Electrical stories from our past....

[ard]

Electrical Project stories from our past....

Not sure this belongs here, but I get the sense that there may be some stories.

I know I have a few. Here's one.

I was wiring my current house. 400A panel at the house, with a 300 foot run of conduit down to the barn/shop. 125A sub down there.

Dug trenches, buried 2" conduit, poured concrete- 1st floor deck is framed. Time to pull wire...

So I drive my Dakota down the the wholesale yard to pick up a 1000' roll of #0 copper. Plus 330ft of #4 for the ground. Guy says pull your truck around. I do, and he comes out from the shop doors with a spool on a forklift....places it in the back and the truck settles to the spring stops.


Uh

Oh.

Hmmm. Thats heavy. Hmmm.

So once home, I need to 'convert' that 1000+330 ft pieces into 4-330ft pieces... easy enough, man-handle it around the field, dust, dirt. 85 degree in the California sun.

Oh, wait- did I mention my wife is my helper?

I plow forward. I need to join the 1/2" nylon rope that is the pull rope to the end of the cable, then position this at the top of the hill where the conduit is under 1st floor deck- about a 4ft crawl space.

Good. Then I create a 'loop' so that when I pull it in, the loop will advance into the conduit, I figure I will get 15 ft per pull, and this way I am not pulling the whole 1500lbs. Wife is armed with rags and pulling lube. I figure I am lucky there isnt a single 90 in the run.

Down to the barn. Grab that rope. Uh, yeah...I get about 2 feet of wire into the conduit and thats it.

So, for the next 4 hours, well past sunset, I will back the dakota up to the end of the conduit, form a new figure 8 in the rope and drop it over the ball hitch, then walk 300 feet up the hill, incrementally dragging the wire up in sections so there is a loop of 10-15 feet at the top, the wife then lubes the cable, I walk down, yell "Hands Clear" ..she yells "Yee-ss" in the most annoyed voice possible...and drive forward 15 or so feet. Rinse and repeat.

It was a dark day of my marriage.


So, what crazy, impossible, hair raising or just dumb stuff have you done???

 

[kd3pc]

In 1975, I was a second year electrical apprentice, son of a career electrician which meant I already had years of experience - as a result of being #1 son of the same.

12 story building, new construction - mixing bowl outside DC. Told to get ready to pull feeders for the building. Haul puller to the basement switchgear room...crane to put cable on the penthouse... spend the week laying out phases, taping, identifying and getting ready for the pull.

I approach the mechanic/foreman and ask why we are doing this, this way, it is going to get out of control heading down, no wedges, no nothing, except soap? Before I could explain, I was told, "you are the apprentice, I am the foreman, get your **** in gear or you can go to the hall", I almost left but thought the entertainment value would be high. Early Monday, I am on the soap detail, up top. With a headset wired to the basement "pull room". At least I will be safe. WE are set and lift a strap up to let the feeders hit the pipe easier. Pull start and after about a third of it is in the pipe - all hell breaks loose, I can't keep up with the cable shooting down the pipe. Headset screams stop, stop, stop. Just as I see the taped end of the pull disappear in the pipe.

Boss, simply says get this cleaned up. Walks off, to make a phone call.

Later that day, I see the rest of the crew and they simply shake their heads at me. At the end of the day, the foreman hands me a hacksaw and says meet me in the switch gear manhole at 6am in the morning. I guess you were right.

I spent the next few days, sawing feeders that had spaghetti piled in to the small manhole across from the pipe where the feeder came from, into pieces.

 

[ctfjr]

When I was in high school (early 60's) I used to work at my father wholesale heating company on Saturdays. Our core business was oil company related. Sooo I used to watch the contermen 'test' the various ignition transformers that were brought in as 'bad' by taking a screwdriver & drawing an arc from one terminal as far as possible to the other. If you could draw a 1" spark the transformer was deemed good.
So one Saturday a customer came in with a transformer & the two countermen were *******. I leaped at the chance to show off my brilliance.
Maybe I shouldn't have grabbed the 1st screwdriver I saw - a wooden handled one with the metal blade coming right through to the end of the handle. I held the body of the transformer with my left hand & brought the screwdriver in contact with one of the spring terminals. wtf! I went flying, literally.
Now you know where the saying, "Keep one hand in your pocket" came from.

