What Disasters Have You Had.

[JOHN M]

Hi all

By July next year i will have completed my C&G 2365 level 2 and 3 ( 3 years in total) in it we will have covered installation ( theory and practical) Design ( assignments and exams) inspection and testing ( exams and practical) which is all good and lovely but what worries me is going to someones house to fit a new socket, start to chase out the walls and what not and all the plaster falls off.

What the F%*K do you do in a situation like that?

What disasters have you had and how did you get round them.

John

 

[Andy™]

do what you can. get a fixing where possible. plaster the backbox into place (old plaster goes off quickly, or throw some cement in the mix). fix a bit of wood and screw box to that. many ways around it

of course, if an apprenticeship was done, you would probably have already came accross just about every problem like that and what to do

 

[JOHN M]

Thats probably one of the biggest hurdles for someone like me,(experience) not just the installing the wires part but the when it doesn't go as planned part and not really knowing what to do about it.

John 

 

[ProDave]

Well my best "disaster" was when rewiring an old stone cottage.

I needed to drop a shower cable down the wall, which was (I thought) lined with timber studs then lath and plaster.

So up into the loft. There's a sheet of plasterboard on the wall. So I should be able to whack a hole in that to gain access into the wall cavity.

Whack with my hammer.  Whoops. I can see through into the cottage next door.

That's when we found out, it was ONLY a timber lath and plaster wall separating this one from next door, and due to different ceiling levels just a single sheet of plasterboard in between the loft of this one and next door's bedroom.

Neighbour was very understanding, and the owner of the house I was rewiring paid his decorator to fix the hole in the wall and redecorate next door.

And we put the shower on a different wall.

 

[batty]

All depends how good you are at plastering I can do bits to a reasonable standard but if it gets bad you may have to get a spread in. Always point things like this out in the quote. I state I will do the chases but decorating is to customers expense. You have to remember some customers think wires are magic and can be got in without chasing.

 

[OnOff]

Years ago my brother moved into a place where pretty much every socket on the ring was a single. He wanted them replaced by doubles so said if he chopped the boxes in would I wire them up. Soon heard a crash followed by effing and blinding from upstairs...............he's gone to enlarge a single in a bedroom............on a 4" wall................other side was the tiled bathroom. You get the idea!

Percussive chasing risks more damage of course. A proper wall chaser with diamond discs works a treat with little vibration BUT the dust is unreal unless you have proper extraction kit!

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

I have seen whole ceilings come down after downlights are fitted in lath & plaster. I get a letter signed by the client  warning of the potential problems if they insist on  us doing the job.

 

[sprocketflup]

Well my best "disaster" was when rewiring an old stone cottage.

I needed to drop a shower cable down the wall, which was (I thought) lined with timber studs then lath and plaster.

So up into the loft. There's a sheet of plasterboard on the wall. So I should be able to whack a hole in that to gain access into the wall cavity.

Whack with my hammer.  Whoops. I can see through into the cottage next door.

That's when we found out, it was ONLY a timber lath and plaster wall separating this one from next door, and due to different ceiling levels just a single sheet of plasterboard in between the loft of this one and next door's bedroom.

Neighbour was very understanding, and the owner of the house I was rewiring paid his decorator to fix the hole in the wall and redecorate next door.

And we put the shower on a different wall.

That is a corker Dave, and I have read that story before on here, but can you imagine how it would have panned out if the other cottages owners were in bad at the time? :slap

 

[Evans Electric]

Has anyone done a "Delboy & Rodney"  ??

I've had disasters in the past which stick with you and make you more careful .  You don't know you're doing it sometimes .  Like "Measure twice, cut once"

That sort of thing .

I went to measure an sub-main cable run , 70 sq.mm X4 core , fairly long run.......half way through measuring someone distracts me .... I forget that 5 mtrs round that corner and carry on . 

A week later we pull it in , and Yep... its 5 mtrs short !!    My fault  ..I was employed back then ...general taking of the Part Pee by other sparks and rollocking from gaffer ..but strangely , no one else ever wanted the job of measuring them .    However I never did it again .  

Also , not my fault this time , pulling in loads of armoureds at the Kidderminster Sewerage Farm , mostly in trenches .  Couple of guys are rolling a cable drum across the site from where it was dropped off .    They reach the top of an incline above where we are all waiting to set the drup up at the riverside.

