tubs and shower stalls

[Gunny]

And, yes, I do know the difference between voltage and current... I'm lazy and just say 277 and everyone knows what I'm referring to when you get bit by them. It's painful!

I think the biggest mishap I witnessed was again back in my apprentice days and we were building out the Comm Room down in the basement of a brand new Cancer Center at the Providence Hospital Campus in Anchorage.

Across the hall was the main demarc for the electrical, and the sparkies were in there doing their thing. I heard a Journeyman tell his apprentice to take his fish tape and put it in a conduit to see if it went a few rooms down, and the Journeyman walked down to the room and waited to see if the fish tape appeared.

It was a metal fish tape.

I could hear the apprentice working the fish tape, pushing it in. Suddenly there was a lightning bolt and a BOOM and the entire place was plunged into darkness. I had a miner's light on my hardhat, and turned it on so I could see. I ran out of our room to the Electrical room and the apprentice walked calmly out of his room toward my light. I asked him if he was okay, and he nodded.

His fish tape had gone in the conduit and come back into the same room on the other side behind him, and had laid itself across the main bus bars - 5,000 amps worth of 'lectrics!

Then all hell broke loose with foremen and the complex Superintendent along with his entourage of VIP visitors that had been on site taking a tour of the building. They quickly started investigating and we wisely stayed out of the circus & continued building out our comm room and listened in on the proceedings across the hall.

They quickly identified who had done it, questioned his Journeyman (because an apprentice is usually not responsible for doing stupid things because he's directly supervised by his licensed Journeyman) and he threw his apprentice under the bus. I heard him tell the General Foreman that he did NOT tell his apprentice to do that, or to use a metal fish tape. The Foreman told the apprentice to pack his tools and get the hell off his jobsite, and this meant his career was over - an apprentice getting himself fired means he'll be washed out of the program.

I was seething that the POS Journeyman would hang his apprentice out to dry like that and lie about what happened. The apprentice did exactly what he had been told to do by his boss. Sure, he should have known better but he followed orders and trusted that his Journeyman knew what he was doing.

I waited until the bigwigs had wandered away, then went to the General Foreman and told him what had actually happened. He went and found that Journeyman again and fired him, then recalled the apprentice who's career was suddenly back on track. He was grateful to still be alive and still have his career intact.

The Journeyman was blacklisted, with good reason, and I heard he eventually left AK about a year later to find work. No one wants a guy like that around the jobsite.

He should have been canned. Not even a question. Not so much for hanging his apprentice out to dry, but for being stupid. A metal fish tape in a conduit with live wires? Shooting yourself in the head is quicker. EVERY time I've seen an apprentice jacked up it's because the journeyman got lazy and didn't watch them. That was never a problem for me. I was so used to having troops with loaded weapons I was pre-trained to be paranoid. The transition from live weapons to live electricity is not hard to make.

[Gunny]

I've been electrified a few times! But that's because I'm no electrician, journeyman or anyone that should be within 50' of electricity. I fix computer equipment. While you guys talk about these live lines - try opening an older monitor and lay one of your fingers on one of the capacitors in those suckers. I had one nearly put me on the floor once. I guy that worked there, who was about 75 or so, laughed for like 10 minutes at me. My hair was on end and I was shaking, and that old bastard is lucky I didn't kill him! LOL I also accidentally touched the wires while thinking I could change a 3 button switch in my bathroom while it was live. Not only did I find out the hard way that it stings a little when your pinky finger touches those wires - but that was the end of the new switch as swell!

And speaking of drills, I just bought this 18v Dewalt about a week ago. There was a rep there that day in Home Depot from Milwaukee, who tried to sell me the superior equipment, but it was like double the price. Considering I will break it out like twice per year, I didn't see a point in paying the extra. But I did buy 2 extra sets of bits for it, and she came with a spare battery too! On sale for $99. Did I get robbed?

Don't screw with capacitors, Jim. I'm LMAO at you, but don't. I had to learn the math on that one. Oh, just 120v. That'll be okay. Capacitors build enough amps to start up your equipment and shit will kill you. You've heard of people dying from screwing around with their tv's while they were hot? That rule hasn't changed, and is the same thing NT and I have said more than once in this thread. It ain't the volts that'll get you, it's the amperage.

There's no real difference in quality between the Milwaukee and the DeWalt. They'd each like to make you think so, but it's like the difference between a Ford and a Chevy.

