ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Costly Mistakes

well if you guys want to really know , i've fallen threw 2 ceilings.one at my brother-n-laws.told my sis that i thought he was going to kill me for it. when he got home from work.i was hanging there from the rafters.my sister had to come get me down. shoot i was scared to deah. but he was cool about it, & said not to worry about it. the second was in an old house i was rewiring. asked the owner where i should step, he said there should be ok.it wasn't! we both got a good laugh out of it later, but right then i belive we both wanted to run & hide.

Electure,
You have nothing on me mate.
I may have told this story before too.
I was working with an Apprentice Line-Mechanic one day looking to remove a "Suspect Pole" from down by the Ocean-front.
Anyhow I seem to remember this because we were driving down the Main Road and my charge was waving at all the pretty girls, from the Pole Truck.
I was in radio communication with the Crew down the road for Isolation purposes, from the basket of the EWP.
We cut all the wires away on the 400/230V side of the pole and had the 11kV side left, when all of a sudden the pole gave way and turned itself upside-down.
It seemed to dance over the fence of the nearby property, it smashed the glasshouse and the adjoined Chicken coop an the end of the pole smashed the Conservertory(sp?), on the front of the house.
Chickens were running everywhere!.
I got into a great deal of trouble over that, but it's nothing like my mates with the Pole Truck in the middle of the river.
As those that frequent the Chat rooms will attest.
Believe me guys, if you make a mistake, you aren't alone, we've always done something worse!.

Eons ago, as a young draughtsman, I joined an elite team working for HM. I felt out of my depth, surrounded by all these highly qualified people. Across the office was an immaculatly turned out 'go-getter', always seemed to be sneering at me, neatly groomed hair, too many teeth, confident, crisp shining white draffy's coat, ( why did mine always have ink and tea stains all over it? ), new Morris 1000 car, a right Mr. R. Slicker. Peeping up from my tiny drawing of a small bolt, I saw that he had a huge full-size model of the tail-section of a 'thing' on his desk, cast in amber epoxy resin, which he was self-importantly measuring with great bravura. This was to be painted in 'crackle paint', covered in strain-gauges and put in a press to get stress levels on the surfaces. Suddenly there was an almighty crash, and the $100,000 casting was 'flying'- but all over the office floor in bits! You could have heard a pin drop. And, Oh Joy! he'd taken the model out of the Chief Engineer's office without permission! Suddenly the Chief walked into the D.O. Told of the accident, he just shrugged and said "We'll have to make another one." $100,000, and not an eyelid was batted!- It was the Cold War, and budgets were infinite. At that time, I took home the equivalent of just $120.00 a month, with a wife and new baby at home.
Alan

There was that, but also most managers at such companies realize that such was an accident, and not an act of vandalism. Not like in high school chem lab, where a kid that accidently breaks a beaker gets reamed out over it. A good company knows that its people are more valuable than any specific piece of hardware.

Guilty as charged. Not only have I fallen through a sheetrock ceiling from working in the attic above, I actually did it twice! Fortuneatly, it was not on the same job.

I'm also guilty of drilling through a "new" hardwood floor one time while drilling holes for some hi-hats I was installing. I never told anyone that I did it, but the homeowner did find it a few weeks later. I denied doing it, but felt bad later on having to lie about it.

As a young journeyman I hooked a 480 to 120 volt transformer up backwards (trying to get coil voltage for a starter to pull in an industrial saw). Turned on the breaker and heard a loud humming sound from the Xformer for about3-4 seconds and then BLAM, sounded like someone touched off a hunting rifle. The nearly 2000 volts we created was too much for the xforemer to handle even just sitting there, glad we didn't push the START button, would have blown the starter off the face of the earth.

A smokey, smelly valuable(expensive that is) lesson!

First one isn't technically a mistake, but the outcome was...as a very young lad in rural Ohio, my best friend decided to try out his new rifle by shooting at those funny-looking cans on the poles...two shots and we were "rewarded" with the most evil sound heard by a kid and a nice bright explosion!! His father was "rewarded" by the local POCO with a repair bill of around $6,000 (This was around 1970)!! My friend was rewarded with a sore bottom that lasted for a week. I got heck too since my dad figured that since I knew about electricity I should have stopped my friend.

Mistakes on my part:

Damaged the busbars on my parent's Zinsco panel trying to seat the double pole breaker for the garage subpanel I installed. Put my best screwdriver on the terminal and smacked it with my hand, broke right through the side of the breaker. End result: Damaged breaker, vaporized screwdriver, one scared old man.

Miswired an old, obsolete cinema projector console, causing total meltdown of the factory wiring. Rewired it my way and no problems!! (The maker of that console was known for serious quslity problems anyway.)

Working for a local electrician, had a meter socket (resi) fail when pulling the meter for a service change. The blast blew the meter out of my hands and across the lawn. I was VERY lucky as I was NOT wearing any PPE (the sunglasses I had on don't count.) Since then, I have always worn at a minimum rated gloves and faceshield and non-synthetic shirts. I would also cut the drop whenever possible before pulling meters.

Dollar wise the most expensive for me was knocking a coated glass reflector for a xenon lamphouse off the shelf while holding the bulb for same. Mirror $850.00 Bulb $1,250 Embarrasment on dropping both, priceless!!

A collegue recently dropped a $45,000 video projector while struggling to attach it to a lift. Ouch.

Always be careful at "assuming" where the ceiling joist are in the attic. I was rewiring a paritally "demoed" house. Went up in the attic to pull some wires. It had insulation laying in between the joist. As I was on my hands and knees, I was moving pretty good until I put my hand where I thought there was a joist, because of the edge of insulation was there. Wrong. My hand went through the ceiling, and of course I was on my way down. Fortunetly? My jaw caught on the joist and saved me from going on through. Ouch! No real damage to the house since it was being remoldeld anyway, but shook me up a bit. Steve

Oh an interesting line here - mistakes ? can tell you a few ones that would well make yer eyes water.

When doing my time I helped out with a rewire at a factory - putting in a new distboard and connecting up some plant. Anyways usual saturday afternoon blast get it done and then out for the evening - only this time it was a blast literally. One of the guys doing it dropped an adjustable spanner unlucky for him if fell onto the busbars took out two phases. Now I jumped as the bang was like nothing I had heard before. Young sparkie not a lot of experiance. Anyways it took out the main fuses on two phases. What happened next ? Yep the back up generator started - mains fail detected and the genny breaker closed - spanner was well and truly wasted - The second bang wasnt as loud but well we all raced to try and shut the diesel down.... Dont think anyone would have heard it woith all the panting that was goin on.

I heard about a maintenance crew working on a genset someplace near vancouver - had just drained down the oil and were out getting a cup of coffee when they had a mains fail - that old engine started and run for a few minutes before it siezed up..... That must have been an expensive fix. Try explaining that one to your boss....

Oh and a could it get any worse story, A trucker out on I 40 gets a slow puncture - tyre heats up and starts to smoke. Pulls over in the rain parks under a bridge for shelter. Tries to call on the mobile to let boss know tyre is kaput and needs tyre repair cant get signal under bridge walks up shoulder to get signal on phone calls boss and tells him, during concersation turns to look at truck and sees tyre on fire - hes loaded up with HAZMAT so he aint going back for the fire extinguisher - starts to run back up the road to stop traffic, wet road gut running about waving arms ? Yep tailenders all over. Meanwhile truck has burst into flames and then the bridge collapses with the heat.

Id be suprised if he still had a job after all of this....

Rugged

Reposted

[This message has been edited by Theelectrikid (edited 08-18-2006).]