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

I was working in a control room at the smelter here as an apprentice many moons ago, replacing bulbs in the "panagraph" (old style control station using the Swanson system). I dropped my screwdriver, and it landed handle down right onto a stop button for a conveyor. No big deal, until I realized EVERYTHING was interlocked with that conveyor. The sound of everything in the noisy plant grinding to a halt was disheartening to say the least. It ended up totally shutting down 4 other plants and caused a backup of SO2 gas in the system. The automatic gas sensors turned on the evacuation alarms. As it was, the plants were evacuated for 45 minutes (about 700 workers) and after the evacuation was done it took 3 hours to get the plants all up and running smooth again. It took a long time to live that one down.

Now here's one that didn't happen to me, but it did happen at one of our local hydro generation plants. They had just finished a generator re-build, the rotor was put back into place and everything was fine, until one of the electricians doing last-minute checks had a 6" metal ruler fall out of his pocket into the gap between the rotor and stator. They had to pull the rotor out again just to get the ruler out, and lost many thousands of dollars in power revenue. After that their policy changed: everyone going onto the generators had to empty their pockets.

[This message has been edited by Sixer (edited 12-12-2005).]

Guys,

Thanks for brightening my day. It's been a rough couple of weeks.

My alltime favorite occured about 18 yrs ago. We were doing work at the house of the then NJ Attorney General. One of the men stepped through the sheetrock ceiling.

But the best part was the phone call to my old man: "Hey boss, did you know this ceiling was only made of sheetrock"

Since then, you name it.

John, this is an advantage to being an HVAC guy. When you step through the ceiling you just say "That's where the return goes"

Here's one..,
How about walking through the substation on your way to break and accidentally brushing up against the shunt-trip for the main to the whole General Motors main headquaters building.
Had to go through the whole sub killing all the switches just so we could reset the main and then go back and throw all the switches back on.
We finished and sat down like nothing had happened just as the suits started pouring through the door.
"Must have been an Edison problem."

Before I sold my last house and after much goading from the wife, I thought it would be a good idea to finally install the attic fan that had been sitting in the box in the garage for about a year.

Got the fan installed in the gable..no prob. However, there was no room to squeeze another wire into the existing chase down through the header/rafter above my panel (I wish I could choke the guy that wired my old house..but that's another story). I borrowed one of those long bits from a residential contractor friend down the street and got busy. Drilled hole. Climbed down to see where hole was. No hole. Hmmm.
Strange. You guessed it...the hole was in the living room. Cracked the drywall good too. I hate when that happens.

Last mistake that I remember (or will admit) at work was ordering a 500ft run of 500MCM CLX armored cable without the neutral. Ouch.

2 biggest srew-ups I know about:

First one was a guy I worked with. He forgot to bond the nuetral and grounds, burnt up about 100K worth of cicuit boards. Bosses insurance covered that one...

2nd was the boss himself. He was so happy about buying an auger truck. Away he went to drill and pour light columns.....
And about three weeks later he got a call from the township,water dept and home contractor. Seems he forgot to mark where the storm drains were and somehow drilled right through one, then poured it full of concrete.
48" sewer drain?

I still laugh over that one......


Dnk....

Alright... since we're on the subject...

Back in the day when I was a greenie, I was on the roof of a new tilt-up hooking up A/C units with another "supposed journeyman". The journeyman had me drill holes in the bottom of the pans in the units themselves instead of having to use roof jacks and to top it off, he just had me stubbing flex through the pan (one ¾" for power and another ½" for tstat) times 16 units!!!
Over the preceeding weekend, it rains like crazy! I'm in Fresno over this weekend so no one gets ahold of me to let me know that the flexes are acting like garden hoses pouring into the building! I get to the jobsite the next monday and the foreman and the GC are standing at the door looking at me saying "What the (CENSORED) did you do!?!!?" I told my foreman that I did exactly what the journeyman told me to do (which I did)
Needless to say, they had to pump out the entire building that was supposed to be getting carpet in, had already been painted with some sort of expensive sparkly paint, (which made a beautiful pattern in the water I must say ) They had to run the big propane heaters in there for about 2 weeks to dry everything out
The journeyman that was there wasn't heard from since after lunch that day..

About a year later I went on a small service call to the same building and there must've still been leaks in the units cause the ceiling tiles were water stained.. I remember putting one of the tiles back and a manager for the company that had moved in commented "They sure did a crappy job on that roof, didn't they?"

We were doing some work at a DHL cargo facility in San Diego -converting it from whatever it had been to a cargo facility with conveyor belts/lighting/office ti's- and the GC had to place concrete filled steel bollards around the electric room which protruded into the floor area of the cargo sorting area, and was subject to being hit by truck/forklift/van traffic in and out of the building. He was core drilling holes in the slab for the bollards and nicked one of the underground conduits coming out of the electric room. Luckily he stopped before getting entirely through the pipe, so my story has a kind of boring ending, but I still couldn't help but think: "what if?.."

LOL,
That's a cool story Randy!.

Can I make fun of my father here? I'm gonna anyway.

He is permanently barred from helping the men by driving ground rods.

1st occasion, residential service upgrade. He was pushing the GR in by hand (working it up and down) when all of a sudden a slight hiss. Then water coming through the foundation. He managed to go directly through a 3/4" copper water main.

2nd occasion, service upgrade to a small strip mall. He begins to install the 1st ground rod, same as always, by hand. No hammers, drills, etc. This time an awful hiss. He went right through a 1" plastic gas main.

Now when the men see him on site with a ground rod in hand, they have orders to shoot to kill.