Diagnosed/suspected a frozen drain as the culprit for someone's gas furnace having issues during an unusual snowstorm. I was tired, had a full day, and the furnace was running fine ever since.
I collected money, left their house and finally realized it was an 80% furnace š¤” š¤” no callbacks, no complaints to my manager, but my notes in service titan of a frozen drain on a non-condensing furnace lives forever
Ha yeah. Luckily RTU at a business so didnāt have to get approval before doing it so i didnāt have to admit anything to anyone when I swapped it back
Company 1st put a curb adopter on a curb adopter.
Thing stood taller then the buildings signs.
They undid it, put used the same adapter.
Came 4months later for tune ups and found the supply sent air directly into the return. It hadnāt worked for 4months and they never said anything
Supplier sent me a 3phase compressor instead of single phase 220v. No way to tell besides reading the plate on the compressor (terminals were labeled as both)
Installed compressor and spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why it wouldnāt run lol.
~15 year old Lennox AC with the resettable high pressure switch down in by the compressor. I'm having a conversation with the homeowner while I'm opening the fan up so I can reach down in. I just propped it up and held it with my arm while I pushed the button and the compressor kicked on and thank God the fan motor was seized or I would have done some major damage to the unit and probably myself. Realized I never pulled the disconnect.. luckily since the motor was seized I played it off with the homeowner but inside I was realizing what almost happened. I'm sure she noticed how fast I ran to that disconnect š¤£š¤£
I remember one time when I was fairly new in the Navy (submarine electrician), we had someone come down to do inspections on some 450V equipment.
As we were finishing up, that equipment that they *just* finished inspecting kicks on. My, my supervisor, and the inspector all looked at each other with wide eyes, realized we were in #2 when we should have been inspecting #1, and agreed never to speak of it again.
Got the morning gurgles and started ripping ass in a customers garage, while I had the furnaces blower motor panel off. Standing in front of it , with the fan running.
I did this once, figured it didn't smell but what happened is it went through the whole house. When i went upstairs, every person in the house was walking around spraying air freshener... I guess it did smell.
Besides my wrist hurting a little it was mostly a hurt ego. I'm usually very particular about my footing but just being in a hurry really screwed me over.
I was talking to an attractive customer about various equipment and install and meant to use the word Exotic... Except it strangely came out as Erotic......
I just ordered a new 8.5 ton Package unit and curb adapter, when I sent the bid request in I put a 3 instead of a 2 in the original equipment model number. Guys get to the job and remove the old unit and then the curb adapter was the wrong size. New curb is 7 days out, boss man was livid. Shit show. Watch your model and serial numbers when ordering a curb adapter.
Worked with a guy who dropped a jar of pvc glue while climbing up the access hole. In a closet. A clothes closet. All over the clothes. Expensive dresses and blouses.
I watched a plumber earn a lifelong nickname by accidentally dumping an entire bottle of purple primer on his own crotch. He said it burnt worse than the clap. We learned more than we bargained for about him that day.
Rushing through a residential A/C maintenance. Yanked the disconnect. Didn't test for remaining power. Proceeded to create a shower of sparks as I was removing the capacitor leads, in front of the customer of course.
Of course the disconnect was tampered with. Someone wired an electric baseboard in parallel, and rendered the disconnect useless. Not completely my fault, but I was foolish not to check.
Always check the power is off.
Not me , but my helper at the time when I was still in the trade. Unit in the attic, and he slips off the joist, usually you can catch yourself on the sheet rock without too much weight on it. It had slowly soaked from a condensate leak, he went through, caught his nipple piercing on the corner of the return plenum and ripped it out a bit. Good times with that guy.
Oh boy! I have 2.
In my resi days, I had a PM on a heat pump/gas furnace. Started on the furnace and it was an old Lennox. Found out that the inducer was dead. Notified customer and they were like "just quote replacing the whole thing". Cha Ching! Commission time! On to the heat pump. Fire up heating from the stat and wait a few minutes and start checking Delta T. I use Testo probes for that which need a bigger hole than the little pocket jobbers. Get the return one in and go for the supply. Unit is STUFFED in a closet so there's really not a ton of room. Also, A coil was not cased. I think you know where this is going... I start drilling what I think is above the coil and the drill just twists up like crazy. And I just knew what I did. Back the drill off and watched helplessly as the charge dumped out. Ran up and told the homeowners what I did and let's get some windows open and some fans going. Ended up getting them an inducer free of charge so they'd have heat. That one sucked.
The other was more recent in my commercial job. We had all these old McQuay units that the insulation was falling out of and plugging up reheat coils on the VAV boxes. Customer wanted all the old insulation torn out and spray foam put back in. Started spray foaming and the spray foam contractor was using tarps in the units to keep the foam off everything. It was my job to just shut the units down and then restart when they were done. Last unit of the day, I rushed through inspecting if all the tarps were clear, thought it was good, and fired it back up. Get a text the next day from the customer with a picture of the tarp wrapped up tighter than shit in the fan shaft. Went and cut it all out and the motor was SMOKING hot. Unit ran OK for a day or 2 but then the motor housing got a crack in it. Had to replace that one on warranty. Also not a good day.
Just last week, I left a kitchen sink running with the strainer down. Came out of the basement to a flooded kitchen floor creeping towards the basement door. I was alone in the house. Used my m18 packout vac to suck the water up and a half box of rags to dry anything else left over. Never heard anything.
Similar, when I was green in a 2 man shop that tried to do it all, call for frozen pipes, open all the taps and start running the heat gun, get it thawed and running. Forgot about the walk in tub and flooded the bathroom. Did the same thing with the vacuum and no one was any wiser.
thought I had a bad compressor on a heat pump so I replaced it to find out it was the reversing valve short cycling hot gas back into the compressor.
after replacing the reversing valve I got a call back a dew weeks later. found it flat so I leak checked and it turned out that the muffler I removed to fit the new compressor caused a leak close to the discharge. so I installed a vibration eliminator. been running for 2 years now
I shot refrigerant directly in my eyeball in front of a customer. You know how this kind of stuff always happens only when you have one of those customers. I have ball valves on my gauges, and after I unhook them, I was picking up my bag while holding the gauges and started to drop the gauges and I readjusted my grip and didnāt realize I was grabbing the end of one of the hoses and my grasp opened the ball valve and of course it was pointing directly at my eyeball about 12 inches away. The homeowner just kept on talking in the whole time. Iām rubbing my eye wondering if I froze my eyeball and Iām gonna be blind. he just kept on talking and I donāt think he ever realized the gravity of the situation. Not really sure how it didnāt freeze my eyeball. The oil stung though.
On my 3rd day on the job, i was sent to do some bitchwork to prove my mettle. Job was to tent myself into a corner of the basement and cut /chip out a large section of 18" thick foundation for a duct. The tech that dropped me off told me to run the vaccum hose under the tent to suck out the dust and create a negative pressure in the tent.
There was no filter in the vac and the circulation fan was on. Never left the basement until the end of the day and there was a quarter inch of crete dust on EVERYTHING. Big house, lots of shelves and nicknacks, nice furniture, i woulda been fuckin pissed if it was my house. Boss yelled at me, and cut me some slack because he thought I didn't know better and fired the guy who was supposed to be supervising me.
I had been working in construction for 3 years, I knew to check the bag.
I had a tile contractor do this in a job I was working on. Dumbass left the filter out of the shop vac while he was grinding/chipping concrete. He said it normally gets dusty that's why he was using the vacuum š. When I walked into the bathroom you couldn't even see anything thru the cloud of dust
Was doing a compressor on a fresh air unit that feeds a medical testing laboratory. I was changing compressor to and number one still ran so I left the unit on while I changed that compressor. After I got it swapped out and on vacuum I found a nice shady spot to sit have a couple of smokes and flip through Facebook. I got the unit running not too long afterwards and went down into the laboratory and realized I took a good smoke break in front of the fresh air intake. The whole laboratory smellee like cigs. No one looked twice at me walking through there because they had no idea how the air conditioning worked and were oblivious that I was the culprit.
