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#69643 09/16/06 09:18 PM
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 73
S
Member
I was called "stat" into O.R.Where they had a patient on a surgical table.There must have been over a million dollars worth of education in the room.They could not get the table to lift the patient and wanted to know how long it would be to fix it.Without saying a word I plugged in the table and told the staff it's all fixed.

#69644 09/17/06 10:48 AM
Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 206
C
Member
I went on a same day emergency service call for a grocery chain we service. The call was for no power to the scale on the meat wrapping machine. They had a scale tech come out and he moved the machine across the room to prove it worked. He then moved the machine back into place and informed the manager to call an electrician since it was not his problem. I get there, walk into the meat room and look at the switches beside the door. The switch marked do not turn off "Meat Scale" was off. Turn switch on and scale works fine. The look on their faces was priceless.

Al

#69645 09/17/06 07:36 PM
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 183
N
Member
I used to live in an apartment building. The landlord said that a tennant was complaining that his brand new TV had horrible interference each night at 10PM, and since I am a ham, was it due to my radios?

It turns out the tennant had a new TV (which defaults to CATV) plugged into the building's master antenna and was trying to watch a UHF channel. I had him flip the setting to "antenna" and the problem went away. Oh and why did the problem show up at 10PM? That's when he turned the TV on to watch his show. No interference problems when it was off :-)
/mike

#69646 09/18/06 12:13 AM
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 9,923
Likes: 32
G
Member
As my wife always says when she catches someone, "Well, it works fine in the off position, let's try turning it on".


Greg Fretwell
#69647 09/18/06 04:10 AM
Joined: Dec 2001
Posts: 2,498
T
Member
When we moved into the new apartment there was a lot of weord switches too, but it took me no more than 15 minutes until I knew what every switch did. There's no way I'd accept to have a switch in my house of which I don't know what it does!

I've got a funny story too... when I was around 5, my dad rented another apartment in an old house. One room was used as an office, one was a guest bedroom. Then there was a half bedroom (used for storage) and the kitchen we used as a work shop. He only had the office and guest bedroom rewired, as well as the panel replaced (fuses, two 10A circuits with screw-in breakers, some of which didn't even went out if you pushed the red button, let alone trip).
One day when I was maybe 6 or 7 and had already done my first attempts at house wiring, the ceiling light in the work shop failed.
I knew the wiring was shoddy at least, so I tried to convince my dad of a rewire and didn't bother to really check out things. Well, it turned into a full rewire (and I'm still glad we did it, the original wiring was incredible), but when we were done (mostly I was done), the light still didn't work. Then it dawned on us and we considered checking the light bulb...

#69648 09/18/06 04:55 AM
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 101
J
Member
I once got called out to a gold mine in British Columbia way out in the boondocks to fix a big soft starter on an air compressor. It was a 16 hour trip to get there, the last 10 hours of which were on a bumpy dirt road. When I got there, the PC board had been obviously raked with a screwdriver, there was a 6" long gash right down the middle, circuit traces cut, components destroyed etc. Their "electrician" said "You guys must have shipped it from the factory that way". As much as I wanted to scream and throttle him (as if we would miss something that obvious), I swallowed my pride and replaced the board. A 10 minute job.

The next day I began my 16 hour trip home and since it was a mining area with blasting etc., I had to have a radio in the car and report as I passed each mile post on the road. 5 hours later they call me to return, the compressor isn't working again. 5 hours back, I open the cabinet and again, someone has raked a screwdriver across the main PC board. Now they accuse ME of doing it! I said "Oh sure. I drive 16 hours to get here to do a 10 minute job that you could have done yourself and I'm going to risk making this trip again just to piss you off? Where's the logic in that?"

I had one more board so I put it in and start the compressor. Now it's too late for me to start out for the nearest town again until the next morning, so I get a tour of the mine by the maintenance supervisor. While we are in the catwalk of the machinery bldg where the compressor was, the shift changes. A new guy comes into the machine room holding his ears, opens the cabinet and rakes a screwdriver across my PC board again, killing the compressor. Then he goes off in a corner behind the compressor where nobody can see him (except from the catwalk) and settles in for a nap! He gets fired that night.

The worst part is, after firing him they ask me to give him a ride back to town the next day when I leave! Needless to say I did not want to spend 10 hours on a dirt road in the wilderness with a disgruntled employee who might feel I am responsible for his losing his job! I declined.


