On becoming an electrician
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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When I worked in a big box store right after high school I would turn off hard wired light fixtures by putting on a glove and shorting a bulb socket out with a screwdriver so the GFCI breaker would trip. That way I only had to get on the lift and go to the ceiling once. Rarely ever felt any current.
ToeMissile
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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I worked for a commercial shop for about a year a bit out of HS. Was on a site doing demo work and had to drive a lift outside for pick up or something. Didn't drop it low enough and wasn't paying attention while going through a stndard double doorway, smacked my hard hard right on the frame as I passed through. Fortunately no physical damage but felt like a fuckin' moron for a while. No one must have seen it because I don't remember getting any shit from anyone about it.
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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There's a lot of good ways to get yourself dead.
I always hated driving ground rods. Those fuckers will sway and bounce all over the place if you're trying to hammer them in, especially if the ground is hard. The natural response is to try holding the rod steady with your off hand. Lots of people have caught their off hands between the hammer and rod as it bounces around and you lose your grip, and people would talk like "Yeah I knew one guy who hammered his hand right over the top of a rod, so the rod came up through his hand". Not sure I believe it necessarily but who knows.
People always tried finding a better way. I used to have a t-post driver for no other reason to drive ground rods. I once brought that driver too far up that I 'lost' the rod, the rod swayed to the side far enough that when I came back down I tore the end of a finger off along with the nail.
We had a guy put a big splined hammerdrill over the end of one to drive it in, and IIRC he fucked the splines up. Def need a sort of adapter if you're going to do that, and I also think he was hammer-drilling that fucking rod forever.
Then you think that if you drive grounds rods into the bottom of trenches while they're still open, that's a few feet less you have to drive in. But I've had some close calls trying that while standing on the edge of the trench and then losing my footing. I've heard of people falling on ground rods and getting impaled, and I can see how that shit happens. I also knew people who hated driving ground rods enough that they'd just do the wiring on the loose rods then chuck them all into trenches horizontally to get backfilled over. And I don't know if it's a code issue, it's probably mentioned somewhere in the NEC but I remember people claiming that it was a big red flag on not to ever do it.
Best way I ever found was to get an operator to bring an excavator over and just push the shit down while you hold the rod steady for about the first half. So much easier. Might cost you lunch or a case of beer though.
People used to cut a foot or two off a rod and then drive that short piece into the ground and toss the rest.
Gotta be real careful with lighting, especially if it is 277V. And even if it's GFCI protected, that'll only trip if you somehow send stray voltage off to ground somehow. Hot to neutral current will not trip a GFCI itself, so there's always a chance you could send current hand-to-hand from hot to neutral and it will never trip, but that shit passing through your torso will do some serious work.
I've also seen some truly shit electrical work that other people have done, especially with lighting. I've been nailed just touching the frame of a fixture.
I've mentioned it here before, but I worked with a dude 25yrs ago that got nailed working on a junction box (not on a fixture itself, but the junction for it) while way up on a scissor lift, and we have no idea how long he was up there energized and couldn't let go. Dude lived, but he lost most/all of his bladder control IIRC.
I always hated driving ground rods. Those fuckers will sway and bounce all over the place if you're trying to hammer them in, especially if the ground is hard. The natural response is to try holding the rod steady with your off hand. Lots of people have caught their off hands between the hammer and rod as it bounces around and you lose your grip, and people would talk like "Yeah I knew one guy who hammered his hand right over the top of a rod, so the rod came up through his hand". Not sure I believe it necessarily but who knows.
People always tried finding a better way. I used to have a t-post driver for no other reason to drive ground rods. I once brought that driver too far up that I 'lost' the rod, the rod swayed to the side far enough that when I came back down I tore the end of a finger off along with the nail.
We had a guy put a big splined hammerdrill over the end of one to drive it in, and IIRC he fucked the splines up. Def need a sort of adapter if you're going to do that, and I also think he was hammer-drilling that fucking rod forever.
Then you think that if you drive grounds rods into the bottom of trenches while they're still open, that's a few feet less you have to drive in. But I've had some close calls trying that while standing on the edge of the trench and then losing my footing. I've heard of people falling on ground rods and getting impaled, and I can see how that shit happens. I also knew people who hated driving ground rods enough that they'd just do the wiring on the loose rods then chuck them all into trenches horizontally to get backfilled over. And I don't know if it's a code issue, it's probably mentioned somewhere in the NEC but I remember people claiming that it was a big red flag on not to ever do it.
Best way I ever found was to get an operator to bring an excavator over and just push the shit down while you hold the rod steady for about the first half. So much easier. Might cost you lunch or a case of beer though.