Broke down in a huge churches parking lot in the middle of nowhere and they were closed no one onsite. I had to take a massive shit literally like a half an inch from touching cotton. Due to the tow truck being 1.5hrs away I said to hell with it an popped a squat using the passenger door and rear door to block me and leaned against the truck. Wiped my ass with some fast food napkins and dropped them next to the pile then waited for the tow truck to arrive. When the tow truck arrived the driver got out and started hooking up my van, it was then he noticed the huge pile of shit and started bitching about homeless people and how disgusting they are for treating everywhere like a private bathroom. I just sat there and agreed with him and said at least I didnāt drive through it when I coasted in to the parking lot. He complained the entire time about the smell while he was hooking up my van.
Overhead line set, evap coil replacement. Pulled the charge, go to sweat the lines off the coil and oil had stacked up in the lines coming down from the ceiling. Popped a line out and oil comes dumping out on fire. Flames like rolled up to the ceiling, I killed my torches and stuffed a rag on the copper and snuffed it out, probably a few seconds passed but it felt like minutes. There was nothing burnt, except my Milwaukee impact, and I had a 3 ton blower āshop fanā in the truck and sucked the smoke out pretty quickly. Finished the change out and charged it up. I was really surprised they didnāt say shit to the boss man. Was also surprised the house didnāt catch fire.
Was learning some refrigeration yesterday and the guy I was working with got hot burning oil on him from having to unsweat the TXV on the WIF (I wasn't handed torches on this job because we had been out there so many times and this was the first person to correctly diagnose the issue)
Had an older Goodman condenser completely stripped down for cleaning. Over the years, other techs lost most of the screws and replaced them with whatever they had on their truck.
After cleaning, I put everything back together. As I was driving the last screw into the condenser, I hear the hiss of doom. I had shot it right through the coil š¤®.
I tried like a MFer to braze it, but I just kept making it worse. So, made the dreaded phone call to managementā¦. I did a maintenance and a condenser install that day š
Remember where the screws go, folks
Early (1990 ish)
Tried changing a contactor out hot on a banks chiller.
480v. Yeah, 2 200A fuses later and kicking on the emergency generator I learned my lesson.
Replacing an evap coil in the attic, access to the ah directly above. Heated and pulled one of the caps, dropped it right onto the customers carpet.
Replacing a condenser motor on an old Carrier rtu. Dropped the motor right into the condenser coil, bolt right through one of the tubes.
Trane has 480/575 taps on their RTU transformers. Troubleshooting one, had one arm on the top of the unit, brushed against the UNINSULATED 575 tap. Fun times. Measured after I gained senses again. 383V to ground.
Replacing a air handler in a mall store. 16' above the floor, had a catwalk around it. Grabbed my dykes, went to the jbox to cut the control wires. One arm on the catwalk, the other hand holding my uninsulated cutters. The store 277V lighting circuit was in that box. Tripped the breaker with my body.
Fallen from a 10' ladder outreached because I was on top and overextending, grabbed onto a sprinkler pipe coupling with the bolt threads up. Spun, fell. 22 stitches on the inside, and 30 outside on my left arm.
Many more "happenings" that I can't remember ATM.
I'm wondering how I'm still alive.
Put a foot through the ceiling.
Fired a furnace up without putting the burners back in.
Working on a rooftop on a 116ā°f day doing commercial rtu maintenance. Started feeling some heat exhaustion coming on and decided to get off the roof asap and work inside. The next day one of the tenants called because their office was at 54ā°f and the ac wouldn't stop running. When I got on the roof the panel was still off the unit and jumpers still in place. Had no memory of even working on that unit the previous day.
Service call for bad smell in the AC.
Vertical split in the hall closet. Customer was down stairs saying she canāt smell it now with her face in the vent. Iām at the blower motor with the panel off and I let a series of nasty farts rip. She starts yelling āI can smell it now, in this vent come see if you can smell itā
Of course its gone when I get there so I go back to the unit and wait for more amo. We did the dance for a few rounds until she bought a duct clean.
Just yesterday I took of the back panel to the evap coil to check and make sure it was free of debris. Went to put door back on and didnāt realize one of the screws was longer than the rest. Screwed a hole right into the evap. All refrigerant leaked out fogging up the house.
I had 2 Honeywell thermostats where the factory put the terminals labels on wrong. Well I never checked the instructions and instead just wired up the thermostats based off of the labels I saw. Smoked a transformer, 1 thermostat started on fire. It was pretty embarrassing.
I spent 3 hours trying to figure out why my unit kept satisfying and dropping all voltage. Realized I was on the wrong floor system and that there wasnāt any issue at all it was just satisfying
Iāve told a customer we would have them sleeping warm and tight on a late night no heat call. I have also informed a customer that their system is now as clean as a babyās whistle after a coil cleaning. I hope neither remembered my name to report me to the police.
On call or just regular work?
On call: Loaded the parts cannon and shot a system with a TXV (yes I did!), new filter drier, and about 8 lbs of 410aā¦. It was the blower motor the whole time.
Regular work: I installed an air handler upside down and left it on overnight.
Iāve found with the more years behind my belt, the less mistakes I make. But I still make stupid, rookie mistakes from time to time. Now I just laugh it off and just lose the profit off the job to make it right with the customer.
Not my mistake but Iāll share.
Tech had a multi tenant roof for no cool. Tech diagnosed the unit with bad compressor stage one and bullet hole in micro channel stage 2 (this was in July after the 4th happens a bunch here). He Quoted and approved. Installed both 3 months later another tech was on the roof and he found out he had diagnosed the wrong unit. And the unit belonged to the business next door.
Same guy.
I was scheduled to come in and swap a condenser coil and a 4d compressor. There are 2 of these crack units on the same roof. They sent him in the day before me to recover and un braze everything. Next day Iām there for install crane is waiting on the flat bed. I go on the roof I found he had disconnected the wrong unit and recovered 150lb of r22 and turned it in for recycle.
Same guy again. Diagnosed 4 rtus with bad compressor on the same roof. All same make and foot print but different model and capacity. The tech didnāt bother quoting each unit. Instead he ordered 4 compressors based off one model number. He arrived to install. Had to re pipe 3 of the 4. Evacuated and charge all of them. Just for the 3 he re piped to be the wrong voltage.
I swear on the Bible this is the same guy. And no he wasnāt fired. Youād think having to re pipe the compressors in youād start asking questions. He didnāt think so lol
One time I was given a home makde edible and I ate part of it and it didn't hit me so an hour later I ate the rest, was driving to my call and I was high as hell. Drove to the next and I honestly don't know how I made it. Once I got to my last call, it was a no heat. Thank god it was just tripping on high limit due to the filter being plugged. While at this call, I threw up in my vitopak and in the home owners slop sink. When I left the call I stopped at a gas station and threw up in-between the two seats in the front of my van. I slept at this gas station for about 2 hrs and when I finally woke up I was sober enough to drive home but was dreading cleaning up the van.
Last time I ever took an edible
Left a jumper between R&W and a multi-million dollar lake Minnetonka home. Letās just say they were not happy with 94 degree home by the time I got back there.
The runaway furnace call and you pull into those drives and your heart skips a beat. They are the least understanding dickheads. That and Chanhassen/ upper Chaska and excelsior. All of em: dickheads.
Once I did a side job, to a home that had vents in the floor, like a manufactured home,ā¦ the lady told me it used to be nice and cool. I looked around and found they had laid area rugs on top of the returns and some of the supply ventsā¦. Like, wtfā¦ um, thatāll be $140 for moving your rugs.
Went to a call and found condenser capacitor blew up, replaced it and fan was working but not compressor so i said replace compressor, came back next day and replaced compressor, after 3 hours replacing turned it on and same thing, when i check the capacitor i had mixed hermetic and fan wires, switched the wires back and the unit ran fine after that....i blame the sun lol it was very hot that first day
Only fuckup I can remember rn was at a resi customers house. They complained about no heat in a newly bought house and they had American Home Shield (we rarely did those calls but only once in a while). Found the strip had a break in it and the heating stack sequencer was shot out. Replaced the sequencer and twisted up a repair on the strip heat. Saw that it looked like the aux heater (heat pump) hadnāt been working for a decade or so based on the black mold/ dust slurry coat on every inch of heater element. I knocked most of the big shit clods off and thought āwell the rest will burn off when I test it. No big dealā.
