A hotel worker painted over this broken receptacle located on the side of a hotel building!



The electrician showed the worker that the exposed contacts were alive!



Not much to be said here, except that 118 volts could be the cause of the death of the painter, or even the kid there in the walkway!



[This message has been edited by Joe Tedesco (edited 09-27-2003).]

Joe, not being sarcastic at all, but OSHA will visit our job sites and fine us, yet something like this can go untended untill some one or some child gets hurt, sad priorities.

How was it that this was found? Was the painter shocked?

Roger

New Eez-e-Reech™®٤© test points—I like it.

Roger:

I found this outside of a seminar room in Miami at a Holiday Inn. No, the painter didn't get shocked. I am not sure OSHA would visit a Hotel?

On water-based paints these days, are they more conductive than earlier oil-based varieties?

Once got a call from a pizza parlor where a wall of foil-faced wallpaper was biting customers. A receptacle terminal under a wallplate had energized the foil.

Here's another fine paint job

hey thinkgood awhile ago when I moved into a house (New Paint) almost all off recepts. were like that. I hate that

I don't see how anyone would get a good night's sleep in a hotel with a maintenance program as poor as this.

(DANGER...engaging rant mode...)
It really irritates me that people feel that wall receptacles and light switches HAVE to be painted the same color as the wall. I can understand painting the cover plate, as long as time is taken to remove it, paint it, and then re-install it. I have seen many receptacles covered over by so many layers of paint that no holes appear at all any more. The only evidence of a receptacle being there at all is a bumpy outline in the paint. A wall receptacle or a light switch is what it is. Why try to make it disappear?

Mike (mamills)

Looking at the inside of the box, it was probably sprayed.

Isn't it kind of dangerous holding you meter while using one hand to insert the test pins into the circuit like that?

The red probe could slip and the metal could touch your finger, couldn't it?

I always put the meter on a surface and use two separate hands to hold each probe (stick neutral in first and then the hot).

Joe: Was this an outside receptacle or in a courtyard? It sure looks like it was a picture taken outside.

Thinkgood: That looks like the old receptacles in my apartment. Although mine were two-hole instead of three-hole.

After a while, enough paint leaks into the holes and covers up the contacts, rendering the device unusable, even if the holes are still open.

Sometimes the devices are so old and the contacts have lost their spring-action that the only things holding the plug into the socket are the layers upon layers of paint!!

On another note, what do you guys think about the practice of removing box covers and covering the device with masking-tape prior to painting?

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 01-17-2003).]

I've seen this sort of thing where the area was remodeled, and the receptacles were then covered by panelling, etc. Makes for some interesting trouble-shooting.
OSHA has jurisdiction wherever a business "affects interstate commerce;" I believe that that is defined as more than a quarter-million in annual business.
I once was not hired to paint an apartment because I proudly told the owner that I would remove cover plates; he felt that would take too much time. "Just roller over them."
Incidentally, I recently saw that Snap-on is selling a pair of "composite" (no metal} needle-nose pliers, that they claim are as strong as the steel ones. Nice if true; usefull in fixing this broken receptacle!

Many years ago, I worked as on-site maintenance for an apartment complex. It was a pretty nice place, one of the more upscale complexes in the area.

We had a guy who was an outside contractor who did the painting of empty apartments. I don't know what he was paid per apartmet but he could paint a two bedroom apartment in about two hours.

We sanded and refinished all floors after he was done so he didn't have to worry about splatter and we had all walls patched and ready for him. He didn't tape, didn't believe in a brush. He just painted over light switches, outlets, nails in walls, light fixture lense covers if we forgot to remove them.

The picture was taken outside of my meeting room, see the grass in image 2.

Last time I was there they installed a new receptacle and cover and now are in Violation of the rule in 410.57 because of the type of cover they used!

There’s another fun thing painters sometimes do in an institutional/office setting. They remove every receptacle and switch plate marked with circuit numbers, and then “shuffle” the plates before reinstalling them.

Bjarney:

Square-D Shuffle

nyuck nyuck nyuck, indeed.