What's the Strangest or Funniest Service Call you ever got?
I figure with all of the people we have here there must be some Doozies !
I was away for the day recently and came back to a call requesting help for a 'buzzing' Kitchen Receptacle. She sounded very upset saying that it made a
buzzing sound every few minutes and even turning off breakers didn't make it stop.
Hmmm, When I did get a chance to call her back she said 'you'll never believe it' I was thinking, ... Bees?? - I've had that one myself. But, no, Her son's beeper was in a container of some kind right next to the outlet and it kept going off every few minutes. ....
Not the top of the list I'm sure.
What's your story??
(PG only please!)
Bill
A bit off topic; I had the pleasure of going through the list of the service calls (all types, not just electrical) for the past six months for a gas station chain to categorize them. You can't imagine the number of strange problems like "Toliet chair stolen" or "Urgent: Flag stuck halfway on the pole. Won't go up nor down."
while pigtailing alum with copper in an apartment complex, we came across a lot of dead bats inside outlet boxes. strange.
Had a service call to an old house. One of the fuses had blown, but when the customer replaced the fuse, it still didn't work. He had tried several new fuses with no luck.
I was assuming that he was trying to screw a 20 amp fustat into a 15 amp adapter or something like that. But upon seeing the panel that wasn't the case, it was a new 15 amp fustat in a 15 amp adapter so it should have worked fine.
As I stood there in front of the panel holding my flashlight with the customer right beside me, I unscrewed the fuse. Hidden from him, but visible to me I could see that a piece of bakalite thread had broken free and was holding the fuse out. One quick blow into the fusholder, fuse reinserted, the lights came on. The customer stood there looking at me as though I was a mystic LOL. What the he&&? he asked.
We got a call Wed the lady said she was worried about a receptacle that was making a funny noise. What kind of noise we said? She said "I don't know it just sounds like electricity". We had wired the whole house several months earlier so we immediatley rushed right out fearing it was an arcing connection.
When we got there she was on the phone and she ushered us in and led us to the suspect receptacle. We heard nothing and proceeded to pull the cover plate and had the receptacle half out when she returns and says "do you hear it?" we still don't hear anything then she puts her ear real close and says "I can hear it". So I put my ear real close and sure enough I hear a faint ticking. I said "Do you mean that ticking sound" as I look out the window to the irrigation timer mounted on the outside wall
opposite the receptacle. "Yeah that's it!" she says. Then I lead her outside and said "listen to this" as I point to the timer.Then she says "Oh I feel like such a dope" We didn't mind as we were relieved that we hadn't made a wiring error.
Of course there was the time a customer said that renters had destroyed half the wiring in the house and when we got there we discovered the problem: half the breakers were switched off!
And my own wife told me the TV was making a buzzing noise every few minutes-it was my pager laying on the dresser!
Brian
[This message has been edited by Brian Winkle (edited 08-07-2003).]
I have three rooms where the power is there and then no power. You fixed our porch light 3 years ago and must have done something worng. I am not very happy with your work.
Well we went there, and sure enough no power to those rooms. We asked if anyone had been working there on the electrical system and she said no, you were the last one doing any work here. Started at the panel and found that a new timer was hanging on a nail next to the panel with a nm cable pulled out of the wall going in the timer and out of the timer. We put the timer on manual and suprise the rooms had power. When we asked about the timer she said the lawn guys put that there, but that is not electric it is for the sprinklers and they work, don't you know what you are doing.If you tell me this is going to cost me money, I am going to ask you to leave.
ah, the old 'give me an estimate after you figure out whats wrong, then i'll fix it myself' trick.
ah, the old 'give me an estimate after you figure out whats wrong, then i'll fix it myself' trick.
shootr,
That's near the top of my 'could do without' list!!
Bill
A customer called and said electricity was coming through her kitchen window and shocking her. I checked the neutral and ground connections in the panel. The pipes were all grounded. The ground rods were percode. I followed the service drop from the weatherhead to the pole. The pole was engulfed in ivy. The top of the ivy was very ner the high voltage bushinf on the serving transformer. I called the utility and they sent a crew out pronto. They cut the ivy back and the problem went away. Evidently the ivy was conducting voltage to her underground water pipes.