Oh, and just turn off the circuit. I hate doing stuff in houses. The romex rockets that wire houses are usually high as kites and don't give a shit, and don't leave enough wire for you to work with.

[Gunny]

Yeah, you gotta have a pair of Nines. 10-in-one, too.

And you forgot to mention your Snips and 88 tape!

My fellow 'Commies' like to call them scissors, which I will always automatically correct them about. Snips will cut scissors in half.

I broke my snips. Have to get some new ones. I crushed the handles. I'm only half-crippled in the legs, not the hands.

And yeah, calling them scissors is dumb. Cutting anything except what they are designed to cut is dumb too. I always use the straight cut, yellow handle ones. The green/red left cut/right cut are too much for me. More often than not, I'm going after studs with them.

[Gunny]

always flick off the breaker first Jim. you'll learn and get yourself a cheap volt meter. their easy to use and safer than your fingers. that's a nice drill and a good price to. most don't come with a spare battery. the Hitachi I posted was 97 bucks, my god some of em are up over 300 plus.

Different deal. Jim apparently thinks he's a construction worker. DeWalt's and Milwaukee's come with a second battery. They're useless to us otherwise. For around the house, it doesn't matter. You carry one around all day, and you've usually got one battery on the charger.

That IS a nice drill, but Jim having it kinda reminds me of the 9 years old with an UZI.

[namvet]

Different deal. Jim apparently thinks he's a construction worker. DeWalt's and Milwaukee's come with a second battery. They're useless to us otherwise. For around the house, it doesn't matter. You carry one around all day, and you've usually got one battery on the charger.

That IS a nice drill, but Jim having it kinda reminds me of the 9 years old with an UZI.

jim's also a great electrical conductor

hold on i gotta go stick my fingers in a wall socket. my sinus's are clogged

[Gunny]

jim's also a great electrical conductor

hold on i gotta go stick my fingers in a wall socket. my sinus's are clogged

[NightTrain]

jim's also a great electrical conductor

hold on i gotta go stick my fingers in a wall socket. my sinus's are clogged

Your comment about getting zapped clearing your sinuses made me LOL... I've never heard anyone say that before. Pretty odd side affect. One guy told me his vision got better after getting hit, but it only lasted a few days and he had to go back to wearing his glasses... which was pretty weird, too.

[Gunny]

Your comment about getting zapped clearing your sinuses made me LOL... I've never heard anyone say that before. Pretty odd side affect. One guy told me his vision got better after getting hit, but it only lasted a few days and he had to go back to wearing his glasses... which was pretty weird, too.

You get hit and it'll clear something alright. Jim was messing with amps. I'm surprised it didn't clear more than his sinuses.

[NightTrain]

You get hit and it'll clear something alright. Jim was messing with amps. I'm surprised it didn't clear more than his sinuses.

Yeah, most people don't know that it can take less than a third of an amp to kill you. That's not much!

[namvet]

Your comment about getting zapped clearing your sinuses made me LOL... I've never heard anyone say that before. Pretty odd side affect. One guy told me his vision got better after getting hit, but it only lasted a few days and he had to go back to wearing his glasses... which was pretty weird, too.

I have no idea why but its always cleared mine up.

[Gunny]

I have no idea why but its always cleared mine up.

Your body runs on electricity. It has a rhythm. You disrupt that with an outside source, it screws up that rhythm. For lack of better words, you lose your body's retentive capabilities even if it's a split second. The sinuses go first. I'm sure I don't have to explain what's next. Most people that get hit don't hold on long enough for the latter to happen. Which is a good thing. That's what makes 120v so dangerous. Ungrounded, you can stand and hold 120v in your hands and it just tickles. But it's disrupting your internal organs because it's overloading your natural electrical current. I'd rather get hit by 277/480 because it'll blow you off of it. The immediate damage may be more severe, but long term, it's not as bad as 120/208 which will jack up your heart.

Not a real problem for your average around the house guy. Y'all act like you've been shot when you get hit with 120v and run like cats. In my trade it's more a problem; especially with the young un's proving how tough and cool they are. "Look, I can hold this and it doesn't hurt". Morons is a good word. For all the joking around, it ain't a game. Turn it off. We don't always have that option, but it's a lot easier if you can.

