eLeCtRiC sHoCk!!!!

Dave_ · Jan 21, 2011

Well.

Im very new to this forum. (7th post..)

Been on the books for 6 years, qualified 2007, 2391-10 passed 2009 (june exam - 2nd attempt! Doh!) Achieved a merit grade in 2391-20 Design, Erection & Verification in june 2010.... quite chuffed that i have got both parts... but with six years experience i am greener than the New Forest... I have so much to learn.... i have a very deep respect for time served electricians - after all, my knowledge is from them......

I guess your wandering what the *** is this guy babbling on about? well.......

After seeing the thread regarding ' tell us about your faults' i started thinking.....

and im curious to know what mistakes we ourselves, competent sparks have made during our prosperous careers.....? The reason i list my qualifications is to prove there is something between my ears (alongside the fluff, lewd thoughts and odd electrical impulse ;-)

I mean, we are all human. from what i have seen there a lot of 'have a go' DIY peeps that shouldnt be let loose with a bus pass let alone a screwdriver, possibly some bad sparks etc.... but come on guys what have you done? 'momma? am i bad??'

Ill never forget when i was on site (after a few weeks on the tools) and my new friend derek told me: were human, we make mistakes. one time in your career you will make a stupid mistake like cross the polarity on a socket outlet. I listened. did it a week later. (my only chance, *** i cant do it again!)

I have read some cracking stuff on here, JURASSIC SPARKS - GREAT STUFF!! But these are other mens mistakes.....

The Best i know about was when a BT engineer broke a fibre link in a very critical data centre and a very well known bank lost all its ATM's for one hour on a saturday morning to the tune of around ten million pounds. oh bugger.

I cant cap that.... doubt you guys can either ;-)

My silliest mistake was just that. silly. not thinking. I used to work in a posh girls school - a maintenance job basically. I was in the sports centre repairing some light fittings.... In the gents changing rooms (staff luckily) changing a 6ft tube in a VP fitting. I removed the old lamp and then when i put the new lamp in i was at the top of the steps, stood on top literally (8 tread) at full stretch, WITH MY PINKIES ON EITHER ENDS OF THE CATHODES, fitting energised.....

i wont tell you what happened next.... they says its just history... but i'm still here.... i gained 'experience' from that.....

well come on lads, spill the beans.........!

Im new - if this is something that is generally not spoken about then just delete this post, give me a nudge and ill gain more 'experience'

Dave

Lucas · Jan 21, 2011

Never had a buzz that was pure stupidity but I've had my fair share.

I've done some right stupid thing's in the past though. I wired up some socket's and only after I went back to second fix it I realised I had wired them up in 3core

After a few minuite's of cursing and sulking I rewired them and it was all sorted.

My Boss was working with someone once who went across both phases (L2 and L3) with his screwdriver and blew a 400A main fuse! Melted his screwdriver and some of the office's were owned by the Gaurdian newspaper and he had to pay compensation.

simpson93 · Jan 21, 2011

worst thing ive done was probably the 1st time i was coreing alone didnt know exactly how the drill worked it sumehow went on autopilot and started drilling without me pressing anything the drill julted i let go and the drill was fyling around stuck in the hole.......so me being very clever wacked my hand in and turned it off bruising up my hand a lil bit.... needless to say it put me off coreing for a while.

pauljpickering8 · Jan 21, 2011

First week my company was pulling Cat5e's in, my boss showed me how to label up the cables correctly...Right he said go and set 16 boxes up, later...right weve pulled them in now so go and label them off like i showed you and cut them off...labelled them all and cut them off on the wrong side so had all the boxes labelled up 1-16 but none of the 16 cables had numbers on. Still laugh about it now.

Dave_ · Jan 21, 2011

our apprentice (now qualified, not sure how) meggered himself during his AM2 in front of the examiner what a tool.... they still passed him though and the examiner laughed... i would have failed him.... i used to tell him that the voltage drop in a circuit increases when the cables is run vertically.....he didnt question it....

Concept · Jan 21, 2011

Dave_ said:
i used to tell him that the voltage drop in a circuit increases when the cables is run vertically.....he didnt question it....

Haha legend!

I too have made some pretty stupid mistakes in the past usually in a rush and overlooking something.

when I was an apprentice very early on I wired a massive 3 phase dis board up un suppervised only to be told at the end of the day that I couldnt bring 415v into any room at the same time which meant a hell of alot of rewiring...doh

first day on another job I forgot to take a link out after dead testing a board but for some reason dont ask me why I put the link to the top of the isolator on the same side as the meter tails went to put the main fuse in and blew myself up... literally

more recently a couple of months ago was doing a job at my mums she has a B&B and the previous owners had a 20a blue plug fitted outside to power a caravan, she wanted it changing to a normal outside socket so in a rush I turned off the whole fusebox went to cut the wire and blew my snips to bits, turned out there was a second smaller consumer unit hidden behinf
d a shelf above the meter in the cellar which fed this cable... oops oh and didnt blow the fuse wire either.

keith915 · Jan 21, 2011

Most stupid thing for me was when I was doing a PIR, testing R1+R2's. I linked out the busbar to earth bar, forgot which lights were on which circuit....... Never seen so many STARS !! "Er, boss. could I get an 100A fuse please !"

One thing i'll never forget was being given a core drill and told to do a 4" fan. Having been an apprentice only 3 months I was a wee bit apprehensive but gave it a go. After drilling a pilot, I offered up the core drill and start going for it flat out! Got a 1/3 of the way through and BAM! The 4" cutter had snagged, the drill span round and smacked me right in the jaw, knocking me right out of the bath with a bloodied mouth for good measure !

