Troubleshooting Time allowed?

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bigjohn67

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Customer calls and says that her lights are blinking in her bedroom and sometimes goes out completely then comes back on. 3 bedroom on same circuit with a normal bedroom load. (TV, alarm clock, etc.) All rooms are full of furniture etc.
Some furniture will have to be moved for access to outlets.

How much time would you expect your Journeyman to find the problem?
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

It is virtually impossible to say.

There are such an enormous amount of variables involved that giving a time estimate is pointless.

Furthermore, a blinking light indicates an intermittent connection which is all the more frustrating to troubleshoot.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

All that said, a small problem should be located and repaired within a working day, reasonably speaking.

If it takes more than a few days, and starts stretching into the week, then I would conclude that the electrician doesn't really have a good grasp on troubleshooting.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

My best guess is 5 minutes to 5 hours. Troubleshooting is an aquired lucky skill!

Sometimes you can get lucky and find the problem in the first 5 minutes and sometimes not...

I've told customers that the fix is about 10 minutes, BUT finding the problem will take much longer. If your electrician talks to the customer and explains what he is doing, and why, at each step, the customer will cheerfully write the check.
Of course there is the jerk who asks why didn't you look there first. (Always 1 in a crowd)
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

It has taken me 12 hours for find a tripping circuit breakers problem, and it has taken me 20 seconds to find out why an Arc Fault was tripping. The best thing to do is tell the homeowner your hourly rate for troubleshooting and give them a ball park figure. I usually say 4-8 hours. This way if they are lucky it will only take you an hour, and boy are they impressed. Worse case scenario it takes you a day. If it takes much longer than that, your in the wrong trade. :eek:
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

I would guess an hour or two. Just by the discription I would say the house has rear wire duplexs(push in) and one has come loose. It is probally the duplex with something pluged into it. Go around and hit each duplex with a few things turned on, that usually finds the problem if not start taking the duplexes apart, when you pull out the duplex the loose wires usually pull right out. Unless it is some huge house, the three bedrooms probally have no more than 12-14 devices to check. Troubleshooting is an aquired talent.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

I use a voltage drop tester made by Ideal. You plug it into a receptacle and simulate a 15 or 20 amp load and read the voltage drop. A loose or poor connection will show up as a big voltage drop. Plug it into one receptacle and if the voltage drop is 5% and you plug it into the next receptacle and the voltage drop is 20% you can narrow down where the problem is without removing devices. I also have an adapter so that I can connect it to the lamp socket of a light fixture.
Sometimes the problem will be a loose connection in a splice in a light fixture that is working fine.
I had a call where whenever they turned their computers on the light in the room went out. The light in the next room didn't have a problem but that is where the loose connection was. It was feeding power to the room having the problem.
If it appears to be the entire circuit having a problem I would look in the panel first and check for a loose neutral or breaker connection.

[ February 24, 2005, 09:41 PM: Message edited by: aline ]
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

Something in the line of what Chris just posted.
I just had a service call last night that the home owner said he lost power in about 70% of the receptacles and lights on one circuit. Using my three light plugging tester by wiggling each receptacle with it found the problem in less than 5 minutes. fixed it and was out the door with check in hand for the 1 hour minimum in about 20 minutes. But I have had where a DYS had a field day and it took much more. But never lock your self into a set price as you can never tell how long it can take or who has done work before. I always tell them it will be time and material. if it takes more than 5 hours then I reduce the hourly charge.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

In a power plant, it took me 3 days to find the remains of a dead rat causing the problem in a differential protection system (protects the generator from a ground fault) for a 25 MW generator.

As mentioned before it takes only a moment to fix the problem.

Generally our problems are only two of a kind - there is a connection when there is not suppose to be one (called short) and there is no connection when there is suppose to be one (called dark). And the flickering lights are somewhere in between. ;)
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

I once spent several hours debugging a problem in a control panel that was experiencing some unusual problems.