On a side note and back to the humor part .... I shut down River Center Mall in San Antonio once. I was working 277 hot and my linesman's grounded against the grid, and the breaker was so old in the panel it didn't trip. So I tripped the main. You should have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth THEN. They're all crying because they have no power and all I'm thinking is I just blew up a good pair of pliers.

[NightTrain]

On a side note and back to the humor part .... I shut down River Center Mall in San Antonio once. I was working 277 hot and my linesman's grounded against the grid, and the breaker was so old in the panel it didn't trip. So I tripped the main. You should have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth THEN. They're all crying because they have no power and all I'm thinking is I just blew up a good pair of pliers.

Nice! I'm pretty fond of my Nines, too. They're insulated Klein, got a few small blow-holes in the wire cutter part where things didn't go as planned, but still functional.

My personal best on big screw ups was years ago when we re-cabled the AWACS hanger on Elemendorf AFB in Anchorage. We replaced all the old cable with new Cat6 and a 10-gig fiber backbone.

Part of the job was to wreck out all the old cabling that had been piling up in the ceilings since the '50s, and there was a shit-ton of it. We pretty much filled up a commercial sized construction dumpster with all that copper.

The two enlisted Air Force guys in charge of this project assured me that ALL old comm cables were to be removed. I verified it twice, with each of them. Yep, cut it all out.

So I was sitting on top of a 6 footer, with my coworker standing at the bottom taking cable from me as I cut and pulled the old stuff out. There was an old red Cat3 running almost out of reach up in that ceiling, and I leaned way out and cut it with my snips.

The fire alarm started shrieking and strobes were flashing. I glanced down at my partner and he was bellowing at me to hook it back up - but I could hardly hear him over the alarms. I scotch-locked them back together, but that didn't silence the fire alarm. Once that baby tripped, the Air Force fire department had to reset it from the main control panel.

There were full-bird Colonels running past us dragging their secretaries outside and utter pandemonium was everywhere I looked from the top of my ladder. The AWACS complex never got fire drills because that's where they had all their top-secret rooms, so a fire alarm meant it was the real deal.

After only a few minutes, the fire department guys showed up dressed in their Darth Vader suits wielding 6' fire axes. I went up to the lead one and told him I'd cut the fire alarm cable. He said it didn't matter, and to get my ass out of the building and onto the tarmac with the rest of them. He said they had to clear the building for themselves before shutting down that howling alarm system.

We went outside and they'd already pushed the AWACS aircraft out of the hangar to the middle of the runway, toward the F-22 area. I was sure I was going to be fired... this was a big deal.

The alarm stopped, finally, and I awaited my fate. An officer came up and questioned me, I told him what had happened and, amazingly, that was the end of it. I'd done what I was told to do, and the two enlisted guys that gave me the bogus info didn't even get an ass chewing, which was very surprising to me.

Fortunately, the foam fire suppressant hadn't triggered inside the hangar, if it had I was told it would have been 6' deep and like $30,000 to recharge the system.

When I'd seen Colonels sprinting past with their panicked secretaries in tow, I just knew it was the end of the world for me! Whew.

[Gunny]

Nice! I'm pretty fond of my Nines, too. They're insulated Klein, got a few small blow-holes in the wire cutter part where things didn't go as planned, but still functional.

My personal best on big screw ups was years ago when we re-cabled the AWACS hanger on Elemendorf AFB in Anchorage. We replaced all the old cable with new Cat6 and a 10-gig fiber backbone.

Part of the job was to wreck out all the old cabling that had been piling up in the ceilings since the '50s, and there was a shit-ton of it. We pretty much filled up a commercial sized construction dumpster with all that copper.

The two enlisted Air Force guys in charge of this project assured me that ALL old comm cables were to be removed. I verified it twice, with each of them. Yep, cut it all out.

So I was sitting on top of a 6 footer, with my coworker standing at the bottom taking cable from me as I cut and pulled the old stuff out. There was an old red Cat3 running almost out of reach up in that ceiling, and I leaned way out and cut it with my snips.

The fire alarm started shrieking and strobes were flashing. I glanced down at my partner and he was bellowing at me to hook it back up - but I could hardly hear him over the alarms. I scotch-locked them back together, but that didn't silence the fire alarm. Once that baby tripped, the Air Force fire department had to reset it from the main control panel.

There were full-bird Colonels running past us dragging their secretaries outside and utter pandemonium was everywhere I looked from the top of my ladder. The AWACS complex never got fire drills because that's where they had all their top-secret rooms, so a fire alarm meant it was the real deal.

