Tightening every lug

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This plagues the building our office is in. Expensive building built about 18 years ago, sat empty before we moved in a year ago. Loose conduit fittings. Device screws barely tight leading to burned up receptacles. A $0.39 120v toggle switch on a 277v lighting circuit (that blew up). Stranded EGCs under wafer head sheetmetal screws in boxes. Drives me nuts.
 
My favorite is why do I have to tighten the fitting. It has a green wire in the pipe. So who cares. This goes hand in Hand with why put a green screw I the box.

How sad
 
As far as lugs go I supervise or do them my self and mark them and put my initials inside the panel/ trans etc. Then take pic and log.
 
Maybe that is why I am so slow.
I check and re check, just the way I am. To me, an electrician should be able to connect and terminate wires properly that's probably the most important task we do. When I do a panel I go back through it before I power it up give the wires a tug and make sure everything is tight. Once in a while I get a surprise.

Not claiming I never made a mistake
 
when terminating larger conductors I always move the conductor around with my free hand as it seems to let the strands settle in behind the lug.There were many a time when before energizing equipment I would check terminations by grabbing each conductor just ahead of the lug and move them around ,strands would settle and was able to get full turns
 
New house. New owners just moved in a few days before. Wanted a circuit in the unfinished basement for a second refrigerator. Installed new circuit and I'm tacking the staple into the plywood (where the panel is also mounted) for the romex and the lady of the house is yelling that all the lights in the kitchen are flickering. Long story short...EVERY lug on the neutral bar in the panel was loose.
 
tthh said:
New house. New owners just moved in a few days before. Wanted a circuit in the unfinished basement for a second refrigerator. Installed new circuit and I'm tacking the staple into the plywood (where the panel is also mounted) for the romex and the lady of the house is yelling that all the lights in the kitchen are flickering. Long story short...EVERY lug on the neutral bar in the panel was loose.
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What do you expect...it was beer thirty on a Friday!!
 
Other than just lack of care one area where this failure can happen is on larger industrial jobs where one contractor does the work and a third party electrical testing company is to mobilize once to test large segments of the work. Has to be coordinated when things can be tightened down. Large customer owned substations utilizing air insulated bus are an example of this. Torque marks are one good antidote, but you have to make sure it's just not someone going through 2 days later and painting everything with the assumtion that they or someone else torqued it.
 
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