Another one: Customer says floor outlet never worked in 25 years she had lived in the house. I traced the circuit back to a switch. I flipped the switch and the outlet was hot. She always wondered what the switch was for.
Another one: A customer lived in a house for 28 years. Says the kitchen lights won't work. They were wired to 2-3 way switches which had been replaced with single pole switches. They both had to be in the up position for the lights to work. Seems the cleaning lady flipped the switch these people hadn't used for 28 years.
Another one: Customer calls and says there's a strange noise coming from her circuit breaker panel. I show up and see a
square d split bus panel. Not the greates but I don't hear anything. She comes up and says "it only makes the noise some of the time. I thump on the main breaker and we both high tail it out of there. There was a huge hornet nest in the stud space below the panel. After the exterminator eliminates the pests I open up the wall and a significant amount of insulation has been chewed off the wires. An expensive repair job!
Another one: A customer complains that anwhen they use an outlet in a hallway it ruins their vacuum cleaner. I check and find that the outlet has been wired of a baseboard thermostat located above. Funny what 240 does to vacuum cleaners.
[This message has been edited by Webmaster (edited 08-07-2003).]
"always wondered what the switch was for."
Now thats funny! Reminds me of the "Friends" episode.
my fav was the guy who called berating the local hardware store.
seems they sold him everything he needed to switch a (formerly pullchain) cieling lumianare
anyways, he did a rather good job of installing the old work steel box, s.p. switch and plate in the wall
'cept there was no wire........
~S
Does this one count? I use to work for someone and the local creamatory/mausolium (did I spell them correctly?) called usand said, "We have a body half bunt in the crematory oven. The power went out and we can't get it to go back on. We need someone quick, because we have a half cooked body. Please come over and get our oven working now please." We got there and found a bad safety zone valve (or something) This job happened to be and my old boss about 1975-1984. I don't remember exactly.
Harold
Bill,
Here's a call-out that stands out for me.
Just got home from work at 7pm one night and my cellphone goes, there's an elderly lady on the other end, yelling to me about the fact that she has no Hot water.
I thought this will be easy, just a blown fuse, so I turn up there and check the ripple controls and all the fuses on the Night rate supply they're all OK, get up in the ceiling check the HW Cylinder, it's OK, but somehow I can hear water running.
I go and check the taps and the shower is running full blast (cold water).
I told her what I had found and she said that she had a guest staying over the night previous and she had had a shower prior to leaving at 0630 this morning, the shower had been running all this time, as my customer had a hearing problem.
Simple but strange, eh?.
Awhile back, I was called by the new owners of an old mansion on the bluffs of the Mississippi River to unravel the mysteries of the wiring in their home. I discovered a lot of creative wiring, but that's a whole seperate story.
The third day I was there, while uncovering the buried and paneled over original fuse center at the foot of the basement stairs, I became aware of a great caterwaller and rumpous up on the second floor.
I ran up the stairs to meet Mrs. Homeowner and daughter rushing down from the second. Seems that the son had finally prised open the one stuck drawer in the built in set of drawers in the secret room behind the moveable storage shelves in the second floor bath. The drawer was empty, but for a human skull. He had walked in on his mom and sister holding high the prize he had found. . .
They did not share his opinion and ran screaming to call the police.
The skull was without identifying marks. The police determined it used to be a thirty some female, and eventually returned it to the family. The son latched onto it an gave it its own wooden case.
well that's one way to get ahead Al
Here's another one,
I was on Faults call-out one weekend last year and got sent out to a house way out in the sticks.
Long story longer, the complaint was that the Range(Cooker) wouldn't work.
Got there and all 3 DDO's had dropped, so there was no power at all to the house.
Put all the DDO's back in no worries and changed the Secondaries no problems, I happened to do a bit of a walk around the house to see if there might have been something else that might have caused the Secondaries to trip, well, I got around the other side of the house and what I saw, astounded me.
There was a TRENCH and the mains coming in through the back of the house were sticking up in the air and were joined with Tape(PVC Insulation tape), this was 400V 3p +N BTW, hence the blown Secondaries and DDO's.