JRaef
#69649 09/18/06 10:34 AM
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 98
A
Member
My plumber buddy hired me to do an extensive 320 Amp service and tie together feeds to several boilers, outbuildings, hot tub, etc., about a year ago. Several areas were not completed such as wiring in his shop. Now, my friend takes up a lot of space, has a big ego, did his apprenticeship on the 50 & 51st floors of the WTC in '70, moved to the Ozarks in the early seventies. He is really good at his Craft and he and I trade jokes about many of the so-called master plumbers and electricians that we encounter. So I had installed a 60 A circuit and receptacle for his brand new welder, as yet not ordered when the plug was installed. Several months went by and I go in to the supply house one day and my friend had been in that morning and left a note for me to call him.(Don't ask why he didn't have my number...) So I checked in to find that the welder won't work, I musta done sum'tin wrong...so I drive out to his place, kick into troubleshoot mode, suspected a missing leg of the 240. I checked the receptacle, breaker, panel, he had proper voltage everywhere & the welding machine fan was running, I checked the manual, did my best to seem thorough, he claimed that when he shorted the stinger to the ground clamp, he got no response. I suggested he bring me a scrap of steel, explained that maybe the unit needed to detect a tiny bit of resistance in order to work, clamped the ground to the steel, pressed the trigger and ZAP! it worked. The look on his face when he realized that I had driven 30 miles to show him that pressing the trigger was required was too good for words. He had made such a fuss attempting to blame me for doing something inappropriate with HIS welding receptacle, only to find out that all you have to do is push the lil' red button... In his defense, his welding experience was 20 years ago and with stick, so he had never held a MIG gun in his hands before, but you gotta be carefull when you think that just because you are a NYC trained MP that you have an open license to be an expert in every area of life...Read the book, maybe.

#69650 09/21/06 01:33 PM
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 44
T
Member
I got a call to change out a range a few weeks ago. The customer said that the guys from Best Buy had come to replace his range, but told him that he would need an electrician to do it because the unit was "hard-wired" into place.

I get out to the house, tip the range forward, and see a piece of BX running from the back of the range down to the floor. The first thing I thought was that some genius ran the conduit through the floor and tied into a J-box under the house. But then I slid the range out a few more inches and found that some genius had actually fastened a molded range plug on the end of the conduit and it was plugged into a receptacle on the floor. (The whole range was sitting on a box frame about 3.5" above floor level.) I reached down, unplugged the range, and asked him if there was anything else he needed. [Linked Image] I might have been there a total of 5 minutes.

If the install guys from Best Buy had slid the unit out a little further they would've been able to do the job and saved the customer a service call.


Kevin
#69651 09/21/06 01:50 PM
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 44
T
Member
I get a call to change a bad breaker. Get to the house, and the customer takes me the main load center and - while he's telling me what's wrong - he tries to switch on a tripped breaker. He doesn't switch it "off" and then back "on," he simply tries to push the switch on and hold it there. His explanation is that the breaker is bad. [Linked Image]

I try to switch the breaker on, when all of the lights dim and it trips back out. Find out that this breaker controls the living room receptacles. I ask if these are the only things in the house that aren't working. They answer "yes." I had already checked the load center, so I start pulling the receptacles out and find one that looks like the ground wire had been bent around and contacted the ungrounded conductor. The others have some loose back-stabs. SO, I change the receptacles out confident I had found the problem. Turn the breaker back on and it trips again. [Linked Image]

Again, I ask if there is anything else in the house that isn't working. One person says "no," then another finally says "well, except for the venthood that burned up in the fire yesterday." [Linked Image] (They had a grease fire on the stove that burned the vent hood.)

Check the venthood and found that the temperatures from the grease fire had melted the insulation on the Romex and allowed it to go to ground.

I had worked for nearly an hour moving furniture, pulling receptacles, etc. and asked at least twice about other electrical problems before they finally decided to fill me in on the fire!!!


Kevin
#69652 09/22/06 11:16 AM
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 44
M
Member
While I was roughing in electric in a new home the plumbing contractor was furious that the drywallers were using his plumbing dumping their left over drinks and occasionally as a urinal. After watching repeated encounters over a couple days we came in to see the plumbers smiling like chesser cats. When we asked them what was going on they said that they had decided to use their boxes of screws as urinals before they left on Friday. All the drywallers were happily hanging rock with a mouth full of screws, how appropriate.

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