People used to cut a foot or two off a rod and then drive that short piece into the ground and toss the rest.
Gotta be real careful with lighting, especially if it is 277V. And even if it's GFCI protected, that'll only trip if you somehow send stray voltage off to ground somehow. Hot to neutral current will not trip a GFCI itself, so there's always a chance you could send current hand-to-hand from hot to neutral and it will never trip, but that shit passing through your torso will do some serious work.
I've also seen some truly shit electrical work that other people have done, especially with lighting. I've been nailed just touching the frame of a fixture.
I've mentioned it here before, but I worked with a dude 25yrs ago that got nailed working on a junction box (not on a fixture itself, but the junction for it) while way up on a scissor lift, and we have no idea how long he was up there energized and couldn't let go. Dude lived, but he lost most/all of his bladder control IIRC.
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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The thing I hate the most is well pits. Usually when you go down there it's because something is broken and spraying water all over the place. Getting down in there standing in mud and messing with the electrical stuff scares me. Especially when it's wired by ranchers and in the older ones the well casing is in the pit so you have a fucking awesome ground that you might accidentally touch while you're messing with shit. I knew a guy who was electrocuted in a well pit and I've been shocked in one a few times and I just try to avoid going in them if the power is on but I can't always manage it.
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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I got to use a very large hammer drill with an adapter. Took about 10 minutes to drive the full length. Good old Texas clay.
Will be pulling old lighting down soon and putting in LEDs to replace. I think he said 3 cycle 277 volts...I have shocked myself on home voltage and it sucked...not looking forward to first time feeling this kind of output.
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Home power is 240V anyway because you usually have 2 legs pos and neg so to get 120V you take one hot leg and neutral to make your 120V circuits. If you are messing with the supply lines to the breaker box, you'd be exposed to 240V anyway since you could easily short across the 2 hot legs which are +120 and -120 so 240V difference.
I'm not an electrician but I've had just enough electricity-type cases to be an armchair "don't touch that" guy
ToeMissile
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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This is triggering some demo PTSD. I got sent to clear out a bunch of those standard 2'x4' ceiling fixtures which had already been removed, but were stacked up against the walls. Don't remember all the details ( maybe someone was supposed to help but bailed). I ended up hauling about 80 of those fuckers down 2 flights of stairs to stack into the truck and haul off. I just remember pretty much sweating through all my clothes and my legs being dead the next day.
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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Not working on homes.Home power is 240V anyway because you usually have 2 legs pos and neg so to get 120V you take one hot leg and neutral to make your 120V circuits. If you are messing with the supply lines to the breaker box, you'd be exposed to 240V anyway since you could easily short across the 2 hot legs which are +120 and -120 so 240V difference.
I'm not an electrician but I've had just enough electricity-type cases to be an armchair "don't touch that" guy
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Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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Sanrith Descartes
Veteran of a thousand threadban wars
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I have total respect for people working with voltage. I did low voltage stuff (Telco) and worked around transmission lines when working aloft on joint use poles.
The most juice our stuff carries was ringing current. The juice that would make your home phone ringer actually ring. Ringing: -48 Volts DC, plus 100 Volts RMS @ 20 Hz
It wouldn't kill you but it did bite. We used to train new techs not to ground themselves by kneeling down, and instead always squat so your boots were on the ground and not your knee. When we saw a new guy kneeling while working on a customer line we would grab our buttset and dial the number he was working on. Having his knees on the ground kneeling he would get bit by the ringing current.
Usually only took 3 or 4 times for new guys to figure it out.
The most juice our stuff carries was ringing current. The juice that would make your home phone ringer actually ring. Ringing: -48 Volts DC, plus 100 Volts RMS @ 20 Hz
It wouldn't kill you but it did bite. We used to train new techs not to ground themselves by kneeling down, and instead always squat so your boots were on the ground and not your knee. When we saw a new guy kneeling while working on a customer line we would grab our buttset and dial the number he was working on. Having his knees on the ground kneeling he would get bit by the ringing current.
Usually only took 3 or 4 times for new guys to figure it out.
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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3 phase, 277/480.
Home power is 240V anyway because you usually have 2 legs pos and neg so to get 120V you take one hot leg and neutral to make your 120V circuits. If you are messing with the supply lines to the breaker box, you'd be exposed to 240V anyway since you could easily short across the 2 hot legs which are +120 and -120 so 240V difference.
I'm not an electrician but I've had just enough electricity-type cases to be an armchair "don't touch that" guy
240v isn't really pos/neg per se, but I get what you're saying. It just changes direction at 60Hz. I just think of the legs as "Opposite ends of the transformer" so there's a push/pull dynamic going on, so to speak.