A cry of "Look out"  and theres the drum barrelling down towards us , they've lost control of it ,   The forman  (Right pratt) shouts "Stop it!!!" 

Drum is now doing around 30 MPH towards us , so we all step aside and it barrells past us , straight into the River Stour .   I had a vision of it skipping across like  the Dam Buster's bouncing bomb , but it sank like a ........cable drum.

I'm afraid , John M , theres only one way to gain experience ...and thats to experience it . 

You can have years of experience behind you ... but tomorrow it could all go mammeries up .

Edit :   I just remembered running a single phase supply miles through a factory, heading for this Dist.Bd  which had some spare ways in it . 

           After a days work I reached the board, ready to gland it off , open the door again and theres no neutral ,  just 3 ph only.  But again , ypou live and learn .

 

[Robin Spark]

Working late christmas 2011 up in the loft at the dental pharmacy, had nothing to eat for hours and was a bit tired.  Virtually got to a point where I needed to be before packing up and walked casually across the temporary loft boards i had placed up there to fetch my screwdriver.  I continued to walk past the boards and then....drum roll ......

I went straight through the ceiling and would have ended up in the dentists chair if it wasnt for the florrie that stopped me from going any further.

The staff there continue to take the pee everytime they see me asking me if i have put my foot through anything recently!  At least it seems funny now but it wasnt at the time!

 

[betty swollocks]

I was completing a rewire when the man from sky came to install dish, customer had just paid the have PVC cladding installed to replace the knackered cladding on the front of the house and sky man wanted to clip the cable down over the cladding, I suggested it would look shocking and better if he brought it down the side of the cladding and underneath into the house at about the same height he was going to drill anyway, sky guy says nah to much time il leave it if that's what you wanna do and cuts cable and leaves saying he'll be back when customer moves in .... So I neatly clip cable down side of cladding (couldn't be seen...nice) then drills through wall into house.... Ohh that's not going through, pulls drill out to find high pressure water shoots out 10 yards into the garden, runs inside and turns stop tap off.... Water still shooting out unabated! Luckily plumber arrives and goes into street to turn it off there but the trap is full of debris and he can't access the tap...... Water still shooting into garden so I calls water board, 15 minutes later guy arrives and digs out trap, takes 30mins and he uses 3 screw on attachments before hitting the tap ..... I would never have found it, apparently the incoming water had been ran in the cavity from the front door all the way round the house and finally out the wall in the kitchen, the pipe was 20mm and I hit it square on, water board never charged me because the trap should have been accessible and the plumber fixed it as a favour. I still have the 6" bit of pipe in the door of the van as a reminder to never try to be helpful again.....

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Theres a thread about mistakes here somewhere, but to repeat a post i made,Iwas drilling a hole through a lath & plaster wall at low level. Used a flat bit through the skirting  but it wasn't long enough so i bludgeoned my 12mm sds through, thinking i would open it up after with the flat bit. It was hard going but i did it. When i looked on the other side i had drilled right through an antique  4 poster beds leg. I filled the hole with mud.

 

[ProDave]

On the subject of miss understanding specifications:

This was when I had only been self employed for a couple of years so was still learning the responsibility you have when you are doing everything.

I was wiring a loft conversion. I had laid in cables for a ring final, a lighting circuit and a shower from the CU on the ground floor up to the loft.

The plans showed a "Boiler" in a cupboard. That will be okay from an FCU off the ring final.

When I came to second fix it, the "boiler" was a in fact a dual immersion heater off peak hot water tank.  Whoops, no cable for an immersion heater.  and all the floors had been covered in laminate flooring so no hope of pulling in an extra cable.

I solved that one, by splitting the ring and using 1 leg as a 20A radial for the sockets (it was only one bedroom in the loft) and the other leg of the ring became the immersion heater feed, with a local timer for the off peak element.

So when you work for yourself, check, check and check again the specifications to avoid embarrassments.

