OK, picture this:

You are a window gate manufacturer hired to put bars on the windows of a storefront.

You've finished welding together the gate at your shop and have arrived at the jobsite to mount the gates.

First your helper drills eight holes around the perimeter of the window opening in the poured-concrete walls and drives short pieces of metal bar as anchors (how Latin American is this? ).

Both of you will finally weld the entire gate to these stumps of bar using a portable electric welder.

Question is....how and where do you hook up your electric welder?

The store owner will not allow you to clip the welder's jumper-clamps to his brand-new panel's bus bars (for obvious reasons)....

What do you do?

Torch

Sven: Unfortunately, the only things I can think of involve cost outlay; 1) try to arrnage a temp service hookup in a neighboring business (probably not very likely if the client himself is not willing), or 2) rent or trade services for someone with a portable gas-powered welding outfit.

Hopefully someone else here will have a better solution. Good luck!

Mike (mamills)

Fire up the generator on the welding truck.
Scott

[This message has been edited by Scotts (edited 04-09-2003).]

He's doing site work with a wired welder????

Tell 'em to go down to the rental store and get him a welder/generator. They're reasonably cheap by the day.

TW

They sell mig welders that will run all day long on 120 volts. On the other hand, someone that does this type of work ought to have a gas powered welder or a generator.

My neighbor is a welder. He has a Generator on his truck. (And Tanks/Torches) They have long cables to reach where needed.

Bill

There are portable wire-feed welders that will run on 120V service at 20A. Even the tiny ones will weld at 90A, enough to stick some steel rod together unless it's 2" rod.

I would agree with Trainwire and the rest who have said


That would be like me going to a job without my Pliers and screwdriver. A welder should be able to weld with out assistance don't you think?

Any contractor doing this kind of short term jobs at various sites should have a welder/generator.

On long term jobs we will usually wire in welders for the mechanical contractors but they still have a welder/generator outside on the truck or trailer.

Around here more trades are bring there own power, A demo contractor we work with has a large generator to run a "Brock" (remote operated jack hammer, backhoe)

At the Job I am at now the cement cutting contractor brought a large unit to power the hydraulic pumps that run his saws.

They probably got tired of the high bills to hook these up temp, 100 Amps 480 Volt 3P.


[This message has been edited by iwire (edited 04-11-2003).]

bring some spare breakers with you and "plug in"

Thanks to all of you who replied.
The scenario I illustrated was partly based on truth.

The guy who used to go to sites with his portable welders - with the two strands of THHN with hooks at the ends was a guy I knew in Colombia who was renting a house from my grandmom and he set up his dirty shop in the house (cracked the courtyard concrete slab too).

The big welders in the shop were connected by #12 THHN hooked over nails on a
wooden pattress. The nails were connected to terminals on a knife switch.

In order to activate the welder you would move the red wire (with badly scraped insulation) from a non-connected hook to one of the live terminals on the switch.

This guy was such a tightwad that he used a home-made #18 zip-cord extension to run his spray paint gun compressor.

It was spliced numerous times with masking tape - I guess every time that poor little cord snapped or popped because of the heavy use!! The rubber cord caps were also pretty worn out. Scary....

I have never been to Columbia, but if it is anything like some of the wiring that I have seen in Mexico, "Look Out"! Maybe the Columbians taught the Mexicans, or vice versa.
But you know what they say, when in _______ , do as the ______ do.(fill in the blanks)

Hehehehe..yeah, no kidding. But not when it comes to electricity as far as I'm concerned!!

Don,

Some of it is downright scary... exactly just like those pictures we've seen and worse.

Some of it looks 'proper' at least at first glance though and the problem is not the original installers' fault but fellow 'civilians' who hack up the existing system to do mods - like adding more outlets to a room.

I've seen street vendors in downtown Cali "steal" electricty by running zip cord from a building through a groove in the sidewalk (cemented over) into the gutter, down the street and to their stall.

And you see the taped splices in spots where the wire has broken....all this to run their stupid little laminating machine or juice machine. Come closing time they just unplug their whatever from the rubber female cap poking out of the pavement and tuck the connector into a little hole so it doesn't get stepped on.

Colombia has a code (modified version of the NEC), but almost nobody follows it or cares. Old houses are sometimes wired up by residents or handymen who tend to do the job as cheaply as possible - stapling zip cord to the walls and using obsolete surface mount devices.

That's what this guy had done to my grandmother's house which dates to 1949 and according to her had standard in-wall wiring before this guy messed it up. Ahhh the bauties of being an absentee owner.

Somewhere in the NEC section I think I posted some info on the Colombian Electrical Code...

I'm sure problems like this are not exclusive to Latin America....otherwise we wouldn't have anything to complain about here!! hahahaha.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 04-12-2003).]