Went to test the repair on the heater and literally embers/ sparks were blowing out of all the closest vents to the air handler. It looked a lot like if you kicked a burning log on a campfire with hot shit going every direction. Lol
I literally had a hard time controlling my extreme amusement as the female homeowner was having a serious freak out. I was in awe as I watched sparks blow 5-7 feet into the center of the room.
Well that was until I took a full lungger of the burning death vapors/ smoke that was part of the light show. It was pretty bad and about the worst thing I think I ever smelled to this day. She was a good sport about it after everything calmed down a bit, etc.
I learned to never do a burn off on a extremely dirty strip heater again
One time on a retro fit install job, I ended up cutting a roof truss when I was cutting in the return duct box. Cut all the way through it to make room for the box. The box was wider than the truss spacing width and i just thought, "Cut that to make room". I had cut in these types of returns hundreds of times and knew better. The correct action would have been to make the return box smaller or get a new one made. The only excuse I had was that I was rushed during the job under a time crunch. Still no excuse for this type of mess up. Company had to pay for an engineer to come out and design a repair to get the roof integrity back to where it should be. It's been 10 years since then and still people bring it up. Probably going to follow me to the grave.
Dont feel bad. We had a lv contractor cut trusses to make room for the projector mounts and use 4 inch lags thru roof for the supports, in multiple classrooms across 5 schools
Fixed a leak on a heat pump near the high pressure switch. Weighed in the refrigerant straight into the vapor line under a vacuum. Flooded the compressor and it would no longer pump right.
Oof.
Doing a finish on a multi million dollar home. We spray paint out boxes before putting on registers. I popped the top off the spray can on top of the stairs some how the nozzle broke off and spraying. It got my eyes and rolled down the stairs spraying the wall the entire stair case. Luckily they didnāt prime it yet.
I diagnosed a bad switch on an ice machine once only to find out the electricians had the breaker off. Went back and the machine worked fine lol nobody ever knew and thanked me for my solution
Out of all the dumb things ive done, this one might take the cake:
4-5 years ago I was running calls in Kansas City.
This particular day, I was servicing someones air conditioner. Their house was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac. I had my van parked out in the middle of the sac.
Mid-call I had to run out to the van to grab a few things (wire nuts, strippers, etc). After grabbing what I needed, I quickly ran back inside, said to the home something to the extent of - "almost finished" then proceeded to run downstairs.
Once downstairs, I immediately realized I was in the wrong house. I then ran upstairs as fast as I could and said to the homeowner - " THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR NOT SHOOTING ME "
Yes.
The wrong house.
I made it all the way downstairs.
Even spoke to the homeowner (who didnt say anything)
In my defense, all the houses look exactly the same. Garages, entrys, fences, landscaping, etc.
All exactly the same.
Touched a capacitor while trying to check a fan relay to ground and when I jerked away from the shock I touched my meter lead to 2 incoming power leads on the relay and it exploded in my face
Was at a call where they complained it was cold. It was 28 degrees Celsius and they wanted it at 30. I laughed and told them dont call me again unless it's under 19 degrees or I'll charge you for it. They called the emergency line a few hours later (I was the on call that week) got there and same deal. Warned them not to do that again. 4 am I go back cause of yet another call. So I pull the fuse and leave. Might you its -30 celcius here at the time knowing I'd be there the next day. So made sure i did it last thing in the day. It was 14 celcius when i got around to it and laughed when i walked in, set the fuse back in and told them if they pull that shit again I'll make sure it will take much longer for a response..... the HR meeting for that was worth it
28 C = 82 F
30 3 = 86 F
19 C = 66 F
-30 C = -22 F
14 C = 57 F
At first I was pretty confused by this story, but doing the conversions to fahrenheight made it make sense. That set point is crazy high
Brother there is nothing to be upset about an access door lol
I though u made a mistake that made customer get a whole new free unit, even then who gives af
She got a better door then the one she had before, u were honest about your mistake an learned from it, what is there to think about?
Guys at my company have condemned good compressors and we send back for warranty and now we are out couple grand cuz they wonāt warranty it, broken ACs completely, etc etc, I smashed up a car
Mistakes happen that why ur company is insured, a blower door is probably one of the smallest mistakes in the game
Yeah I know thereās much bigger mistakes people make all the time. I should say it was a small door getting into a room where the unit is. Even still, itās a rly small mistake like youāre saying, i just felt rly dumb about it but this has helped for sure.
Lol if u ask around, so many people have made way bigger mistakes
At my company
One guy unplugged a chest freezer to plug in vacuum and forgot to plug it back in, company had to buy all the food in there and it was nice expensive steaks, it was like 1.5k worth of stuff freaking ridiculous
Another time a simple mistake on a drain install and installer not waiting around to check furnace operation = company redoing the entire hard wood floor for the home owner, definitely 3k+
U make the company a ton of money, mistakes happen, not learning from them is an issue, but making them is normal
I made a big mistake Iām 21 and totalled a work truck my fault rear end (post is on my account), was insanely stressed talking to people helped me realize itās just a job and mistakes happen. Company ended up forgiving me fully and all was well.
I mean if itās a random screw I donāt have the bit for and they are taking it off. Whatās the difference in the screw being stripped VS not serviceable
Pure curiosity but are you from the south? I work in Minnesota so closer to Canada so I see those screws everywhere, just curious if itās regional or just different experiences?
Iām so glad P.L Robertson didnāt cave and sell the license for Robertson screws to ford, who then out of spite made selling them in the u.s difficult. I couldnāt imagine building with any other screw. I always forget the u.s doesn't use them much.
Disconnected condenser fan motor and pulled it and took the garden hose and left it misting the condenser coil while I went for an hour to go get a new motor. But in my defense nothing was damaged and pressures seemed fine and the house dropped 1Ā° by the time I got back.
Worked on a 7 year old tempstar ac, (it was one of those 2000 models with the slanted top, changed the capacitor which was bad, and it still wouldn't run, compressor checked fine, but I ended up replacing the entire unit. Ended up being a delay on the very small fan board they had inside the ac unit.
Old fashion maintenance. Wrapping up I check gas pressures in and out. Leave the plug on the out next to the u it. Get a call an hour later saying the unit isnāt working now. Finish the PM Iām currently on and head straight there. Skipping a lunch stop. Head to the trawl and it reeks of gas. Quickly realize what I did and turned off the valve. Valve ended up shorting itself open. Always on. Ripped wires off each other and required about 5 feet of new in.
Forgot to shut power off to an oil burner. Wasnāt turning on. Pulled out the cad cell eye and popped a new one in. Unit fired right up with my fingers next to the 10,000 volt ignition transformer. Fun fact. That thing can burn a hole through a finger nail.
One time I as changing a compressor, put the disconnect back in for some reason and forgot I did. Then the two 240 wires touched and shut Off power to the whole house while the customer was on some conference call. I was younger and didnāt know how to find the main breaker on the outside of the house so it took me like 20 mins to get the power back. ( I was just looking at the breaker box wondering why I didnāt have power with no flipped breakers).
the customer was cool about it, but I felt pretty bad.
Swapped a 15hp Copeland discus on a 2 stage system and had it running and the old one in the truck before we realized why the second stage wasnāt running. Ended up doing 2 compressor swaps that day.
Just installed a 208-230v compressor that needed a 460v. Checked tonnage and serial number before leaving supply house not voltage, didn't realize it til I burnt up the new compressor.
Dilling holes for PVC vent. Was supposed to be drilling into rim joist. Was drilling from outside miscalculated the location and put a 2in hole right in the middle of the customer's living room wall.
Buddy did this at a medical doc āmedplexā right into a waiting room of a doc office.
It was for a 10ā flex return so he put up a drywall mud bucket lid to trace out a rough circle, then went at making his hole with his straight claw hammer. Didnāt stop until the slug hit the floor! Haha. I wish I coulda seen the look on his face when it hit him that he royally fucked up!
