ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area On the job mishaps/ screw-ups

Whoa!

I'm almost afraid to post next to you!

I don't really have anything big to add here, ... knocking wood (unless I'm blocking it out ), but I was using long (6 foot) drill bits to drill across joists in a finished ceiling for recessed lights and went through the floor above. Lucky for me it was in the open area below the Bathtub above and not the middle of the Master Suite.


Bill

[This message has been edited by Bill Addiss (edited 10-18-2003).]

Bill: Iv'e been there. I was using a six foot bit in an office building and drilled through the ceiling in the stair enclosure

Of course it was a rated ceiling and about 25 feet high to boot. That was a nice little back-charge

I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone in the mistake department. If done a few others, luckily not too many and far appart.

I think any of us that use D'versibits (6 foot long drill bits) have have a mishap, or 2, or 3....

A couple of summers ago I drilled up through the floor above, it turned out to be 100 year old heart pine!

About 15 years ago I stepped through a ceiling from the attic after being in the 150 degree+ heat too long.

Was subbed out to a company that had about a 300 foot run of parallel 750mcm alum. The wire arrived on the job on a couple of spools that had to be rolled out and cut. The foreman said to roll it out in the street. Trouble was, it was right before noon and after it was rolled out and cut, about ten guys from other trades got in trucks and backed over it. The engineers said "no way". We then rolled it up and rolled out a new set another place. They were using nylon string as their measuring tape. Got the run ready and pulled it in when one of the guys on the radio said "hope your there cause that's all I can give you". It was about thirty feet short, someone had cut off a piece of the string.

Gunther...I was close to that scenario.....250 foot run of 500's and stripped both ends to put in the lugs. I have no idea how many times I told the guys "Please be a little longer....Puhlease".

Eagle,

I have a friend that used to do a lot of Alarm installations. He was in the Basement drilling up through a wall to get to the attic (I think) and he wasn't counting his extensions right and ended up going through the roof.


Bill

As an apprentice i had the simple job of running light stringers once, but they all turned on dim.

myself and a fellow apprentice worked out all sorts of quantum theories, had fems fact finder & the ugly's out, etc....

turns out , (after quite the him-haw session) that the bulbs were all 277V

Related to the long drill bits department...

I was once drilling a hole for a telephone cable. I wanted to run it inside of a closet, through the floor into another closet, and then down to the basement; I was going to staple the cable to the molding inside--should have been really easy and out of sight. I went downstairs to see how well I did...and saw the bit coming out of the living room ceiling.

Just as I was looking at the bit sticking out of the ceiling, making plans to clean it up quickly, my wife came home. You know, a metal d'versabit looks much, much worse up against white paint.

I really can't take credit for this screwup, but it's a beaut. I was called to service a two stage rooftop air conditioning unit that would not cool. The unit was old, and had had the primary compressor replaced. The AC guy swore up and down that his lines and the unit charge was perfect. The unit had a 240 volt 1Ø supply run through a capacitor bank Add-A-Phase convertor. The compressor just hummed loudly when the disconnect was turned on.

I went through the capacitors and found half of them blown. Replaced the electrolytics, turned on the disco. . .no joy, just humm.

I went through the relay ladder for the start / run capacitor bank switching. . .all good.

Finally I crawled into the compressor housing to get over behind and to the bottom of the compressor to get the model number off the black on black ID plate.

The last character of the 14 char. long ID should have been an E, not an F. . .F was for 480 volts.

I think that this thread jinxed me!

The past two weeks have been the worst run of bad luck I have ever experienced!

We smoked three band new Hobart dishwashers because a helper connected the wrong power. (my fault, I should have checked his work closer).

We were pouring light pole bases last week, the next morning I looked at one of the bases and realized that there should be 3 conduits stubbed up, NOT 2!

A few months back we bored a 4" PVC line under a drive. This week we completed the conduit run and attempt to pull wire. The line is crushed in an area that is now paved over!

We get to rebore the 4" line, just finished that repair this morning. In the process of boring the new 4" we destroyed a 1" conduit. We have another raceway we can use for a workaround, but it will mean more digging.

We lost a 500K contract for phase 2 of this job after being told we had the low bid because the owner didn't want to work with us. Found out later that it was because of delays caused by the engineer and lighting manufacturer regarding approval of the finish on the parking lot poles. The owner blamed us for the delay, although it was outside our control and we were unaware of the situation.

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed!

GJ