After only a few minutes, the fire department guys showed up dressed in their Darth Vader suits wielding 6' fire axes. I went up to the lead one and told him I'd cut the fire alarm cable. He said it didn't matter, and to get my ass out of the building and onto the tarmac with the rest of them. He said they had to clear the building for themselves before shutting down that howling alarm system.

We went outside and they'd already pushed the AWACS aircraft out of the hangar to the middle of the runway, toward the F-22 area. I was sure I was going to be fired... this was a big deal.

The alarm stopped, finally, and I awaited my fate. An officer came up and questioned me, I told him what had happened and, amazingly, that was the end of it. I'd done what I was told to do, and the two enlisted guys that gave me the bogus info didn't even get an ass chewing, which was very surprising to me.

Fortunately, the foam fire suppressant hadn't triggered inside the hangar, if it had I was told it would have been 6' deep and like $30,000 to recharge the system.

When I'd seen Colonels sprinting past with their panicked secretaries in tow, I just knew it was the end of the world for me! Whew.

Dude, you NEVER cut the red wire. That's ALWAYS fire n smoke alarms.

You don't know who got their ass chewed. Praise in public, criticize in private. Unless he's a dumb boot LT, that officer's not going to chew anyone's ass in front of you. And he ain't going to be looking for airmen. They're following orders. He's going to look for their boss. Nor is he going to yell at you. The airmen were relaying orders they were told and you were doing what you were told. Sounds like a good officer. Rare.

Back to laughing at you ... red wire running free in a ceiling or wall is ALWAYS fire alarm. Do YOU have red cable? No. I have red wire but it's always in conduit. Let me guess ... 2 pair (redundant, I know) 18 gauge, sheathed. I would have been teasing your ass for the rest of the year at least.
s a

[namvet]

Your body runs on electricity. It has a rhythm. You disrupt that with an outside source, it screws up that rhythm. For lack of better words, you lose your body's retentive capabilities even if it's a split second. The sinuses go first. I'm sure I don't have to explain what's next. Most people that get hit don't hold on long enough for the latter to happen. Which is a good thing. That's what makes 120v so dangerous. Ungrounded, you can stand and hold 120v in your hands and it just tickles. But it's disrupting your internal organs because it's overloading your natural electrical current. I'd rather get hit by 277/480 because it'll blow you off of it. The immediate damage may be more severe, but long term, it's not as bad as 120/208 which will jack up your heart.

Not a real problem for your average around the house guy. Y'all act like you've been shot when you get hit with 120v and run like cats. In my trade it's more a problem; especially with the young un's proving how tough and cool they are. "Look, I can hold this and it doesn't hurt". Morons is a good word. For all the joking around, it ain't a game. Turn it off. We don't always have that option, but it's a lot easier if you can.

On a side note and back to the humor part .... I shut down River Center Mall in San Antonio once. I was working 277 hot and my linesman's grounded against the grid, and the breaker was so old in the panel it didn't trip. So I tripped the main. You should have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth THEN. They're all crying because they have no power and all I'm thinking is I just blew up a good pair of pliers.

thank you DR Gunny ill take that under advisement

there was only one time i got my ass kicked and i mean hard. oddly enough it was a medical test called a neuropathy test. to check nerve reactions. its really electrocution. a few years back i had numbness on the bottom of both feet. not bad. no pain. more of nuisance than anything. so mr doc there set me up for this test. they were mild shocks to began with but more intense as he went up from the ankles. when he got above my knee's he was laying the wood to my ass. much more powerful shocks, laid me out stiff as a board. when it was done he said negative no problems found. when i walked out of that room i didn't feel good at all and both legs painful as hell. hope to god i don't go thru that again ZAP !!!

[Gunny]

thank you DR Gunny ill take that under advisement

there was only one time i got my ass kicked and i mean hard. oddly enough it was a medical test called a neuropathy test. to check nerve reactions. its really electrocution. a few years back i had numbness on the bottom of both feet. not bad. no pain. more of nuisance than anything. so mr doc there set me up for this test. they were mild shocks to began with but more intense as he went up from the ankles. when he got above my knee's he was laying the wood to my ass. much more powerful shocks, laid me out stiff as a board. when it was done he said negative no problems found. when i walked out of that room i didn't feel good at all and both legs painful as hell. hope to god i don't go thru that again ZAP !!!

God help the world if I ever become President or a doctor.