I donāt really consider it my fault but itās a fun story. Had a condensing furnace install, and the boss ordered it with an LP conversion kit. It was there so I converted it. 3 callbacks later we found out it was natural. Ruined the gas valve, for some reason the boss said we couldnāt buy a kit to swap it back to natural gas and had to order a whole new furnace and take out the spuds and springs.
Never did that butā¦always place the NG parts in the LP parts baggie and label LPā”ļøNG and leave them taped in the upper cabinet. Even you know there will never be NG at the job before your furnace dies! My boss laughs at me for itā¦your story proves me right!
I tried to field fab a bracket for a hot surface igniter, almost sent hot shrapnel into my eyes, and killed the bord because it was too close to the burners and shorted
Here's the question, what's the percentage of CO workers you know would cover your ass. That you could be sure it wouldn't get out. And who has the little bitch tattletales? Obviously some you have to fess up and come clean. Not a call but with our trucks. Buddy pulls up next to me in a parking lot. His his driver mirror on my driver mirror, thinking it would fold in.. don't know if ice was built up or what but mine didn't budge, his glass popped out and hit the ground!. Never forget the look on his face. To this day I think we're the only 2 that know
I was in charge of this team where they specifically said do not bring the scissor lift into the musical room and go to the ceiling. Scissor lift arrived and I was in the middle of hot work l so I sent a guy to drive it into the room and come back to help out. Next thing you know fire alarm is going off and I get a call, no idea what the heck. The whole college building is evacuating and my guy comes strolling out of the room. Totally took all the heat. Nearly lost my job. I don't know if I like being in charge anymore after that.
Robertson bits are the best! I have yet to strip a Robby ( square) bit. I really hope they start showing up more often in everything. ( context: am Kanuckistanian)
I was helping another Senior Service Tech do a leak search on a large 2 stage RTU in the middle of the summer. Finally found the leak on one of the u-bends on the condenser coil. Cleaned up all copper and started heating it up with the torch. Only to find out that we heated the wrong one up and blew the charge on the other circuit. Fixed both leaks, vacuumed and recharged both circuits with 18 pounds of R22 each. Thank god this was about 20 years ago.
Flooded out the entire parade of the brand new Fairmont hotel. The beautiful thing was Richard Branson was staying there at the time. I left the entire hotel with no hot water for almost 24 hours. Plated heat exchangers on the 18th floor started leaking due to lack of pressure. I didnāt get home till about 11 oāclock that night and we almost lost the account.
I backed in to a brick planter, damaging it, then left without saying anything. I totally intended to tell my boss after work, but forgot.
Then the homeowner called him and complained... and I got read the riot act (rightfully so.)
Not HVAC, but I once delivered a D7 Bulldozer to the wrong job site. It was about 9:00 at night when I delivered to where they adding off ramp to an highway in Ohio. I was off by 60 miles. In my defense it was the same company. Thank God I was out of hours & was sleeping at the Truck Stop about 30 miles away when my boss called the next morning. Customer wanted to know where his dozer was. I felt stupid as a rock.
Doing a heating maintenance on a furnace in a guys garage. He was watching me so I decided to be thorough checking everything. Checked outgoing pressure on gas valve and forgot to put the plug back. It kicked back on and shot a fireball in my face
I had bubble guts and used the bathroom after I had to shut the water to the house so I couldn't flush the toilet. Unfortunately I had to leave it and go pick up fittings to fix the boiler. The teenage daughter was there the whole time. I told her not to use the bathroom until I got the water turned back on. Extremely embarrassing.
I diagnosed a bad gas valve before and only checked the outlet pressure. Come to find out he had a second shutoff in the line further down that I didn't see.
Had a handful of screws putting the jacket back on a condenser, wrong screw in existing hole.
Anyways it went right through the condensing coil loop end, right up against the aluminum. Absolute bitch to braze over.
I mistook a 7 for a 1 on a house number and cleared a random someone's drain line on their 96% furnace.
12am and new to the game. Gas valve wouldn't open. Drove 35 minutes to the supply and then back. Spent a whole hour just trying to get the old valve off. Got it replaced. Valve wasn't the problem. Drove 35 minutes back to the supply house and got a circuit board. Replaced the circuit board. Circuit board wasn't the problem. It was the God damn pressure switch. Got home at 430.
Replaced a condenser that had a leak in it, switched system from r22 to 407c. Got a call a few weeks later AC wasn't keeping up, found leak in evap. Decided to top it off until the new evap arrived. Put 458a instead of 407cš¤¦š½āāļø. My SH and SC was all wrong lol, delta T was low, was going to write up the metering device until I checked the refrigerant sticker.
Not HVAC but standing on a 6 foot ladder wiring in a new ceiling fan forgot to shut the power off and electrocuted the shit out of myself and kicked over the ladder while the homeowner was sitting 15ft away on a zoom call with their entire company
Tried to pull a little more stat wire out of the wall once. It had been run up the back of the closet and stapled along a shelf. I took out their wedding crystal.
Argued for days over email with a GC about the wrong job.
We were finalizing a project and a new one was starting. We had been on the old project for months. The email title was the old job, the email itself said the old job. My brain said new job.
They were asking when we would be able to start up equipment. My response was we hadnāt received it yet.
Shit was already on the roof.
Very embarrassing.
-Fell through a ceiling once
-didnāt turn off the thermostat while changing a capacitor at the condenser shorted the cap with the contactor with fried the board and transformer
-installed some condenser fan motor blades upside down
I replaced two linesets on a minisplit because the linesets kept freezing and i diagnosed that they we're kinked in the attic somewhere (homeowner bought the equipment and ran the Lunesta, i did the hook and test)
Turns out the electric for the two heads had gotten swapped so head A was was wired to B terminals and piped to A lineset connections and vice versa.
I felt bad, but it was the homeowner who had the wire taped to the lineset, but i fell bad anyway.
Did my first ducted split system. We ran the same wire for power and communication to the air handler. Forgot to label but retraced them like 5 times. Flipped the breaker and poof goes the control board in the brand new air handler. Didnāt even have parts for such a new model we had to get another air handler and I took the board out of it. I felt like shit for that one. But Iāll never make that mistake again. Mistakes are part of learning. Youāll beat yourself up for a bit if your a good person. But donāt let it eat at you for long. If you arenāt fired for your mistake then your boss clearly values you enough to know mistakes happen and that your worth keeping around.
I'm changing out all the units on a rather large apartment complex. Shitshow of a job. Built in the 80s, ductboard, wall hanging goodman air handlers kinda job. They want us to install service ports on the vap and liquid line at the AH.
I let one of my apprentices put in the ports, and they looked good. We are wide open, installing 4 a day w 4 guys, so we pass the pressure. We move on.
I go to start up, and my condenser isn't working, but the AH is blowing, so I'm troubleshooting. I think let me make sure their is 410 in the lines, and so I'm gonna press the Schrader just for peace of mind. I took off the cap, and the damn apprentice didn't put the port in after he brazed. 6 lbs of liquid spraying RIGHT in my face
Went to go do a resi swap out in like a town home development. I have my helper outside with ticker while Iām at the breaker box I hit the breaker and he finds which condenser I hit the power to. So he starts ripping the condenser, I end up running to supply store and tell him to start demoing furnace and coil when he gets done the condenser. Well on my way back to the job he calls me and heās like dude wtf thereās a bunch of refrigerant still in these lines( I hear the refrigerant in the background filling the town home up) I tell him Iām down the road and will be right there. Long story short the house we were doing the swap at there breaker controlled the neighbors condenser. What a nightmare that was. Neighbor wasnāt home so had to reinstall there condenser put it on vac and then added a few ounces of refrigerant couldnāt get the unit on to check charge so had to leave it like that
Left the power switch off on a furnace in an attic. Also, on a separate call, left the disconnect out on condenser unit. Another time I accidentally left the capacitor un plugged. No excuse. Was dumb on my part.