Turns out what had happened was the guy had dug a trench for a new pump water feed and never even knew that the Mains came in from that side of the house.
I rejoined the mains and I might add I got a FREE Home cooked meal out of it, too!.
Sorry if I have waffled on too much.
But, the spoils of being a Faults-man, eh?
It almost makes up for all the times that I have been caught out in the heavy snow and so-forth!.
[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 08-09-2003).]
Maybe not strictly electrical, however kind of.
At my wife's old job in the break room they had their paper shredder. Every time someone shredded some papers the micorwave would turn on.
At my old job as the facility guy. I got a call one time that Peggy's phone was not working. It just made a bunch of noises when she dialed. I went to her desk and she had bumped thw switch from tone to pulse.
Another time I got a call from the receptionist that the front doors kept opening on their own. I thought to myself, no big deal, this always happens when someone moves the plants closer to the door. Then when the leaves move the motion detector sees motion and opens the door. However this time that was not the problem. So I look around some more and keep looking. Finally I find that a very, very small spider was on the head of the motion detector. You could not see it unless you looked really hard for it. However since it was on the motion detector every time that it moved it opened the doors.
Scott
I know I've had my share of strange/funny service calls, but only one comes to mind.
Back when I was younger and hungier I had a customer with outlets not working in the kitchen backsplash. I thought it would be the GFI, but it wasn't. The outlets had #12 backstabbed and had corroded from the cat peeing/spraying them. Yes, you read that right, apparantly the cat got his jollies that way. I fixed 2 of them and that made them all work. I suggested replacing them all, because the cat used all of them, but the customer didn't want to pay. It was so nasty that I swore I wouldn't do it again, but when they called me in another month, I was hungry again and went back to replace the others.
I can now say I'm not hungry enough to do that job or to make an employee do it, hope I never get that hungry again.
[This message has been edited by Electric Eagle (edited 08-10-2003).]
An electrician friend of a friend had a falling out with his boss. The boss did something that really made his subordinate feel cheated and wronged. The electrician sought revenge.
His last job for the company was to rope a 2 story house. He wired the house up all right. He wired everything from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor, and everything from the 2nd floor to the first floor. It passed rough inspection - nobody noticed the routing of all the wires. The wronged electrician then quit his job and departed, never to return.
After being trimmed out for final and the power was turned on, strange things happened. When you turned on a switch downstairs, a light upstairs would turn on. When you turned on a bedroom light switch upstairs, the garbage disposal downstairs would come on, and things like that.
Here's another one.
A veteran electrician I worked with told me a story of how one of the crews on a jobsite was playing their radio really loud, and he got tired of listening to rap. He was a diehard rock guy with country roots.
When the rap crew left for lunch, somebody wound up turning the radio off.
The old electrician was ready for them when they returned.
He went to the panel, right to the circuit their radio was connected to, then he disconnected the neutral from the neutral bus bar and attached it to a circuit breaker. Now the circuit is 208 volts.
When the rap crew came back from lunch, they turned the radio on.
I asked him what happened next. He said, "Well, first the radio got real loud. Then, after a few seconds, it burned up."
I asked what happened after that. He said, "I put the neutral back on the neutral bus bar, walked out there and asked them what happened, they said the radio burned up and something must be wrong with the electrical. I checked it with my meter right in front of them and said that it's 120 volts, everything looks fine!"
harold endean:
Please come over and get our oven working now please...
What a half-baked request!
Trumpy:
...the guy had dug a trench for a new pump water feed...
I'm not sure how things work over there, but in the US, every state has a "Call Before You Dig" or "One Call"
system . There are fines imposed upon one who digs without calling first (and gets caught or hits a cable/pipe).
In some neighborhoods, people have called the police thinking that someone was painting graffiti when they were marking the underground utilities!
Before I was an electrician I was an alarm installer. We use to trade stories with the Telco guys all the time. Well one Telco guy told me about a service call he got. It seems that a lady called up the central office (CO). The CO called the service man and dispatched the guy to a house. The call was that even though the telephone didn't ring, the lady knew that someone was on the line. Her dog would howl. So the serviceman got there and asked the lady what the problem was. She stated that her dog would howl, and she would pick up the phone and some one would be there except that her telephone wouldn't ring. To make a long story short. The serviceman found that the dog was tied to a metal radiator with a metal leash and choker collar. It seemed that when the phone would ring the voltage would go to the phone but went into the water piping instead. So the telephone would not ring but the dog was getting a shock through it's collar. The dog would get the shock, startt to howl, and the lady would go to the telephone and say, "Hello?" P.S. I did not make this up. Honest guys!
Harold, Now that
is strange
I normally run installations but sometimes I get put on service and realize just how stupid some people can be. One of the easiest is when the receptionist puts her (purse, lunch bag, book, etc) on the remote release for the front door and we get the emergency service call for a door not locking, I have always wanted to see their faces when the $225 bill comes in the mail for a misplaced purse and I spent all of five minutes there....
Sparky,
I think I know your guy that forgot the wire.
I think Harold's in the lead so far with the strangest stuff!
Bill
Just in case anyone was wondering, the meal was lovely Lamb and Mint Sauce, with Roast Spuds, Yorkshire puddings, Peas and Yams.
Farm-killed Lamb too, with all the taste still there.
I can actually bone out a side of Beef or Pork or Lamb, having come off of a farm,originally, this is not a problem, it's also not a problem eating it either!.
Well, a service call we had to make ourselves due to some creative wiring, back when I was a kid of 6: We had rented a new apartment with 1913 wiring and the weirdest newer extensions. In one bedroom there was a receptacle that didn't work. The ceiling light didn't work as well, the previous tenants had taken down the fixture and left us with five(!) black wires taped up with band aid sticking out of a hole in the ceiling. Plus there were about 4 light switches there.
So what the electrician found was this: 3 wires (switched phase, unswitched phase and neutral) came up to the light and 2 wires continued all across the ceiling and down the wall to the receptacle. As these bloody idiots had disconnected all wires at the fixture the receptacle didn't work. BTW, part of the wire to the receptacle were 0.5mm2 (something like 20AWG) zip cord.
Not a personal story for me, but funny, none the less.
A lady in Texas called her electrician, telling him that everytime the toilet flushed, the doorbell rang. The electrician thought, Yeah, sure, but was interested in just what was happening.
After he arrived, he had the lady flush the toilet, and sure enough, the doorbell chime sounded.
Perplexed, he opened up the attic access, where he knew the low-voltage wiring would be, from front door to chime.
He followed the wiring all along the attic floor, and soon found the problem.
Seems in this house, the plumber had run all the copper waterlines in the attic, since it would never get cold enough to freeze, and because the house sat on a slab.
One of the cold water lines ran directly over one of the low-voltage wires feeding the doorbell pushbutton. Whenever the toilet flushed, the waterline actually moved alittle bit, enought to finally rub the insulation off of the wires. Now, whenever the pipes moved, it acted just like the pushbutton, completing the circuit, and causing the chime to ring.
One for the books.
Rick Miell
This goes back to my days as a Police Dispatcher in Philadelphia.
I received a 9-1-1 call from a man stating that he had just passed a tractor-trailer (parked) with a bunch of missiles on the back. It looked strange to him to see this truck just parked like that with nobody nearby. (Hey, don't fight, just send a blue-and-white.)
The police were sent to investigate. Sure enough, there it was, parked--a truck with a few missiles on the back of it.
The police began evacuating the entire area.
After conferring with the people at Fort Dix, it was determined that they had better come out to check on it. In addition to the military, there were also "who knows" how many other agencies called in.
While evacuating the area, the cops got to a nearby house and a man answered the door, apparently woken up out of a deep sleep. When the police told him why he needed to leave, he replied that the truck was his.
Seems that the trucker was transporting cement-filled dummy missiles to some sort of military show in New England, and was passing through Philly in the area where his mother lives. He decided to visit mom and to spend the night there before continuing on the next morning.
Had a customer call,she says that when she turns on her upstairs bathroom light ,It slows down the ceiling fans down stairs and the lights go dim. I verify this is happening and notice that the bathroom looks quite New....Joe Handy man fix-it has tapped into the switched leg of a three way (He has no nuetral) So when the fans downstairs are running its in series with the light upstairs...But how did the upstairs light work without a nuetral ??? Well to top it all off the fans had no grounding conductor all of the grounding conductors had been used as nuetrals...the fan windings were enough to act as a nuetral....Rewired half that house and cutomer complained...said I overcharged them......Yet joe handy man fix it was a good guy..I can't figure people..
Harold, I have heard the howling dog story before. I tend to believe it. Nobody could make up something like that!
The poked pooch story was likely posted
here , but I can't locate it at the moment.
[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 08-13-2003).]
Here are my favorites:
A failed engineer-now mechanical contractor wanted to borrow my meter to see why his electric fence wasn't keeping his dog in. A visit to the site showed a 2-ft. dip in the yard, next to the gate, where the unit plugged in.
A customer called to complain that the bath fan I had wired up was making noise. The man had dis-assembled the thing, then forced the fan back in the housing upside down.
Finally, a customer who had "helped" in wiring his new plant complained that some receptacles that had been working were now tripping the breaker instantly. I went nuts trying to trace the receptacles to the breaker in question. I finally realised that the receptacles could never have worked, as they never had that last piece of MC run to the panel! I found the tripping breaker was for a single receptacle that sat, unused, behind the receptionists' massive desk assembly. The unused screw on the device was touching the mud ring.
My story about the dog and the telephone system could very well be one of those old "Urban legends". However I heard this story in 1975. Take it for what it is worth.
This didn't happen to me ... glad it didn't!
Snake in computer photo As for me, it was a rat that had electrocuted itself after chewing through wires in a wall.
CW
While working at an amusement park as a maintenance mechanic more than a few times I had to help get, well, for lack of a better way to put this, "wicked fat" people out of rides.
Lap bars or seatbelts latched to tight to release or the people just could not get out of the strange seating positions that some rides require.
I challenge you to keep a straight face while helping them out.
If you are big and decide to ride "The Skydiver" listen to the operator when they say keep your arms up while they shut the cage over you, unless of course you
like a broken arm or two.
OUCH!Bob
citizenwatch,
Welcome to ECN!
I'm sure that was a surprise to those guys!
About 10 years back my father-in-law had a car (Sable I think) which developed this really bad smell that he couldn't get rid of - for weeks and weeks. I drove the car for a week myself and the smell was unbelievable, even though the whole interior was doused with perfume and whatever they could find. He finally brought the car to the dealer to see what was going on. The story goes that they had it up on the rack and were looking inside the air ducts and an 8 ft. Snake carcass comes sliding out on them.
My brother-in-law (late teens at the time) had been told by his Mother to get rid of his pet Snake, she didn't want it in the house anymore. He decide to take it to some friends houses to see who would take it. At some stop along the way he came back to the car and found that the Snake got out of it's cage/tank and he thought it had escaped. (windows open I guess). As we all found out later, it had just crawled into the AC/Heater ductwork. He never said a thing about the missing snake in all that time...
Bill
I was sent on a service call at an old couple's house. It seemed that whenever the wife would mop her kitchen floor and brush up against the sink, she would get zapped. Her husband thought she was nuts! Well I put my tester on the wet floor, and the sink. no voltage. So then she said it happened when her husband was downstairs in the basement fiddling with his "stuff". So I went to the basement and looked at the open beamed ceiling, and there was a two lite four foot fixture there, After I opened it, she yelled,"I got zapped again!" I ran back up stairs,and tested the floor again. No voltage. So I went back downstairs, and as soon as I turned on the basement lite, she said "I got zapped again". I told the woman to get away from the sink, and after turning off the lite, I found one of the screws which were used to secure the fixture, dead center of the romex, and since her husband had installed it, he did not realize the importance of grounding all metal objects. Needless to say, he could no longer fiddle with any of the electric anymore!
Richard
OK, I have one or two more. I was working in a house, trying to snake a wire in the wall. I reach way down inside the open hole to try and find my snake, this little old lady next to me starts to say,"I'm sorry if the is a real bad smell in my house. A rat crawled into the wall and died." Now Here I am, elbow deep into a hole in the wall, and I am hoping to God that I don't find that rat!. A friend of mine almost had the same problem. He cut a hole for an old work box, reached inside the hole and pulled aou a handfull of little tiny spiders! He wasked off his hands, picked up his tools and left. The lady called out to him, "What about the hole in the wall?" He replied, "No problem! No Charge!"