Knobhead · Jan 22, 2011

I must be one of the very few people that can claim to have walked away from a 15KV shock. It ******* hurt. All down to a DB being labelled incorrectly!

SimpleSimon · Jan 22, 2011

Held live tails in my hand while the gaffer was sorting something out next to me. Next thing he asks me a question and I turn my head and drop my arms in lack of concentration........BANG!! learned to never turn away again in those sorta situations.

mickytuff · Jan 22, 2011

To add to this post.............i was in my early days as a tester, testing a newbuild apartment (sorry i mean a flat ha ha), and all was good so i thought, i'd left the property all tested and energised, i got a nudge off the siteagent that the shower was tripping the rcd.....so i returned and retested the wiring and all was perfectly fine, the rcd was fine too, so what was it i thought, must be a faulty shower unit, so a new unit was fitted, and guess what this ******* started to trip exactly the same, i was totally stumped as to what it was.................., i rung my testing supervisor who attended, he disconnected all the neutrals on the relevant bar and just connected the shower circuit, powered up and working fine!!!!!!!!, why was this i thought, well as he one by one connected each neutral back in (isolating before doing so) the culprit was found, a duff leg on the ringmain had a dead short neutral to earth. Only when the shower was switched on (i.e a strong load across the rcd) would it trip. A carpenter was fitting skirting board and had gone through the cable. What a relief to know the cause.....and how to find it!!!!, a learning curve i shall never forget..........hope you like folks.

Dave_ · Jan 22, 2011

CMB SAYS

The only way I would get an electric shock now though is if I was working with idiots. Thats honest.

Still not with you on this....

I remember years ago in tech one of my teachers telling a story regarding a call out to a pub. Cant quite remember exactly why but it involved isolating a circuit in an old wylex board with BS3036 fuses. When he gripped the fuse top and bottom he got a horrendous belt and threw the fuse across the room. Turned out it had been sabotaged in a manner so live fuse wire was protruding top and bottom of fuse carrier hence the shock.

He later found out that the landlord had been screwing around and the shock was intended for him, no doubt setup by said womans husband/boyfriend. Turns out the landlord decided to call in a spark and not try to fix the problem himself... and unknowingly for both men, good old sparkie paid the price. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the moral of the story being that nobody is immune to receiving a shock, whether your working with idiots or not, its the nature of the beast, you play with fire you will get burned... we play with fire day in day out, year in year out for maybe up to 50 years....

Also i bet im not the only one who has been in a situation where your on a large industrial site, up on a boom in the roof space sweating like a gipsy with a mortgage covered in cack with your arm gingerly feeling around in a large section of galv trunking say 200mm x 200mm (probably a corner) removing singles.... you know with your hand and half your arm surrounded by a zillion live singles, some with the odd snag or nicked insulation that has been waiting for a victim since being drawn in maybe thirty years ago....I've had a nice belt doing this

not surprising really, nothing i can do about it, its the nature of my job - dangerous.....

A mate recently was live testing inside a large panel. He had the door open and was testing some motor control equipment. He is very sensible, a good spark who rarely makes a mistake. A gust of wind blew the door shut and a pair (L&N) of large live studs (for an analog ammeter mounted on the panel door that were on the inside obviously) touched his sweaty bald swede. It didnt knock him out or worse, he just told me he saw a very white light and was really knocked for six, but ok pretty quick - bloody lucky right?

**** HAPPENS

johnboy6083 · Jan 22, 2011

i made a stupid mistake the other day. we were pulling in cables to valve pit on a water board job. I was pulling in a 5pair SWA through the instrument duct, which already had fibres and 1pr cables in situ. i tied the cable on, bit did not tape up the end of the 5pair first, or taper the end to ease snagging. We pulled it in, and a ripped part of a 1pr followed it into the pit. Luckily for us, the cable had failed in 2007, and was non esential. if it was essential and was intact before, then it would have meant a shutdown of the borehole, which i am told is very very expensive.
As for the rest of us, NEVER EVER rely on somebody else to confirm dead or not. ALWAYS test yourself.

BillyTheSparks · Jan 23, 2011

No worries Bud, I was just curious.

I'm not bragging about what are mainly stupid mistakes. I thought I'd share some of my work-life stories with everyone. I hope that people find them as funny as I do now.

SMB said:
The only way I would get an electric shock now though is if I was working with idiots

The only idiot i work with is myself.....!!!

dhh · Feb 9, 2011

Had my first shock yesterday after 8 years in the job. unplugged an emergeny light fitting and it went into emergency mode, climbed down my steps and then climbed back up only to have 240v running through 1 arm to the other holding onto pipework/ceiling grid. dropped down the steps not knowing how it had happend. Investigation revealed some twit had taken a switch wire and earth ( neutral cut out) from another fitting so the emergency fitting had a s/w aswell as the permanent feed and neutral and earth it already had. so when i unplugged the emergency i had taken away the neutral so it still had a switch feed from another fitting which was lashed across in a flex which wasnt obvious. therefore neutral at the plug was live. so 2 faults, wired unsafe with the roaming switch feed and not bothering to connect the extra neutral! bloody hurt 2!

grantr37 · Feb 9, 2011

BANG !!! aaahh aaahhh....eeee...eeehhheeheee...whatyougo touch that for .....AAA Pity Da Fool ........*the painters lamp went off so he switched it back on again* \w/