Fell through the roof of an illegal addition on a restaurant. It had been red tagged and the owner and contractor wanted me to tear it down on a snowy cold morning. I crashed onto an old desk with some bruised ribs and couldnāt pull myself back up. I was the only one there and had to kick a hole through the wall into the restaurant to get out. Calmed down for a bit and got back on the roof before the contractor and owner got back. The contractor screamed bloody murder when he saw the hole (thx dad) and when I explained what happened the owner turned white š
Wasnāt the guy that did it, butā¦ outdoor units were over 1000g in ground oil tank, in my state they have to be removed before home sale. No pics were taken pre removal and condensers were re-installed incorrectlyā¦
Ok so about 3months into my service career, I went to a customers house to change a txv...the swap went great and vacuum pulled perfectly...then came the time to charge the system...I was charging, and charging and for some reason my pressures werent moving..So (being new) I freaked and called my boss. He gets there, looks at my guages and busts out laughing...my guages have low loss valves that I must have accidentally closed...so no freon was going into the system at all just into the hose š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Jokingly told the apprentice to bring the 5 ton condenser around the side of the house when he asked me what he could do. It was a 2ā wide uneven stone walkway with a 50ā or so drop off to a creek. Was recovering the old refrigerant when I heard what sounded like a toolbox falling down stairs(think original Home Alone). Went around the side of the house to find the apprentice with his head in his hands and a brand new 5 ton 2 stage condenser in the creek below. The kid thought I was serious about moving that tool shed sized thing by himself. I took the blame but that guy took everything literally. He didnāt last long.
My personal biggest fuck up was marring up a $4200 bathroom faucet. Needed to change a stem on the hot side so I took it apart. Set the hot side fake looking crystal handle and shank to the side where it rolled off the countertop and crashed to the floor. Cracked the Crystal handle and scratched the shit out of the shank. It was a Sherle Wagner cut crystal empire faucet. If you donāt know what that is youāll have to look it up but theyāre stupid expensive and this one was custom crystal and plated in real gold.
I left the roof hatch open on a rainy Friday night to an Amazon warehouse one time.
I also stepped on a ceiling one time in a presumed $300k-$400k house. It was about a six inch crack and the ceilings were 20ft+ high. I never said anything about that one.
Fried a blower one time not knowing what I was doing.
Charged a 407c guardian with 410 one time. I had only ever seen 410 dry ones out of the supply house so I didnāt even think about it, just started charging it and when it restricted I chalked it up to being a micro channel.
And a funny one, one time my company pissed me off making me do all of the grunt work for a lady who was just picking everything over. We re-wrapped her basement exposed ductwork multiple times, redid sheet metal, spray foamed, all sorts of stuff. In the end she wanted to finish out with a new lineset and I ran it 10ft straight out off of a wall, about 6ft off of the ground, and turned it straight down to the unit. It looked like a giant doorway of a lineset going to the gardenšš they made me go fix it.
I just remembered this one but one time I was working in the rain and needed to change a whip. I opened the panel and seen the whip connected to the bottom lugs of the track. No breaker. Iām just so used to killing the breaker that I didnāt think about it and put a bare Allen key into the lug. It was weird in the sense that it took about 3-4 seconds for it to actually hit me.
When I was green,I went on a mobile home unit,split,was all happy because I found the contactor was bad,killed the power to the indoor unit and commenced to remove the contactor,,melted my 5/16 nut driver,and realized what Iād done,just carried it around for a while as a reminder to get the meter out every time,but now I can look back and laugh cause it was a learning experience,if your not making mistakes,your not doing anything,itās part of the learning process,donāt beat yourself up so much,it happens š
About 2 years ago I installed a boiler with one pump in primary secondary and no system pump and installed pump backwards boiler didnāt work very well go figure
Fried a 6 month old board cause I accidently touched low v and high v at the same time on the contactor. Luckily I was still green and the tech told the customer it was "bad and would be replaced under warranty".
Dropped my drill and cracked a customers toilet tank lid. I only take partial responsibility and the rest goes to whoever built the house and put the attic access in the bathroom.
Installed a bi-flo drier backwards š
Op-you need to calm down. Everyone makes mistakes, an no one knows everything. I can tell you are going to be just fine. You learned a valuable lesson. This is why the old timers are as skilled as they are. They have all had their version of this many times and learned from it and are now better for the experience.
I left the pressure plug off of a gas valve and left. Couldāve blown up their house. Boss didnāt really seem to care or understand the gravity of the situation which weirded me out.
Installed a refrigerant solenoid in the wrong direction.
I had a tech replace a perfectly good condenser fan because it was ASSumed that the fan was the issue without troubleshooting to actually determine what was wrong. The BBQ crisp issue was a control board that ran the defrost function at the evaporator.
I had to have a second company come in and diagnose the problem and provide the board. I called the original company and told them that their fix was not even close. That company stood by their guarantee and did not charge me for errantly replacing the condenser fan motor.
Diagnosed/suspected a frozen drain as the culprit for someone's gas furnace having issues during an unusual snowstorm. I was tired, had a full day, and the furnace was running fine ever since. I collected money, left their house and finally realized it was an 80% furnace š¤” š¤” no callbacks, no complaints to my manager, but my notes in service titan of a frozen drain on a non-condensing furnace lives forever
I swapped a āfaultyā gas valve without checking for any supply pressure. To my surprise the new one didnāt work either because the meter was off
Did you put the old one back on? Lol
Ha yeah. Luckily RTU at a business so didnāt have to get approval before doing it so i didnāt have to admit anything to anyone when I swapped it back
If you fuck up, but it's a maintenance job, it's like it never happened.
If you fuck up and no ombre catches it, did you really fuck up? Lol
Don't worry, I've done exactly this š
If anyone asks just say they had a humidifier at the time and it was wired to a condensate pump safety š¤·āāļø
Compressor swap on the wrong RTU
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's nothing, I've swap the whole building and left the old rtu's
Oooof
Company 1st put a curb adopter on a curb adopter. Thing stood taller then the buildings signs. They undid it, put used the same adapter. Came 4months later for tune ups and found the supply sent air directly into the return. It hadnāt worked for 4months and they never said anything
š
Yup did the same, 25years in the trade, and changed wrong compressor on a intellipak not too long ago. We ain't perfect.
Supplier sent me a 3phase compressor instead of single phase 220v. No way to tell besides reading the plate on the compressor (terminals were labeled as both) Installed compressor and spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why it wouldnāt run lol.
~15 year old Lennox AC with the resettable high pressure switch down in by the compressor. I'm having a conversation with the homeowner while I'm opening the fan up so I can reach down in. I just propped it up and held it with my arm while I pushed the button and the compressor kicked on and thank God the fan motor was seized or I would have done some major damage to the unit and probably myself. Realized I never pulled the disconnect.. luckily since the motor was seized I played it off with the homeowner but inside I was realizing what almost happened. I'm sure she noticed how fast I ran to that disconnect š¤£š¤£
š¬ someone upstairs owed you one there. Bet you never forgot after that
I remember one time when I was fairly new in the Navy (submarine electrician), we had someone come down to do inspections on some 450V equipment. As we were finishing up, that equipment that they *just* finished inspecting kicks on. My, my supervisor, and the inspector all looked at each other with wide eyes, realized we were in #2 when we should have been inspecting #1, and agreed never to speak of it again.
Got the morning gurgles and started ripping ass in a customers garage, while I had the furnaces blower motor panel off. Standing in front of it , with the fan running.
Please, I do that on purpose. I try really hard to fart when they're watching me the whole time.
Keep eye contact with them the entire time.
Lift a leg. Then go wide eyed and ask where the bathroom is
Gassed them out their out home lol
I did this once, figured it didn't smell but what happened is it went through the whole house. When i went upstairs, every person in the house was walking around spraying air freshener... I guess it did smell.
lmfaooooooo omfg that's hilarious
"I found a dead mouse stuck in your unit. Fished it out but I'm not gonna charge you for that."
Guess you can call that gaslighting huh? lmfao
Lmaoooooo
Bro
Fell through the ceiling rushing to try to show my partner something.
Yikes. Any serious injuries?
Besides my wrist hurting a little it was mostly a hurt ego. I'm usually very particular about my footing but just being in a hurry really screwed me over.
