Outside your normal scope of work

[Cow]

Picked up a work order this morning to check a tripping breaker at a residence. I show up and it's a fifth wheel travel trailer with the problem. I usually tell folks we don't work on RV's but figured since it took 10 min. to drive out here, I'll do a little investigating to get my min. 1 hr charge.(I really hate taking 15 min. to drive out somewhere, just to show up and tell them we don't work on that. I have a hard time charging our min. hour, since I feel our office guy should of caught it.)

Anyways, you could see the floor had been wet right in front of the kitchen sink. Threw the offending breaker on just for giggles, tripped immediately. Pulled out the Fluke 1507, pulled the wires off the breaker and neutral bar, megged the hot-grd, neut-grd, zero. Dead short. I wasn't entirely sure what all was not working and what was, this trailer had about 20 different lights with 20 different switches scattered all over the place, I just decided to get out the circuit tracer and follow it. Here's another plug for the Amprobe 2005(Quogue would be proud!). Started tracing from the panel across the cieling, down the wall through a recep to under the floor and over to the kitchen. It was headed right to the wet floor area, traced it to an access compartment in the toe kick of the cupboards. Low and behold, 4 romexes coming from the belly of the trailer had the sheath chewed on from the floor line up to about 3 inches, plus they were wet. Couldn't get any slack in the wires to splice them and couldn't figure out how to get access to repull the cables, so I had the customer call a trailer repair outfit.

Hey, at least I found the problem for you?:grin:

I was just curious who else does this type of stuff when you show up and it's not what you expected?

 

[LarryFine]

I was just curious who else does this type of stuff when you show up and it's not what you expected?

Since I work for myself, I get to decide. I'll tackle just about anything as long as my efforts are paid for.

You can't learn anything new if you only work on what you already know.

 

[GUNNING]

I love a challenge!

I love a challenge!

I ll give anything a shot. Ive got a pretty sharp learning curve. Love a challenge and you never know when you will become the local expert at something. I know why some people shy away from some types of work. Its becuase they have that flat learning curve thing going on.
Ive only met a handful of electricians that will tackle a challenge. The rest are just there till something better turns up.

 

[e57]

Back in my service work days I got called out to a pier to trouble shoot a control circuit - got there looking for the name of the business.... Lots of different companies in different parts of this pier building. Can't find it - called the number.... "Sorry I'm here I think? - but don't see you on the directory." - The guy says "Oh I see you - I'll be there in a second." He hung up.... A few minutes goes by.... Then some guy taps me on the shoulder - "oh come with me..." I'm following him down the pier. Then he steps of the pier on to a ladder going down to a dingy... He was still talking about his electrical problem, and I had to interrupt - "where are we going?" He points to a Tug Boat - moored in the bay.... I looked at and said, "I don't work on boats...." The guy barked back at me - "Look - don't think of it as a boat - just an electrical problem - that happens to be - on a boat." And that I was the only guy to answer the phone at 6AM on a Saturday - after spending all day Friday calling everyone else in the phone book. He didn't tell me on the phone, because everyone else said "I don't work on boats..."

Next thing ya know I'm on a dingy being rowed out a few hundred yards off shore... One of the more interesting service calls I have ever been on... And relatively lucrative.

 

[Phossilman]

Outside your normal scope of work

Been on a few of those tugboat service calls myself. The ships that are all a/c are sweet to work on, it's the tugs that are entirely d/c that make me a little skidish.

 

[e57]

This one was essentially a floating generator - and really large AC and DC motors to drive it. All I had to do was find which bilge pump relay wasn't kicking on, replace it.... Apparently these are VERY important. :roll:

Back on the OP though - the only job I have refused is a candy factory - where the machine in question was so complicated that it would have been a dis-service to the customer for me to tinker in it blindly.

 

[Cow]

Interesting stories, it appears I'm not alone.

E57, your candy machine story is pretty common, in that sometimes we'll get called in to check a piece of equipment. We'll check power to it and any other simple tasks we can, but I agree, you're doing your customer a disservice if they can get the factory tech out there to work on it, who's familiar with it, and get it running in a much more timely manner than we can.