What I think sometimes confuses people with residential voltage is that it's a native 240v system and transformer, that we cheat using the center tap to get 120v from it as well. Sometimes people will call it 2-phase but it absolutely isn't.
You can do much the same with 277. That's just the single phase voltage. Phase to phase it's 480. But we're also talking RMS voltages, so in actuality the peak voltages are much higher. Like 120v is really 169 and change, though ONLY at the instant it reaches the peak voltage. Our residential 240v is weird because it's really 339v, peak to peak, because it's single phase and the waveforms are mirrored. 480v is really 678v phase to phase, etc. But we really never look at native voltage values, only RMS when talking about AC.
DC is a bit scarier to me. If you arc with DC, it's harder to extinguish the arc. There's absolutely no waveform...it's just a solid voltage and current.
Sorry for the derail
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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I have total respect for people working with voltage. I did low voltage stuff (Telco) and worked around transmission lines when working aloft on joint use poles.
The most juice our stuff carries was ringing current. The juice that would make your home phone ringer actually ring. Ringing: -48 Volts DC, plus 100 Volts RMS @ 20 Hz
It wouldn't kill you but it did bite. We used to train new techs not to ground themselves by kneeling down, and instead always squat so your boots were on the ground and not your knee. When we saw a new guy kneeling while working on a customer line we would grab our buttset and dial the number he was working on. Having his knees on the ground kneeling he would get bit by the ringing current.
Usually only took 3 or 4 times for new guys to figure it out.
I used to work on a lot of older homes back in the '90s.
We'd run new phone down to the basements on remodels, where there was never really a panel board per se, so also no phone box (I remember the old split cover grey plastic interface boxes or whatever the shit they were. Demarcs?). And definitely no 110 or 66, LOL. So anyways, I'd go find the old ceramic blocks with binding posts, often just mounted underneath a floor joist, strip my wires and start landing...and sure as shit I'd feel that BZZZZZZ at every bell interval. Then I'd hear someone laughing from somewhere around the corner, with their cell phone in their hand.
Cocksuckers, all of them.
Even after everyone was hip to it and it got old, people would still try it just to see if you were getting complacent.
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Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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JFC, somebody clean that fucking lift off!
LOL
Also, what is that flange to the right of the lift? That's not some sort of butterfly valve laying flat, is it?
If you're in TX that might kinda make sense. There's a metric fuckton of valves down there.
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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Yeah they make the corners and attachments for those massive pipes from 14 inch to what I am guessing is 2 feet. Spent all day installing LEDs next to the old ones 35 or so feet in the air. Fear of heights has me tensed up while working, I know I will get use to it but spent my day silently screaming every time I had to move and the fucker just sways like a tree in the breeze.
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Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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Took 3 weeks of 8 hours a day but fear of heights is all but gone, just a pucker moment when I hit a pot hole while extended and moving around. Today while extended one of
The workers runs into the scissor lift with the overhead crane, bent the fuck out of the runners that house the power cables. I was yelling for like 30 seconds before the fucker stopped and looked up. Going down would have ripped them clean out. Good times.
Hung a fuck ton of lights and finally turned them on today. Not a single one didn’t light up. Felt very satisfying, gonna enjoy this work.
The workers runs into the scissor lift with the overhead crane, bent the fuck out of the runners that house the power cables. I was yelling for like 30 seconds before the fucker stopped and looked up. Going down would have ripped them clean out. Good times.
Hung a fuck ton of lights and finally turned them on today. Not a single one didn’t light up. Felt very satisfying, gonna enjoy this work.
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Kobayashi
Vyemm Raider
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A long time ago, I designed some equipment that worked on around 400 VDC. When testing it, the only equipment available was an AC 480V load bank. Each individual bank was switched by a breaker I was pretty positive wouldn't be able to interrupt DC, so, I would shut down whenever I'd have to remove load and had someone watching the breaker so that on the odd chance one tripped so I could e-stop the system. The last test I had to do was a 0 to 100% load step - I didn't want to wire in a contactor, so, I tried flipping on all the breakers at the same time by hand. Well, my hand slipped before a couple of banks locked to the on position and they flipped back to off and they struck an arc - I could see/hear it. After an initial panic, I quickly flipped those back on. Definitely confirmed my suspicion. Some things are more convenient with DC, stopping it definitely isn't one of them.
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That's the part I missed the most moving from the field and into the office. You will ride by that place for the rest of your life and go ' I built that' and even if everyone else rolls their eyes you will feel that pride.
Congrats! Throwing the breaker and the lights coming on first time is very satisfying.
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