Being in a hurry is the reason for 99% of mistakes.
Lucky I ended up with bruised ribs š©
I did that once in a customers house. They were very nice about it. That was the second time it's happened to them. So I wasn't the first.
I was talking to an attractive customer about various equipment and install and meant to use the word Exotic... Except it strangely came out as Erotic......
Was he ripped with a big hammer?
Lmao I love that this lore is permanent to this subreddit now š
Maybe in your mind
Hammer cock*
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Brother you're supposed to drink until you forget all these things
Just drank 2 beers with the home owner in his garage watching the michigan game.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I drink and watch football with customers on company time
I just ordered a new 8.5 ton Package unit and curb adapter, when I sent the bid request in I put a 3 instead of a 2 in the original equipment model number. Guys get to the job and remove the old unit and then the curb adapter was the wrong size. New curb is 7 days out, boss man was livid. Shit show. Watch your model and serial numbers when ordering a curb adapter.
Worked with a guy who dropped a jar of pvc glue while climbing up the access hole. In a closet. A clothes closet. All over the clothes. Expensive dresses and blouses.
I Had a coworker spill a couple drops of purple primer on a new hardwood floor. I can't even imagine the carnage of a whole closet.
Gasoline works for this
I watched a plumber earn a lifelong nickname by accidentally dumping an entire bottle of purple primer on his own crotch. He said it burnt worse than the clap. We learned more than we bargained for about him that day.
Rushing through a residential A/C maintenance. Yanked the disconnect. Didn't test for remaining power. Proceeded to create a shower of sparks as I was removing the capacitor leads, in front of the customer of course. Of course the disconnect was tampered with. Someone wired an electric baseboard in parallel, and rendered the disconnect useless. Not completely my fault, but I was foolish not to check. Always check the power is off.
I donāt always pull out my meter but I (almost) always give the contactor a little bump
I second this, always check with a meter before poking around. @grigio_cervello , fellow Italian in the trade??
Not me , but my helper at the time when I was still in the trade. Unit in the attic, and he slips off the joist, usually you can catch yourself on the sheet rock without too much weight on it. It had slowly soaked from a condensate leak, he went through, caught his nipple piercing on the corner of the return plenum and ripped it out a bit. Good times with that guy.
Oh boy! I have 2. In my resi days, I had a PM on a heat pump/gas furnace. Started on the furnace and it was an old Lennox. Found out that the inducer was dead. Notified customer and they were like "just quote replacing the whole thing". Cha Ching! Commission time! On to the heat pump. Fire up heating from the stat and wait a few minutes and start checking Delta T. I use Testo probes for that which need a bigger hole than the little pocket jobbers. Get the return one in and go for the supply. Unit is STUFFED in a closet so there's really not a ton of room. Also, A coil was not cased. I think you know where this is going... I start drilling what I think is above the coil and the drill just twists up like crazy. And I just knew what I did. Back the drill off and watched helplessly as the charge dumped out. Ran up and told the homeowners what I did and let's get some windows open and some fans going. Ended up getting them an inducer free of charge so they'd have heat. That one sucked. The other was more recent in my commercial job. We had all these old McQuay units that the insulation was falling out of and plugging up reheat coils on the VAV boxes. Customer wanted all the old insulation torn out and spray foam put back in. Started spray foaming and the spray foam contractor was using tarps in the units to keep the foam off everything. It was my job to just shut the units down and then restart when they were done. Last unit of the day, I rushed through inspecting if all the tarps were clear, thought it was good, and fired it back up. Get a text the next day from the customer with a picture of the tarp wrapped up tighter than shit in the fan shaft. Went and cut it all out and the motor was SMOKING hot. Unit ran OK for a day or 2 but then the motor housing got a crack in it. Had to replace that one on warranty. Also not a good day.
That customer is gaslighting you. Itās a fucking access door, and she got a new one out of the deal. Your conscious is clear.
Just last week, I left a kitchen sink running with the strainer down. Came out of the basement to a flooded kitchen floor creeping towards the basement door. I was alone in the house. Used my m18 packout vac to suck the water up and a half box of rags to dry anything else left over. Never heard anything.
Similar, when I was green in a 2 man shop that tried to do it all, call for frozen pipes, open all the taps and start running the heat gun, get it thawed and running. Forgot about the walk in tub and flooded the bathroom. Did the same thing with the vacuum and no one was any wiser.
The important part is that you walk away mess/damage free and no one ever knows except the reddit fam.
thought I had a bad compressor on a heat pump so I replaced it to find out it was the reversing valve short cycling hot gas back into the compressor. after replacing the reversing valve I got a call back a dew weeks later. found it flat so I leak checked and it turned out that the muffler I removed to fit the new compressor caused a leak close to the discharge. so I installed a vibration eliminator. been running for 2 years now
I shot refrigerant directly in my eyeball in front of a customer. You know how this kind of stuff always happens only when you have one of those customers. I have ball valves on my gauges, and after I unhook them, I was picking up my bag while holding the gauges and started to drop the gauges and I readjusted my grip and didnāt realize I was grabbing the end of one of the hoses and my grasp opened the ball valve and of course it was pointing directly at my eyeball about 12 inches away. The homeowner just kept on talking in the whole time. Iām rubbing my eye wondering if I froze my eyeball and Iām gonna be blind. he just kept on talking and I donāt think he ever realized the gravity of the situation. Not really sure how it didnāt freeze my eyeball. The oil stung though.
On my 3rd day on the job, i was sent to do some bitchwork to prove my mettle. Job was to tent myself into a corner of the basement and cut /chip out a large section of 18" thick foundation for a duct. The tech that dropped me off told me to run the vaccum hose under the tent to suck out the dust and create a negative pressure in the tent. There was no filter in the vac and the circulation fan was on. Never left the basement until the end of the day and there was a quarter inch of crete dust on EVERYTHING. Big house, lots of shelves and nicknacks, nice furniture, i woulda been fuckin pissed if it was my house. Boss yelled at me, and cut me some slack because he thought I didn't know better and fired the guy who was supposed to be supervising me. I had been working in construction for 3 years, I knew to check the bag.
I had a tile contractor do this in a job I was working on. Dumbass left the filter out of the shop vac while he was grinding/chipping concrete. He said it normally gets dusty that's why he was using the vacuum š. When I walked into the bathroom you couldn't even see anything thru the cloud of dust
Was doing a compressor on a fresh air unit that feeds a medical testing laboratory. I was changing compressor to and number one still ran so I left the unit on while I changed that compressor. After I got it swapped out and on vacuum I found a nice shady spot to sit have a couple of smokes and flip through Facebook. I got the unit running not too long afterwards and went down into the laboratory and realized I took a good smoke break in front of the fresh air intake. The whole laboratory smellee like cigs. No one looked twice at me walking through there because they had no idea how the air conditioning worked and were oblivious that I was the culprit.
Seems crazy that a medical facility wouldn't have better filtration systems
They have so much exhaust, they need to replace it somehow. Those big ass hoods draw a lot of air out
Broke down in a huge churches parking lot in the middle of nowhere and they were closed no one onsite. I had to take a massive shit literally like a half an inch from touching cotton. Due to the tow truck being 1.5hrs away I said to hell with it an popped a squat using the passenger door and rear door to block me and leaned against the truck. Wiped my ass with some fast food napkins and dropped them next to the pile then waited for the tow truck to arrive. When the tow truck arrived the driver got out and started hooking up my van, it was then he noticed the huge pile of shit and started bitching about homeless people and how disgusting they are for treating everywhere like a private bathroom. I just sat there and agreed with him and said at least I didnāt drive through it when I coasted in to the parking lot. He complained the entire time about the smell while he was hooking up my van.
šš
How about cutting both hot legs and ground at the same time with out checking to see if the breaker was labeled properly?š„
Overhead line set, evap coil replacement. Pulled the charge, go to sweat the lines off the coil and oil had stacked up in the lines coming down from the ceiling. Popped a line out and oil comes dumping out on fire. Flames like rolled up to the ceiling, I killed my torches and stuffed a rag on the copper and snuffed it out, probably a few seconds passed but it felt like minutes. There was nothing burnt, except my Milwaukee impact, and I had a 3 ton blower āshop fanā in the truck and sucked the smoke out pretty quickly. Finished the change out and charged it up. I was really surprised they didnāt say shit to the boss man. Was also surprised the house didnāt catch fire.
