kill me. I said that troubleshooting a hot circuit would not kill me.

You can brush up against it and you get a shock. I assume it has happened to everyone here more than once. If you put yourself in a position where you can get hung up, you have made a dangerous error. Simply working it hot doesn't necessarily put you in that position.


There are basic common sense rules to follw. I won't kneel on the ground wearing shorts outside or on a conductive surface because, well because that would violate the whole insulated thing. I wouldn't rest on a metal structure above a grid for the same reason.


PPE to tshoot a 15 amp resi circuit? Please. I do have eye protection (honestly, only because I can't see well enough to work without glasses). I have seen a few ground faults in a device box. We all have. It ain't gonna kill anyone.

Dude, I know the dangers of electricity. I know how it works (basically). We evaluate risks on a daily basis just to get thru the day. I know how to evaluate the risk involved with my work. It's not my first rodeo/BBQ. If anything, I am more and more safety conscious every day. To suggest that I am unfit because I tshoot something like this hot is just dumb.

Tell me one thing. How do you test power if it is not turned on? Is it OK to work hot if it only involves testing for power? Why is that? Can't you get killed by having exposed conductors sticking out of the box?

Maybe you are suggesting to take the whole circuit apart and individually meg the wires? I don't know what you are suggesting, all I know is that you are way off base.

OK....one last question. We all know that 120 has the power to kill

How, specifically could I have gotten hung up and killed/hurt (other than a bloody nose :grin in this situation. Teach me. Maybe I am missing something.

 

[Mule]

These stories are funny to us becuase we relate to it. However, we must all strive to be more safety minded while working circuits. Especially with all the younger guys coming into the trade, learning our old and/or bad habits. I personaly need to order some PPE, and start getting with the program, because its now law, if we like it or not...

Yes some folks seem harsh with their statements, but in general Bob does a great job as a moderator, and I can't imagine how much gruff, he's taken with those 29,000 post and if he loses his temper once in a while, oh well.....I SaaLute you Bob !!

So let's all protect one another in our attention to safety and learn, and try not to be to hard on one another on this forum. Life's to short

 

[76nemo]

220/221, I think you're going to get pounded by what you just posted, so I am going to embarass myself while you re-think some of what you just said. I say that very friendly.

The ultimate of stupid: (from another forum I posted this on).


Ahh rogo, thee ol' angle grinder. I was at a buddies house once removing his sewage vent, (the old cast iron), with a fan blowing. This is pretty sad, extremely dumb, Glenn would hang me for this one. It's about a hundred degrees on this day, so I have a big fan going. I'm almost all the way through, so a take a peek just a little closer at full RPM. A gust of strong wind came through the window changing the wind direction. Now I have a pretty long beard, the wheel caught my beard and my shirt, ripped half of the shirt off of my back, ripped half of the beard out, and the ol' eyes welled right up, THAT HURT!!!!!!!
Beard grew back, bought another shirt, pride was lost. Story is kind of funny because where I was working at the time, they made me tuck my beard in my shirt, and I always thought that was the dumbest thing I ever heard. Wrong again!!!

"You BIG DUMMY!!!!!!!"
Yeah, that'd be me.

 

[peter d]

PPE to tshoot a 15 amp resi circuit? Please. I do have eye protection (honestly, only because I can't see well enough to work without glasses). I have seen a few ground faults in a device box. We all have. It ain't gonna kill anyone.

OK, here's where I see the distinction. Yes, the power has to be on to troubleshoot. You're probing around with a meter on the device or the disconnected wires. We've all done that and do that. I don't think anyone is saying "Don't troubleshoot live circuits."

But, the way you described it, is that you didn't like the way the wires were made up in the outlet box, so you decide to start fixing it, and you did it live. That's doing wiring, not troubleshooting. You could have (should have!) turned the power off for 5 minutes to fix the messy wiring in the box, and gone back to troubleshooting it live once it was fixed.

 

[220/221]

220/221, I think you're going to get pounded by what you just posted, so I am going to embarass myself while you re-think some of what you just said. I say that very friendly.

I don't take it as a pounding. I am here to learn. I will however defend myself when necessary. I will also occaisionally apologize and change my ways.

In general I have issues with across the board statements like "Never work hot". Never say never....unless you are saying "never say never". All hot work is not equal and we have to evaluate each situation on it's own.

I wouldn't say that it's always safe to work a circuit like this hot. There are situations that call for disconnect, accessibility and the condition of the wiring being one....or two :grin: