I don't like working with electricity

[Ed Hackenbruch]

Why you ask?  Because sooner or later i will get zapped by it.!  People have told me you can't possibly get shocked by doing this or that, and yet i do.  Just a week ago i decided to take out some old wiring in the engine compartment and the bed room. A couple of outlets and switches for 110 that were no longer in use. I plugged in my drill to see if there was juice,....nothing. I then flipped the switches to see if that made a difference,....nada. I then took a simple light tester to the wires on the side of the switches,....did not light up. Then our lot neighbor, (another busnut), took his tone tester and checked the switches,....again nothing.  So i took off the outlets and decided to cut the wire going to the switches in order to be able to pull the wire back thru the bulkheads and from behind the walls.   As i started to cut the wires there was a very loud "pop", the cutters flew out of my hand, and we lost some of the power in the bus.  Wasn't hurt, just startled, cutters do have a small shiny groove on one side of the jaws now.    Did figure out that the other end went to the breaker box and was still hooked up.  Should have just shut off all of the power to the bus but the wife was doing some things and did not want to interrupt her,...plus all of our tests showed it was dead, right?....yah, right!!!   I have also gotten shocked by 12v stuff and get zapped pretty good by static electricity quite often........as i said, i am not a big fan of electricity!  It goes way back to my early childhood, even before i was in my teens standing in a swampy area tying together a broken electric fence wire and my brother was in the barn and saw the charger was unplugged and plugged it back in......even though he was in a building and i was over 300 yards away down over a hill and in the woods, he could hear me yell. I knew who had done it and he knew i was going to kill him if i caught him......

[Len Silva]

Always assume that a gun is loaded!

[Gary '79 5C]

Cutting one wire at a time will cut down on replacement tools.

Turning off the power will be safer.

Been there Ed, many times.

Good thing no one was injured.

[bobofthenorth]

Many years ago I was doing a network installation for my accountant.  It was long enough ago that we were pulling coax - remember those days?  Anyway I had to drill a hole through a partition wall.  Me: "Is there any chance there are wires in this wall?" Accountant: "No, absolutely not." Me: "You're sure?"  Accountant: "100% sure"  So I drilled the hole with my extended 3/8 spade bit, fire came out the hole and the lights went out.  Accountant: "Oh yeah, I guess that line does run through there."

[Red Rider]

I don't know Ed! Here's a guy who can take the biggest piece of earth-moving equipment and move a mountain, yet a little old wire can slow him down. I wish I could say that electrical situation never happened to me. Stay safe.

[Ed Hackenbruch]

Mike, yup them little wires can bite you in the @$#. Just look at Bob's post!   And Bob, i have had similar experiences where somebody has told me there is nothing there when digging a trench or a hole. Makes me nervous when they say that, as i almost always find something......one time i found 2  6 inch water lines, 2 electrical conduits, and 5 sprinkler lines in a spot that i was digging on a golf course.  They had told me there was "nothing there"!  Lucked out and felt them without breaking any of them.

[Dave5Cs]

When I was an apprentice Carpenter back in the late 60's, the boss told me to go the the garage next door and plug in the cord into the electric panel in there so we would have power to build the house we were to work on.

So I go over and open the garage door see the panel in the corner with a plug he had rigged up to it for us. I'm dragging the cord with me when all of a sudden I hear this very low pitched growl from a dog I found out later had just had baby German shepherds.

About the time She came at me I dropped the cord and my hand slipped in the panel and hit a black wire on a breaker and the other was on the ground. Yep got a really good shock and luckily pulled away and turned and ran with my Leather bags on. Nails and tools flying everywhere as I slammed the door but the dog was on my side coming at me. I jumped over a 5 foot fence with her on the other side and the whole crew laughing their butts off. Could have been worse but still look around everywhere before flipping a breaker.

Dave5Cs

[rv_safetyman]

In general, I am not concerned about working with electricity - at least for 120 V and less.  One of the issues that bites me now and then are systems with capacitors.  They will give you quite a shot unless you discharge them or give them time to discharge.

My story is a bit different.  A couple of years ago I was fishing a rear view video cable behind the washer/dryer and shower wall.  I was using a flat steel fish tape.   All of a sudden I saw sparks and the tape got hot enough to burn my hand.  Turns out the tape worked its way between the washer plug and the outlet and shorted across the prongs of the plug.  Didn't do much damage, but it sure got my attention.  Could not have done that in a million years if I was trying.

That said, it is very hard to top Dave's story

Jim

[robertglines1]

Zaap!   Always hot. Will prob happen again--trying not to! Hope that sums my experience up.  Be careful and stay alive! Expect the unexpected. Don't trust the underground locator service. Stay in rig when you contact elect wires. Don't be the ground!   Bob 

[gus]

Your 120v bus grounding system may not be correct, it is not the same as in a house.

[robertglines1]

To make my previous post more clear; That's the way I treat any elect    condition . Not talking about any one time.  Bob

[Oonrahnjay]

      I'll only say "Kitchen GFI socket (complete with secondary socket) quit working; the little pencil note 'kitchen socket' was pretty close to the bottom breaker so that's the one I turned off.  Not the right one.   BUUUUZZZZZZ - Ouch!"

[Len Silva]

Non-contact voltage testers are inexpensive and convenient.  I wouldn't work on anything without one.
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=noncontact+voltage+tester&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=11919256675&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5327576332072129176&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_6j38kx6lqw_b

[bevans6]

I find electricity very easy to work with, it's extremely logical and follows very simple rules (until you get to delta-wye three phase, which I pretend does not exist).  What I hate is when people, either out of ignorance or laziness don't follow the extremely logical and very simple rules for wiring.  Like following the colour code practice, bonding neutrals and grounds correctly, using breakers and GFCI circuits correctly.  I was doing some work in my house the other day, labeling breakers (why would you install a new breaker box and not label a single breaker?  Lazy and lazy, I guess).  I saw that while the outlet in the downstairs bathroom had a GFCI outlet, the upstairs did not, so I popped out and bought one.  I had determined which breaker turned off power to that box, so I threw it, went upstairs, checked the light over the sink to make sure power was off, and saw that I had the wrong cover plate for the square GFCI duplex cover, so I abandoned the project.  Then I had the idea to check to see if that upstairs outlet might be controlled by the GFCI in the downstairs bathroom, so I popped the test button and went upstairs to see.  Sure enough, the outlet upstairs was dead - but the light switch in the same box was still live.  How stupid is that - very simple rule, never put two distinctly separate power feeds on different breakers into one circuit box.  Logical, simple rule, but now I have to figure out how to fix it.

Brian

[saddleup]

SO Ed, now when i here sirens running through the foothills do i need to check on you,or wait till all the power goes out and then sirens to check lo