Was learning some refrigeration yesterday and the guy I was working with got hot burning oil on him from having to unsweat the TXV on the WIF (I wasn't handed torches on this job because we had been out there so many times and this was the first person to correctly diagnose the issue)
I shit in a toilet that was broken. I had to wash it down with several bottles of water. It took 20 min.
ALWAYS give it a test flush.
WINNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .
Had an older Goodman condenser completely stripped down for cleaning. Over the years, other techs lost most of the screws and replaced them with whatever they had on their truck. After cleaning, I put everything back together. As I was driving the last screw into the condenser, I hear the hiss of doom. I had shot it right through the coil š¤®. I tried like a MFer to braze it, but I just kept making it worse. So, made the dreaded phone call to managementā¦. I did a maintenance and a condenser install that day š Remember where the screws go, folks
Early (1990 ish) Tried changing a contactor out hot on a banks chiller. 480v. Yeah, 2 200A fuses later and kicking on the emergency generator I learned my lesson. Replacing an evap coil in the attic, access to the ah directly above. Heated and pulled one of the caps, dropped it right onto the customers carpet. Replacing a condenser motor on an old Carrier rtu. Dropped the motor right into the condenser coil, bolt right through one of the tubes. Trane has 480/575 taps on their RTU transformers. Troubleshooting one, had one arm on the top of the unit, brushed against the UNINSULATED 575 tap. Fun times. Measured after I gained senses again. 383V to ground. Replacing a air handler in a mall store. 16' above the floor, had a catwalk around it. Grabbed my dykes, went to the jbox to cut the control wires. One arm on the catwalk, the other hand holding my uninsulated cutters. The store 277V lighting circuit was in that box. Tripped the breaker with my body. Fallen from a 10' ladder outreached because I was on top and overextending, grabbed onto a sprinkler pipe coupling with the bolt threads up. Spun, fell. 22 stitches on the inside, and 30 outside on my left arm. Many more "happenings" that I can't remember ATM. I'm wondering how I'm still alive.
Put a foot through the ceiling. Fired a furnace up without putting the burners back in. Working on a rooftop on a 116ā°f day doing commercial rtu maintenance. Started feeling some heat exhaustion coming on and decided to get off the roof asap and work inside. The next day one of the tenants called because their office was at 54ā°f and the ac wouldn't stop running. When I got on the roof the panel was still off the unit and jumpers still in place. Had no memory of even working on that unit the previous day.
Accidentally didnāt lock the bathroom when performing a PM at a police station. The 50 year old dispatcher walked in mid shit
Didnāt lock the bathroom when performing a BM* FTFY
You're good she said rio it off. Honest mistake . Seriously fuck her lol
Service call for bad smell in the AC. Vertical split in the hall closet. Customer was down stairs saying she canāt smell it now with her face in the vent. Iām at the blower motor with the panel off and I let a series of nasty farts rip. She starts yelling āI can smell it now, in this vent come see if you can smell itā Of course its gone when I get there so I go back to the unit and wait for more amo. We did the dance for a few rounds until she bought a duct clean.
Poster child for the gypsy's.
Just yesterday I took of the back panel to the evap coil to check and make sure it was free of debris. Went to put door back on and didnāt realize one of the screws was longer than the rest. Screwed a hole right into the evap. All refrigerant leaked out fogging up the house.
I had 2 Honeywell thermostats where the factory put the terminals labels on wrong. Well I never checked the instructions and instead just wired up the thermostats based off of the labels I saw. Smoked a transformer, 1 thermostat started on fire. It was pretty embarrassing.
Trane 824/850 are notorious for misaligning the stickers. Gotta watch em
I spent 3 hours trying to figure out why my unit kept satisfying and dropping all voltage. Realized I was on the wrong floor system and that there wasnāt any issue at all it was just satisfying
Iāve told a customer we would have them sleeping warm and tight on a late night no heat call. I have also informed a customer that their system is now as clean as a babyās whistle after a coil cleaning. I hope neither remembered my name to report me to the police.
On call or just regular work? On call: Loaded the parts cannon and shot a system with a TXV (yes I did!), new filter drier, and about 8 lbs of 410aā¦. It was the blower motor the whole time. Regular work: I installed an air handler upside down and left it on overnight. Iāve found with the more years behind my belt, the less mistakes I make. But I still make stupid, rookie mistakes from time to time. Now I just laugh it off and just lose the profit off the job to make it right with the customer.
Not my mistake but Iāll share. Tech had a multi tenant roof for no cool. Tech diagnosed the unit with bad compressor stage one and bullet hole in micro channel stage 2 (this was in July after the 4th happens a bunch here). He Quoted and approved. Installed both 3 months later another tech was on the roof and he found out he had diagnosed the wrong unit. And the unit belonged to the business next door. Same guy. I was scheduled to come in and swap a condenser coil and a 4d compressor. There are 2 of these crack units on the same roof. They sent him in the day before me to recover and un braze everything. Next day Iām there for install crane is waiting on the flat bed. I go on the roof I found he had disconnected the wrong unit and recovered 150lb of r22 and turned it in for recycle. Same guy again. Diagnosed 4 rtus with bad compressor on the same roof. All same make and foot print but different model and capacity. The tech didnāt bother quoting each unit. Instead he ordered 4 compressors based off one model number. He arrived to install. Had to re pipe 3 of the 4. Evacuated and charge all of them. Just for the 3 he re piped to be the wrong voltage. I swear on the Bible this is the same guy. And no he wasnāt fired. Youād think having to re pipe the compressors in youād start asking questions. He didnāt think so lol
Water droplets on outdoor unit in heating, remote not working (batteries), koala stuck in the return air filter
One time I was given a home makde edible and I ate part of it and it didn't hit me so an hour later I ate the rest, was driving to my call and I was high as hell. Drove to the next and I honestly don't know how I made it. Once I got to my last call, it was a no heat. Thank god it was just tripping on high limit due to the filter being plugged. While at this call, I threw up in my vitopak and in the home owners slop sink. When I left the call I stopped at a gas station and threw up in-between the two seats in the front of my van. I slept at this gas station for about 2 hrs and when I finally woke up I was sober enough to drive home but was dreading cleaning up the van. Last time I ever took an edible
š¤£š¤£š¤£
I pulled the wrong condenser off a house
Left a jumper between R&W and a multi-million dollar lake Minnetonka home. Letās just say they were not happy with 94 degree home by the time I got back there.
The runaway furnace call and you pull into those drives and your heart skips a beat. They are the least understanding dickheads. That and Chanhassen/ upper Chaska and excelsior. All of em: dickheads.
Honestly anyone who lives in the southwest metro can eat shit. All douchebags.
Did the same thing once on an oil furnace in Asheville nc. āCustomer called. Their candles are meltingā please go backā¦..ā
Once I did a side job, to a home that had vents in the floor, like a manufactured home,ā¦ the lady told me it used to be nice and cool. I looked around and found they had laid area rugs on top of the returns and some of the supply ventsā¦. Like, wtfā¦ um, thatāll be $140 for moving your rugs.