Bob,
I've done the very same job, before!.
And yes, it
is hard to keep a straight face!.
LOL
Old house. Old bathroom being remodeled. Removed the medicine cabinet and started to reach down the hole in the wall where the cabinet was. Fortunately, looked down there first. Thousands of razor blades! Medicine cabinet had a slot inside for "Blade Disposal". Using a magnet on a string, we pulled enough blades out to fill a 5 gallon bucket. Who EVER thought that was a good idea? I now understand that thousands of these medicine cabinets with this feature were sold in the 30s.
Fred,
That's a shocker!.
It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up reading that.
On a service call one time;
The Homeowner was remodelling the den in the back of the house and had just unscrewed the Baseboard heat from the wall when someone noticed that Lights and outlets in the next room didn't work.
When I got there and tested the outlets there was no neutral. Everything looked OK at panel, started opening up outlets and got to one where the Neutral feed (from the panel) was not hooked up. And it was Capped!
I asked the man if he had changed anything he said no. (??? - huh?) I did a bunch of head scratching and a little more digging and I figured out that the person who had originally hung the Baseboard had used very long screws and had made contact with the white wire in the cable between outlets.
For all these years that circuit was using the Baseboard Heat enclosure and water pipe as a return (neutral) wire. It's obvious that the 'Electrician' had known something was up because he capped that wire. - More of that 'can't see it from my house' attitude I guess that gets my goat sometimes.
Bill
[This message has been edited by Bill Addiss (edited 08-23-2003).]
Wow, good thing you look first, eh, Fred? All those razorblades, yikes! Could have been worse, too, not knowing how old or rusty they could have been, thats some serious business there. Wow.
This is not from a actual service call but rather a phone call. A friend of mine who is a roofer gave my name and number to someone who was having some electrical troubles and encouraged him to call me. This was a real potential horror story. All names have been changed to protect the innocent . . .
Caller: Hi this is Harry Homeowner. I just talked to Rodney Roofer and he told me that you are a pretty fair electrician.
(FAIR!!???? Only fair???? I think I need to have a talk with Rodney!)
Me: Well, Rodney tends to exaggerate sometimes.
Caller: Um well yes. Well I was calling you because I am having a problem with my washer. Sometimes it trips the breaker when I'm washing clothes. I had to reset it four times last night to wash a load of laundry.
(Uh oh. Time to shift to trouble-shooting mode)
Me: (In a wise tone of voice) Hmmmm.
Caller: It's only been doing this for a week or so. Sometimes it works OK but other times it trips right when I start the washer. After last night I'm tired of resetting the breaker all the time so I thought I would call somebody.
(Oh. Only a week? And here I thought it was serious)
Me: When you have a breaker tripping like that, you should try to find the problem before resetting it so many times. Usually it's trying to tell you something when that happens.
Caller: Yeah
Me: Is there anything else on the circuit with the washer? Does it go to any other rooms?
Caller: Yes it goes to a yard light but I unhooked that last year because it stayed on all the time.
(I'm still thinking overload so I ignore the comment about the light)
Me: Has your washer been working ok? Making any strange sounds or anything?
(This is leading up to a suggestion to try the washer on a different circuit to see if the problem follows the washer. I hate to charge someone for a service call just to diagnose a faulty appliance.)
Caller: It's been working ok but I have heard a popping sound sometimes when this happens.
(Super Sleuth is on the case. This is definately looking like a problem with the washer.)
Me: Where is this sound coming from? The washer?
Caller: No, actually I have heard it outside.
(Ooops)
Me: Outside? Is this directly outside where the washer is?
Caller: I don't know. It sounds like it is coming from overhead near the garage.
(Ok, ok. Maybe I shouldn't have ignored the part about the yard light)
Me: Tell me more about that yard light.
Caller: I unhooked it because it didn't have a switch and it bothered my wife because it stayed on all night. I took the light down and taped up the wires.
(Ohhhhhhhhhh boy)
Me: Where was this light? Was it on a metal pole or on the garage?