 

[kd3pc]

Spark can be hard on the joints....as a young gear head, we often "helped" out at the dragstrip. Having seen the senior guys start the magneto, blower cars, I jumped at the chance to do so.

Being young, and spindly, I laid the starter on my knee and boosted it up in to place, with my leg still on the frame and knee under the starter, but against the magneto head. Needless to say when I hit the starter button, the dual spark knocked me on my **** and bruised everything I owned.

The guys were good about it, dusted me off and asked if I learned anything? We won the round and got down to 3 cars, so I was the "good luck" from then on.

 

[ard]

I was an odd kid.... My dad was a musician, but Id take anything apart and fix it...so I didnt learn from him. Started working in PA when you could pay for 3rd party inspection services. At 15 I was always low bidder.

Anyway, about 15 years old I was working on an old farmhouse, in the crawlspace. Re-routing a BX cable to an electric range. Hooked up to a two pole breaker. Clipped a test light on the one conductor, went up and turned the breaker off, looked down into the crawlspace, light is off. Cool.

Down into the crawl, sitting on some damp dirt- kinda cool, it was summer outside. Cut the metal spiral BX with a hacksaw, sharp twist to break it- then holding the BX cable with my left hand I proceed to pull the short 8 inch piece of metal spiral off the ends of the wire with my right hand.

Unfortunately that double breaker was miswired- one leg supplied one of the conductors (the one I had a light on) the other leg went to a different breaker....

So the carpenters upstairs said I screamed the whole time. All I remember is 3 things:
- I could not let go. Could. Not.
- All I could do was fall over on my side
- After I fell over I realized my legs worked, so I thrashed my legs up to knock the cable out of my left hand.

Lots of "Sparky" jokes from the carpenters after that.

Even today, 43 years later, that was a pretty scary one.


kd- like that first story...total opposite.

 

[zmaxmotorsports]

Re: Electrical Project stories from our past....

Not sure this belongs here, but I get the sense that there may be some stories.

I know I have a few. Here's one.

I was wiring my current house. 400A panel at the house, with a 300 foot run of conduit down to the barn/shop. 125A sub down there.

Dug trenches, buried 2" conduit, poured concrete- 1st floor deck is framed. Time to pull wire...

So I drive my Dakota down the the wholesale yard to pick up a 1000' roll of #0 copper. Plus 330ft of #4 for the ground. Guy says pull your truck around. I do, and he comes out from the shop doors with a spool on a forklift....places it in the back and the truck settles to the spring stops.


Uh

Oh.

Hmmm. Thats heavy. Hmmm.

So once home, I need to 'convert' that 1000+330 ft pieces into 4-330ft pieces... easy enough, man-handle it around the field, dust, dirt. 85 degree in the California sun.

Oh, wait- did I mention my wife is my helper?

I plow forward. I need to join the 1/2" nylon rope that is the pull rope to the end of the cable, then position this at the top of the hill where the conduit is under 1st floor deck- about a 4ft crawl space.

Good. Then I create a 'loop' so that when I pull it in, the loop will advance into the conduit, I figure I will get 15 ft per pull, and this way I am not pulling the whole 1500lbs. Wife is armed with rags and pulling lube. I figure I am lucky there isnt a single 90 in the run.

Down to the barn. Grab that rope. Uh, yeah...I get about 2 feet of wire into the conduit and thats it.

So, for the next 4 hours, well past sunset, I will back the dakota up to the end of the conduit, form a new figure 8 in the rope and drop it over the ball hitch, then walk 300 feet up the hill, incrementally dragging the wire up in sections so there is a loop of 10-15 feet at the top, the wife then lubes the cable, I walk down, yell "Hands Clear" ..she yells "Yee-ss" in the most annoyed voice possible...and drive forward 15 or so feet. Rinse and repeat.

