Your best service call ever

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When I was doing residential service had a call a woman tha had lived in a house 18 years and this one outlet was dead from day one. Her daughter had finally gone off to college and she turned the bedroom into an office. I fliped the light switch on she almost had a heat attack, then started laughing.

The top half was switched they never tried the bottom, the one in her son's bedroom was behind the bed and never used. I asked her if she ever wondered what the switch was for and she said they never noticed the switch.
 
Dont know if this counts as a service call but I was teaching an onsite substation operation and maintenence course to a steel mill in AZ, pretty complex system as most steel mills are. Our class was on day 4 I think and we had gone through the one lines and done some switching practicals earlier that day when sure enough, the whole plant goes dark. I was excited, I say "OK class, go fix it."

So my 8 students and I go down to the 13.8kV sub, and there is the engineer and electrical maintenence manager, trying to figure out the complex kirk key system for thier sparing sub and didnt know what to do, my class jumps in there and in 2 minutes has the whole plant back up, the EE and MM were stunned, they asked the guys how they knew how to do that, they all turned around at pointed at me. That was a fun day. Needless to say I was back many times training that plant and all other North American Operations for many years to come.
 
zog said:
Dont know if this counts as a service call but I was teaching an onsite substation operation and maintenence course to a steel mill in AZ, pretty complex system as most steel mills are. Our class was on day 4 I think and we had gone through the one lines and done some switching practicals earlier that day when sure enough, the whole plant goes dark. I was excited, I say "OK class, go fix it."

So my 8 students and I go down to the 13.8kV sub, and there is the engineer and electrical maintenence manager, trying to figure out the complex kirk key system for thier sparing sub and didnt know what to do, my class jumps in there and in 2 minutes has the whole plant back up, the EE and MM were stunned, they asked the guys how they knew how to do that, they all turned around at pointed at me. That was a fun day. Needless to say I was back many times training that plant and all other North American Operations for many years to come.
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what caused the outage?
 
Wired a new house for a doctor . We installed an auto start emergency generator and connected to a sub panel with selected circuits. I got a call from the doctor stating that the generator was running and he couldn't get it to stop. Went to check and found that he turned the main off . He was trying to do some electrical work and wanted to turn the power off. Doing so the generator started. All I had to do was reset the 200 amp main. The doctor stressed physical fitness but didn't have enought strength to reset the main.
 
brian john said:
When I was doing residential service had a call a woman tha had lived in a house 18 years and this one outlet was dead from day one. Her daughter had finally gone off to college and she turned the bedroom into an office. I fliped the light switch on she almost had a heat attack, then started laughing.
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I had a similar one. Service call to fix a few things in this gals house and add a switch for their natural gas fireplace. Oddly, there was already a switch on the wall right next to it. "Hmm, I wonder what this does"..... flipped the switch, 3 seconds later the flames wick up and there is a fire.:confused:

Made me wonder if they had even tried the switch?? She wasn't happy to admit she had lived there for 1.5 years and never knew that...
 
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I got a 300$ tip the other day that has to be up there on my list. People just love when you explain how thier new plasmas work and that you did a really anal neat precise job before you even cut your first hole in the wall.
 
This was on a commercial dishwasher I serviced a couple of times from another thread:




Oh, this is good. I searched high and low for the switch for the door latch circuit, NO LUCK. Could of made one work, but I don't jerry rig anything. I wanted an exact replacement. The heater element had to be replaced also, 'cause I cracked it trying to replace the wiring.
Apparently, I took too long, so the club called an "authorized" dealer who sent the "authorized" technician. That switch is no longer made, (25 years old), so he made do. He cut the switch in half, (not servicable), dremelled out the arc, and epoxied the switch back together, and didn't replace the heating element. I asked if they got a warranty for that service, they replied,..."What for?" The tech also told them to cut the circuit breaker off when the dishwasher was not in use, 'cause the switch may weld itself shut upon any arc from closing. That's real assuring. Won't take another call for that thing. Nope, someone rigs something in that matter, it's now their liability.
 
1. Have fixed dozens of bathroom and outside receptacles by finding the upstream GFCI receptacle and resetting it.

2. Went to a house that had suffered a burst pipe in the basement ceiling. After the flood was cleaned up, half of the basement lights weren't working any more. I had a pen tester but not a multimeter; so since there was a voltage potential difference in the switch legs and jumpers, I thought there had to be a dropped neutral somewhere. After 90 minutes of tracing wires and checking joints in j-boxes, I discovered that all 6 flood lamps on that switch leg had burned out, and the circuit was just fine.