Caller: No it was on a tree.
Me: Oh I see. Where did you unhook it?
Caller: I climbed up on the tree and took it down and taped the wires real good.
Me: Ummmm is the wire in conduit where it goes up the tree?
Caller: No it is just stuck to the tree.
(I wasn't brave enough to ask how it was stuck to the tree)
Me: Ok. What about from the tree to the house? Is it underground? Is it in conduit?
Caller: Yeah it's underground but I don't think it's in conduit. There are a few places where you can see the wire and I haven't seen any conduit. It's real rocky here and it's hard to dig very deep. There's one place where I keep tripping over it.
(I'm beginning to wonder if this call is for real. I proceed to tell him that this wire might or might not be part of his problem with the washer but it could be VERY dangerous and should be disconnected at the house and removed immediately. I also explain that a "mysterious" tripping of a breaker is not something to be ignored and he should get this all checked out. In addition, I suggest that he leave this breaker off until the problem is found. Naturally I offer my services for this. )
Me: I'm busy up until Friday, but I know you don't want to do without your washer until then. I believe I can run by there tomorrow evening and take a look at this. Hopefully it will be nothing serious and we can get you fixed up quickly.
Caller: Well, Rodney said you were pretty good. I was hoping you could tell me some things I could look for myself so maybe I could fix it.
(Oh, so now I'm not just fair, but GOOD? I guess it's never too late for a little flattery)
Me: Well . . .
Caller: I've done electrical work before.
(Translation: I don't want to pay anyone to fix this)
(Unfortunately for me, I'm a sucker when it comes to situations like this. If someone was hurt because I didn't help, even for free, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. From all indications, it seems as if the problem could be with the old yard light wiring, but that does not explain the popping sound from near the garage. I decide to ask a few more questions to try to chase this down.)
Me: Normally these things don't just happen by themselves. Have you had any work done around the house lately? Hung any pictures? Been driving any nails?
Caller: Yes. I've had a lot of work done this year. Last fall a tree fell on my house and almost the whole house had to be redone.
(When he says this, I recognize the guy. I visited this house with my buddy, Rodney Roofer, the day after the tree fell. This tree fell across the room that housed the main panel and appeared to have taken out most of the home runs from the branch circuits in the house. The damage was extensive and when I saw it, I was sure that at least half of the house would have to be rewired not to mention rebuilt. This was a big insurance job and one of the "Insurance Specialty" companies from a neighboring city did the repair work. This company does all of the carpentry, drywall, and finish work, but they usually contract out the electrical and plumbing. I drive by this house occasionally and I knew that the work was completed only a couple of months earlier so I began to see a way for me to get out of this situation.)
Me: Do you know who the electrical contractor was?
Caller: Yes, it was Electricians-R-Us.
(This guy needs help and really needs a qualified person to look at this problem. My goal now is to try to make this happen. Even if it's not me, it will help me sleep at night.)
Me: I'm not saying that your problem is related to the work that they did, but I believe you should give them a call to come look at it. There's a chance that, if it's related to what they just did, they may fix it for free. I know if I did the work, I would want you to call me.
(All he hears is fix and free)
Caller: That's a great idea!
Me: Now if they don't take care of you, or if you have any other problems, you call me right back. In the meantime, leave that breaker off that goes to the washer.
Caller: I will. Thanks a lot Jim!
Me: Thanks for calling.
(Sigh)
I got a good kick out of that one, lol. Especially the part about 'fix.....free...'.
But it sounds like it could be dangerous and hopefully, this guy will take your advice and NOT run that washer until everything is checked out. Remember in the old days, how places were run by fuses? And when the fuses went, well, there was always aluminum foil to keep things going?? Ouch.
1. Service call at night... Complained that her house was "GlOwInG" orange. Sure enough all the vertical seams of the aluminum siding were glowing orange. Touching the siding and being grounded could have been painful. "I didn't try it". She lost her ground and since the service outside was screwed through the aluminum it found it's path.
2. A tv antenna of a house struck by lightnig. Every nail in the aluminum siding was blown out of it's hole.
jb:
Almost sounds like psychiatry...
Tell me more about that yard light.