It was a dark day of my marriage.


So, what crazy, impossible, hair raising or just dumb stuff have you done???

That's a job for some 2 1/2"-3" conduit and a backhoe with a good operator!

 

[zmaxmotorsports]

In 1975, I was a second year electrical apprentice, son of a career electrician which meant I already had years of experience - as a result of being #1 son of the same.

12 story building, new construction - mixing bowl outside DC. Told to get ready to pull feeders for the building. Haul puller to the basement switchgear room...crane to put cable on the penthouse... spend the week laying out phases, taping, identifying and getting ready for the pull.

I approach the mechanic/foreman and ask why we are doing this, this way, it is going to get out of control heading down, no wedges, no nothing, except soap? Before I could explain, I was told, "you are the apprentice, I am the foreman, get your **** in gear or you can go to the hall", I almost left but thought the entertainment value would be high. Early Monday, I am on the soap detail, up top. With a headset wired to the basement "pull room". At least I will be safe. WE are set and lift a strap up to let the feeders hit the pipe easier. Pull start and after about a third of it is in the pipe - all hell breaks loose, I can't keep up with the cable shooting down the pipe. Headset screams stop, stop, stop. Just as I see the taped end of the pull disappear in the pipe.

Boss, simply says get this cleaned up. Walks off, to make a phone call.

Later that day, I see the rest of the crew and they simply shake their heads at me. At the end of the day, the foreman hands me a hacksaw and says meet me in the switch gear manhole at 6am in the morning. I guess you were right.

I spent the next few days, sawing feeders that had spaghetti piled in to the small manhole across from the pipe where the feeder came from, into pieces.

***** to be on the bottem of the food chain some days!
1st day working as a laborer for a friend of my uncle who was an electrical contractor for my summer job when I was 15.
The guy told me I was going to run a south Omaha backhoe.
Im thinking Im going to learn to run a tractor,He came back 5 minutes later with a shovel and says dig me a ditch boy!
That was around 1970,by the time I started wiring full time around 73 I knew more than most of the damn journeyman on the job but was only considered a 1st year apprentice officially since it was my 1st year doing it full time.

 

[zmaxmotorsports]

Spark can be hard on the joints....as a young gear head, we often "helped" out at the dragstrip. Having seen the senior guys start the magneto, blower cars, I jumped at the chance to do so.

Being young, and spindly, I laid the starter on my knee and boosted it up in to place, with my leg still on the frame and knee under the starter, but against the magneto head. Needless to say when I hit the starter button, the dual spark knocked me on my **** and bruised everything I owned.

The guys were good about it, dusted me off and asked if I learned anything? We won the round and got down to 3 cars, so I was the "good luck" from then on.

You should've been starting the blown chevies instead of the hemis,chevy put the distributar on the right end of the motor!

 

[MushCreek]

I was about 14, out fishing in my old boat with an even older motor. The water pump quit, and it started overheating, still a couple miles from home. What to do? I started pouring water over the block to keep the little egg beater cool enough to run. Did you know that salt water is a pretty good conductor when poured on spark plug wires? I finally figured out to throw the water on it, breaking the connection back up through the bucket and my tingling hands!

 

[astroracer]

I was working in a small job shop in the late 80's. The building we were in was a drafting/machine shop. Lots of power coming into the building on the shop side.
The building was a fairly new construction and we had installed floor outlets on 10' centers in the main drafting room. I and a couple of electricians were running a fishtape to pull wires through the conduits to the main floor for computer installs. I am in the drafting room pushing the tape and have about 35' of tape into the hole when it hits a couple of hard spots. I push on it and give it a few twists and it jumps/pops and continues on it's way. Anyway I get about 15 or 20 more feet into the hole and figure its got to be out of the box by now...
The box we were expecting the tape to come out of was locked out and open. The box it ACTUALLY came out of was closed and working with 660V input... The tape came into the box at the top, snaked through about a dozen live breakers and jumped/popped out the bottom of the box ans was ran about 15' across the floor... Did I dodge a bullit that day?
Mark