 

[JOHN M]

Ha ha

I wish i never asked, im more worried now than when i started. :B- ​ I suppose all you can is research as much as possible, learn as much as possible and just get stuck in and deal with the problems as they happen ( hopefully none of the above though)

John

 

[kerching]

Spent ages fishing a cable through a wall and down the cavity ( back in the day I may add)

Job finished....phone call following day......I had sort of drilled through the bedroom wall and fished the cable behind the wardrobe WHOOPS!

Had to get earth wire from mains to water stop tap. Took kitchen plinth off, 1 m SDA bit through wall...needed the length as it was under a corner unit.

10 mm SDS bit dead centre through a 10 mm water pipe that fed the toilet......WHOOPS

this one wasn't me.....car ramp connected wrong phase rotation. When it went down ( ramps usually installed and left with the table at half way). The limit switch did not work as it was expecting the ramp to go up, and it screwed itself out of the floor

 

[Blue Duck]

Recently In a sleep deprived & starving state I Dismantled the wrong remote timer for an outdoor light and Couldn't wire it back up because nothing was identified, eventually I figured out how It was wired.

I got another timer tried that, didn't work, then another didn't work so went about testing the switches checked 6 switches, all fine.

About ready to give up all together and the customer opens the door to the garden (Shared house, Corridor to access garden) and there is another switch on the inside wall!

Tested that... beep! In the bin that went and all was fine It did take nearly a whole day though!

All funny stories guys, very educational too

 

[alpha spark]

Had one other week went to price a job up she wanted a outside socket wiring there was a washing machine on outside wall so I pulled it out to have a look behind when the washing machine hose came clean off hear this gush of water and started flooding the kitchen of course no body knew where the isolating tap was luckily I found it after a dash. It cost me £3.89 to replace it.

And I got the job was shocked really

 

[BlueFlashAsh]

well im the same as john in college struggling to get experience iv been doing bits for friends and family when i can round work. id love to do apprenticeship but simply cant afford it with the misses baby car etc. i have been worried about the same thing to, the what ifs. but after reading all these im **** scared but can see even the worse f-ups can be fixed and make awesome stories down the line thanks guys

 

[Evans Electric]

One reason for Self Employed Insurance  Blueflash .

A painter in this area was stripping paint with a gas torch, outside a house , up a ladder.    He was called away and left the gas burner going on a ledge , it set fire to a bird's nest which set fire to the roof joists and virtually gutted the house .

No one injured but I never discovered if he was insured or not .     I've noted over the years that many one-man-bands, whatever trade , do not carry proffsional Insurance.  

 

[theBANKERSareGANGSTERS]

One reason for Self Employed Insurance  Blueflash .

No one injured but I never discovered if he was insured or not .     I've noted over the years that many one-man-bands, whatever trade , do not carry proffsional Insurance.  

 I'm a Carpet Fitter, I've always been insured for Public Liability, can't see why not, £80 a year, only claimed once.

Which brings me on to my first mishap, long story short didn't sleep a wink one night, not so much as resting my eyes for five minutes, on the way to the first job I fell asleep at the front of a Que at a set of traffic lights, not a good sign.  Anyway fitting the lounge carpet doing a long heat-seamed join, pulling the heat-seamer along pulling the carpet together and got to the end of the join and put the heat-seamer back on its pad, while I attended to finishing of the join, only to turn round to see I had put the heat-seamer directly onto the carpet and burnt a nice square brown shape into the carpet, thats what insurance is for.The  Moral of that story, never have an all night blazing row with your mrs and go to work, go to the pub instead. Guinness

Next is not really something that went wrong , more of a once in a lifetime event  (maybe twice) of loosing it, and swearing at a customer. Not something I'm proud of, more a reflex reaction. In the process of clearing the room to fit a lounge carpet, there was a trail of 2.5mm Twin &earth that went from one side of a doorway to the other, being all proper I advised the customer that I could not fit it under the carpet, I then proceeded to pull the plug out with my right hand and then put it with the pins of the plug into the palm of my left hand.

What the cupid stunt had done, was put a plug on one end of the wire into a socket, put a plug on the other end of the wire and plugged it into a double socket, to create an extension. "You f***@@@k~~##g w@@**?R" I said, lucky it was AC. It still makes me angry now whist I laugh shaking my head. The moral of the story and I'm no electrician, is check it ain't live then check again.

  I could go on, I'll save it for another time perhaps, opcorn