3. Went to a buddy's house; he had just moved in to his fiancee's house. The master bedroom had one light that was switched from the doorway, like always, but there were two cans over the bed that were switched from the bedside; only one worked. He said he had changed the bulb but it still didn't come on. When we moved the big four-poster bed to set up the ladder, we discovered another switch behind the bedpost that controlled that last can light. Problem solved.
 
Many years ago I went to assist someone on a service call to restore power to some fluorescent lighting in a kitchen. Found and replaced a bad three-way and then customer wanted us to look at her fridge, as it was collecting water in the bottom. So we told her we could look for anything obvious. Turned out that the tiny drain at the bottom was clogged and had begun to back up. The guy I was helping asked her if she had a q-tip. She went into the other room and returned with a used q-tip. Unused cotton swabs are white and this one definitely had some other shades in there as well as some kind of residue. He took it from her and cleared the drain. At this point we were trying not to crack up and when he finished with the fridge i said to him, "whatever else she wants done, please don't ask her for any toilet paper."
 
When I was still contracting we had an old customer that purchased a new home where a number of the receptacles were not working. When I opened the outlets in question there were no wires. I told them they needed a lawyer not an electrican. They sued the builder.
 
I did hear about an EC who was behind in his work and took an offer from a few guys to trim out a house over the weekend. Deal was they were to be paid cash Monday morning. True to there word all switches,receptacles,ligght fixtures,etc were installed and they got the money promised. After power was turned on the EC did hot check. Nothing worked. He found out quickly why. They never hooked the first wire to anything. That's what he deserved for hiring men under the table.
 
When I opened the outlets in question there were no wires.
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I remember a story about a fire sprinkler company that was just installing heads with no piping.

When I was 19, I was installing lawn sprinklers. There was a rush on a job so the builders could get their final draw. I remember a bunch of suits from the bank walking around while we stuck a bunch of sprinkler heads into the ground with no pipes.
 
Call - "Please help! My light doesn't work" or "my bulbs keep blowing"
Problem - Screwshell tab not making contact.

Another:
A childhood friend moved in to my new neighborhood right accross the street. One night she comes over to my house practically in a panic.... "my stove is ticking, I'm not sure if it's leaking gas but I'm afraid to touch it"

I go over and find one of her daughters wind-up toys in a basket next to the stove.

Kinda like the bedroom call, just a little more family oriented.
 
My favorite one was years ago and I was there for different reasons but I heard the chirp sound of a bad battery in the smoke detector. I told the HO and she said no it was crickets. I told her I was sure it was the battery in the SD again and she again said it was crickets. Apparently she had pest control company come out three times to kill the "crickets". I changed the battery and boy was she mad and embarrassed.
 
Went to this little outlet mall where none of there poles and a bunch of other things weren't working. Found out that they saw cut several sections of sidewalk all over the mall to replace them the day before. One of the sections pulled up a whole mess (don't remember exactly how many but it was quite a few) 3/4" and 1" PVC's that were cut by the saw. Somehow when they put them in they were in the ground, floated up in the concrete for a few feet then back into the ground. Also for some crazy reason, the rebar was LIVE! Found that one out the hard way. The panel supplying most of them was really a mess. Most of it wasn't labeled. What was labeled was mostly wrong, and I found joints in it with wires that went maybe 5 feet down the pipe to nowhere.
A "service call" turned into a couple of days of "fun".
 
cycotcskir said:
Call - "Please help! My light doesn't work" or "my bulbs keep blowing"
Problem - Screwshell tab not making contact.

Another:
A childhood friend moved in to my new neighborhood right accross the street. One night she comes over to my house practically in a panic.... "my stove is ticking, I'm not sure if it's leaking gas but I'm afraid to touch it"

I go over and find one of her daughters wind-up toys in a basket next to the stove.

Kinda like the bedroom call, just a little more family oriented.
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Sounds like she may have used that as an excuse to get you over to her house for a different reason. :)
 
steelersman said:
Sounds like she may have used that as an excuse to get you over to her house for a different reason. :)
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Maybe. I've been accused of being a little dense when it comes to women flirting with me. I usually opt towards, "prob'ly not" rather than "How you doin'"
 
Three day weekend and security at the plant I worked at called and said that the lights wouldn't come on in a certin area. I asked if they called the electrician that lived right down the street and they said they had but he wasn't home.

I said well I'm getting ready to leave on vacation, but I have to drive right by there so I'll stop in. Get to the plant, tell the family to wait in the car, walk in and can smell it, walk over to the contactor panel and see that it's fried, go over turn off the breaker, said see you on Tuesday.

10 minutes worth of work, automatic 4 hours because it's a call back. Nice way to start a long weekend
 
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