Embarressing mistakes

[scotsparky]

We have all made them! little brain F**ts that come back to haunt us so please so we all learn from others..

I personally was thanked by a council after i had a blonde moment and run in 16mm as a main bond in a house and was terminating as there head man walkinin to see how i was doing. OOps no harm done though

 

[Spudnik]

I got given a loose roll of earth cable a little while ago.

Did a job and thought hmmm i got that loose 10mm in the garage, ill use that up.

Only later did i realise that in fact, it was 16mm.

I wondered why i struggled with it.

 

[Sparky-Tom]

My most embaressing mistake was when I first started up my current job, I was halfway through my apprenticeship and asked to connect some 3 phase 95mm tails into a panel for a new compressor system in the plant room. So as i was doing the connections, I made a mental note to make sure that I removed all debris out of the panel. I finished the job, cleared my mess, had one last visual inspection, then gave the go-ahead for the power up. BANG! A massive flash and a load of sparks!

When I re-checked my work, I noticed that there was a washer left behind the two contacts on the panels main incomer. (I had missed this due to that part of the panel being dark)

I have never felt so embarressed in all my life! But I learnt from the experiance!

 

[Wotsit]

When i was an apprentice I installed a skin fitting for a depth transducer into the hull of a 40’ yacht. The boat was put back into the water that evening, and sank overnight up to the level of the deck. Luckily the marina staff spotted it and managed to tow it over to the crane and get it back out of the water before it was gone forever! The boss was not that pleased the next day.

Somebody else i worked with was swinging the arrestor hook pin from a tornado GR4 by its warning flag (the arrestor hook pin is a steel pin about 750g 8” long and 30mm dia) when it slipped out of his hand and into the engine intake. It came out the other end of the engine in blobs and bits along with most of the compressor blades from a Rolls Royce RB199 engine, totally destroying it.

Another chap i worked with a rather old and slow maintenance engineer, was on a breakdown of a printing press. He was a bit confused if the dryer was working or not working, so he removed the unit and set it up over two blocks. Asking the printer to turn the unit on, he then ran round with his feet on fire shouting for the unit to be turned off.

 

[desertbootz]

Installing a +ve Earth CU into a -ve Earth PV system. Wouldn't have been so bad as each PV was seperately isolated with a Main Switch but who bothers doing the seperates... good as blew the CU of the wall (very impressive light and noise) and trashed 2 or 3kW of PV's. How I laughed as I wondered where I was supposed to get the spares stuck 3 miles off Eastbourne and hide my stupidity.

 

[scotsparky]

My biggest bang was when i was trying to fix a comertcial dishwasher with no intructions. Worked through ll circuit carefully and found the 16KW 3 phase heating ellement was broken so replaced it.
No problems switch it on and it will work. It was only after the ellement went past me,head chef,My Foreman and manager did we realise that the tank which the element is in only fills after a 10 minute run of the machine and not to switch the element on till after its all been run.oops. I got away with it as they had been watching what i had been doing and new it wasnt my fault but still an immpressive bang as cold water hit a 16Kw red hot element.