Eventually, I found an intermittent butt spliced connection inside a wire trough in a trench under the machine. It's one of the reasons I hate splices, I suppose.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

Took us three days to find a problem in a lighting ckt on board ship. And I mean us. We had someone on it constantly until we found it. Got down to pulling each connection box apart and chasing wire's. Found a washer to large to of been used for anything (who know's how it got there, I'm sure some one know's) stuck inside a receptacle box that must not of hit the hot side of the receptacle until we took a good role. What a pain.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

i got lucky a few times, but it's hard to explain when it seems to take too long. spent 4 ours helping friend with home construction job find that it wasn't any of his work. a bad breaker would sometimes trip for a small load, then hold for near max. just tried changing breaker out of frustration. voila.

i have run into problems that i just could not get, but the next day it was easy. Specialized testing equipment can make it easier.

with intermittants, the best time savers are the residents' memory. try to recreate the problem and define the field of possibilities. check easiest and most likely first. check most difficult last.

with very old wiring that has been partially upgraded, suspect overloaded neutrals, breakers, and assume that the field of possibilities is wider than obvious.

there were days truobleshooting that made me wonder why i thought i was an electrician.

goodluck, good hunting

paul
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

I once found a dead rat who could have used a GFCI! Poor Critter. He was inside a meter base. The bottom of the meter base feed out to a building that was no longer in use, the meter was still hot. There was a 2.5 inch PVC pipe open from the bottom. He must have wiggled homself up the pipe, and started to nest. Not for long. Lady called and said there was smoke coming out of her meter base and was scared her house was going to burn down. I noticed it smelled kinda good. Like chicken. opened it up and it was the rat. Actually I just made that part up, but it sounded good huh! :D ;)

[ February 25, 2005, 09:46 PM: Message edited by: aelectricalman ]
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

Had service call one day.New renter,had dead outlet in bathroom,rear outlet and one at a dressing table.Other bathroom and front receptacle worked fine.Only gfci to be found were the one in garage and one at master bath and of course 2 for kitchen ,none were tripped.After wasting better part of an hour and getting no place i called my boss and inquired about age of this home since it was in his neighborhood and almost identical to his house.Seems they had a second gfci circuit in garage that fed the other bath and rear outlet.Problem was to now find it.2 car Garage was packed solid with boxes from fllor to ceiling with just enough space to crawl thru to get to panel.Without his info no telling how long this would have took.Having found the first garage gfci i did not give thought to there being a second.Took about 15 minutes to get to the wall and there it was a tripped gfci.What would have been a 10 minute service call took 1 1/2 hours plus travel.Sometimes we get lucky and then sometimes you question your own ability.
I would say if after 2 hours your not hot on the trail its time to seek reinforcement from your other men.You will find it hard to charge for an 8 hour day let alone part of a week.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

One weird one I had was a call for dead receptacles in the master bedroom of a house that was just about to pass out of the 1 year warranty, at least that was the story. Our company didn't wire the house, I don't think, and we had been on the project more than a year. Peculiar.

Anyway, I start checking things out, find out the outlets had never worked for half the bedroom.

This house had passed through hot check, inspection, and over a year of occupancy before I came along and unburied a receptacle and got it going. Took about twenty minutes.

My friend said that the box containing a living room home run had gone undiscovered for over a year at an apartment we had wired. Those calls always baffle me. Some people just don't complain! It says a lot for the inspectors who actually plug into every outlet!
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

A friend called me and said he lost power to half the receptacles in his kitchen. He had lived in the home for about a year. It was a new home. Found one GFCI receptacle in the kitchen feeding the receptacles that were still working.
I could not find another GFCI recpeptacle for the dead recepatcles. It had gotten buried behind some floor to ceiling cabinets.
Had to cut a hole in the back of the cabinets to uncover the receptacle and reset the GFCI.
Total time spent was about 2 hours.
The ones I really hate are the splices buried behind sheetrock. When you see 2 yellow thhn wires coming out of the sheetrock without a box to a light fixture and the switch for the light has romex cable to it you know you've got big problems.

[ February 26, 2005, 10:04 AM: Message edited by: aline ]
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

Our inspectors do not check receptacles or lights for operation on finals.Good reason being we do not get electric to homes before we have a CO.It is up to the electrician to do a hot check.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

Speaking of hidden receptacles, Have any of you recomend a good tracer for regular residential wiring? what I mean is for regular 120v romex wire or bx behind sheetrock or wood panel.
 
Re: Troubleshooting Time allowed?

The worst recently was receptacles in a screen porch were not working. Because they were out, I could not trace which circuit fed them. I took them all apart on the porch and everything was wired fine, but no voltage. After a few hours of head scratching, I called a friend who has a wire tracer. Took about 10 minutes to locate broken hot wire inside drywall (cut the hole within inches of the problem). Picture this: the guy who installed the porch wanted to tap a piece of Romex for the receptacles. He must have had about 2 inches of slack, so he cuts it and splices it in an octagon box. Thing was a tight as a guitar string when I found it and the hots had arced and vaporized under the homeowners shop-vac load (they were barely touching under the wire-nut). I guess I should give the guy credit for having a box around his buried splice. Bought a wire tracer the next day.

Good diagnostic equipment helps a lot.

Mark
 
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