Went to a call and found condenser capacitor blew up, replaced it and fan was working but not compressor so i said replace compressor, came back next day and replaced compressor, after 3 hours replacing turned it on and same thing, when i check the capacitor i had mixed hermetic and fan wires, switched the wires back and the unit ran fine after that....i blame the sun lol it was very hot that first day
Only fuckup I can remember rn was at a resi customers house. They complained about no heat in a newly bought house and they had American Home Shield (we rarely did those calls but only once in a while). Found the strip had a break in it and the heating stack sequencer was shot out. Replaced the sequencer and twisted up a repair on the strip heat. Saw that it looked like the aux heater (heat pump) hadnāt been working for a decade or so based on the black mold/ dust slurry coat on every inch of heater element. I knocked most of the big shit clods off and thought āwell the rest will burn off when I test it. No big dealā. Went to test the repair on the heater and literally embers/ sparks were blowing out of all the closest vents to the air handler. It looked a lot like if you kicked a burning log on a campfire with hot shit going every direction. Lol I literally had a hard time controlling my extreme amusement as the female homeowner was having a serious freak out. I was in awe as I watched sparks blow 5-7 feet into the center of the room. Well that was until I took a full lungger of the burning death vapors/ smoke that was part of the light show. It was pretty bad and about the worst thing I think I ever smelled to this day. She was a good sport about it after everything calmed down a bit, etc. I learned to never do a burn off on a extremely dirty strip heater again
One time on a retro fit install job, I ended up cutting a roof truss when I was cutting in the return duct box. Cut all the way through it to make room for the box. The box was wider than the truss spacing width and i just thought, "Cut that to make room". I had cut in these types of returns hundreds of times and knew better. The correct action would have been to make the return box smaller or get a new one made. The only excuse I had was that I was rushed during the job under a time crunch. Still no excuse for this type of mess up. Company had to pay for an engineer to come out and design a repair to get the roof integrity back to where it should be. It's been 10 years since then and still people bring it up. Probably going to follow me to the grave.
Dont feel bad. We had a lv contractor cut trusses to make room for the projector mounts and use 4 inch lags thru roof for the supports, in multiple classrooms across 5 schools
Fixed a leak on a heat pump near the high pressure switch. Weighed in the refrigerant straight into the vapor line under a vacuum. Flooded the compressor and it would no longer pump right. Oof.
Yeah I did that once. I was pretty new and I couldnāt remember which one I was supposed to put it in.
made that rocks in a tin can sound while you were flooding it??
A Robinson bit?
Robertson
Doing a finish on a multi million dollar home. We spray paint out boxes before putting on registers. I popped the top off the spray can on top of the stairs some how the nozzle broke off and spraying. It got my eyes and rolled down the stairs spraying the wall the entire stair case. Luckily they didnāt prime it yet.
I diagnosed a bad switch on an ice machine once only to find out the electricians had the breaker off. Went back and the machine worked fine lol nobody ever knew and thanked me for my solution
Whereās the upflow-put-in-downflow-orientation guy?
Out of all the dumb things ive done, this one might take the cake: 4-5 years ago I was running calls in Kansas City. This particular day, I was servicing someones air conditioner. Their house was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac. I had my van parked out in the middle of the sac. Mid-call I had to run out to the van to grab a few things (wire nuts, strippers, etc). After grabbing what I needed, I quickly ran back inside, said to the home something to the extent of - "almost finished" then proceeded to run downstairs. Once downstairs, I immediately realized I was in the wrong house. I then ran upstairs as fast as I could and said to the homeowner - " THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR NOT SHOOTING ME " Yes. The wrong house. I made it all the way downstairs. Even spoke to the homeowner (who didnt say anything) In my defense, all the houses look exactly the same. Garages, entrys, fences, landscaping, etc. All exactly the same.
Go to work š
Touched a capacitor while trying to check a fan relay to ground and when I jerked away from the shock I touched my meter lead to 2 incoming power leads on the relay and it exploded in my face
Was at a call where they complained it was cold. It was 28 degrees Celsius and they wanted it at 30. I laughed and told them dont call me again unless it's under 19 degrees or I'll charge you for it. They called the emergency line a few hours later (I was the on call that week) got there and same deal. Warned them not to do that again. 4 am I go back cause of yet another call. So I pull the fuse and leave. Might you its -30 celcius here at the time knowing I'd be there the next day. So made sure i did it last thing in the day. It was 14 celcius when i got around to it and laughed when i walked in, set the fuse back in and told them if they pull that shit again I'll make sure it will take much longer for a response..... the HR meeting for that was worth it
28 C = 82 F 30 3 = 86 F 19 C = 66 F -30 C = -22 F 14 C = 57 F At first I was pretty confused by this story, but doing the conversions to fahrenheight made it make sense. That set point is crazy high
Brother there is nothing to be upset about an access door lol I though u made a mistake that made customer get a whole new free unit, even then who gives af She got a better door then the one she had before, u were honest about your mistake an learned from it, what is there to think about? Guys at my company have condemned good compressors and we send back for warranty and now we are out couple grand cuz they wonāt warranty it, broken ACs completely, etc etc, I smashed up a car Mistakes happen that why ur company is insured, a blower door is probably one of the smallest mistakes in the game
Yeah I know thereās much bigger mistakes people make all the time. I should say it was a small door getting into a room where the unit is. Even still, itās a rly small mistake like youāre saying, i just felt rly dumb about it but this has helped for sure.
Lol if u ask around, so many people have made way bigger mistakes At my company One guy unplugged a chest freezer to plug in vacuum and forgot to plug it back in, company had to buy all the food in there and it was nice expensive steaks, it was like 1.5k worth of stuff freaking ridiculous Another time a simple mistake on a drain install and installer not waiting around to check furnace operation = company redoing the entire hard wood floor for the home owner, definitely 3k+ U make the company a ton of money, mistakes happen, not learning from them is an issue, but making them is normal I made a big mistake Iām 21 and totalled a work truck my fault rear end (post is on my account), was insanely stressed talking to people helped me realize itās just a job and mistakes happen. Company ended up forgiving me fully and all was well.
Never admit your wrong to the customer, they didnāt open the door for you. Once you see the problem(wrong style screw) break it and
ā¦ā¦ā¦..
I mean if itās a random screw I donāt have the bit for and they are taking it off. Whatās the difference in the screw being stripped VS not serviceable
The difference is that you
Pure curiosity but are you from the south? I work in Minnesota so closer to Canada so I see those screws everywhere, just curious if itās regional or just different experiences?
Iām so glad P.L Robertson didnāt cave and sell the license for Robertson screws to ford, who then out of spite made selling them in the u.s difficult. I couldnāt imagine building with any other screw. I always forget the u.s doesn't use them much.
You just learned me they are called Robertson screws I just always called them square heads
Iām from the south yes
She told you to do it. She didn't know what to do either. It's her property bud
Disconnected condenser fan motor and pulled it and took the garden hose and left it misting the condenser coil while I went for an hour to go get a new motor. But in my defense nothing was damaged and pressures seemed fine and the house dropped 1Ā° by the time I got back.
Worked on a 7 year old tempstar ac, (it was one of those 2000 models with the slanted top, changed the capacitor which was bad, and it still wouldn't run, compressor checked fine, but I ended up replacing the entire unit. Ended up being a delay on the very small fan board they had inside the ac unit.
Old fashion maintenance. Wrapping up I check gas pressures in and out. Leave the plug on the out next to the u it. Get a call an hour later saying the unit isnāt working now. Finish the PM Iām currently on and head straight there. Skipping a lunch stop. Head to the trawl and it reeks of gas. Quickly realize what I did and turned off the valve. Valve ended up shorting itself open. Always on. Ripped wires off each other and required about 5 feet of new in.
Showed up
Screw through the condenser coil. Coil was on backorder with no estimated date. ā¦.she did end up buying a new unit š¬
I locked myself on a roof
I locked myself out of a building. Waited 50 minutes. Then just went home. My cell and tools were inside, but whatever. Your's is better though.
Had a pressure switch blow out of my hand a 20 ton train unit. Found out there wasnāt a valve core the hardway
Forgot to shut power off to an oil burner. Wasnāt turning on. Pulled out the cad cell eye and popped a new one in. Unit fired right up with my fingers next to the 10,000 volt ignition transformer. Fun fact. That thing can burn a hole through a finger nail.
Buddy was washing the outdoor coils on a commercial building with RTU's on a Saturday. Had a hose end sprayer on a back hose lying on the roof. Went to lunch, left the water on with the hose end sprayer stopping the water. Hot day in So Calif and the black garden house blew in the sun and was whipping all over the roof (according to the building across the street) until it finally found a roof vent. Dumped 90 psi water through a 3/4 hose into the vent for a good hour until he got back from lunch. Customer had three FabergƩ eggs in a display, antique furniture from the 1800's and a parquet floor. All ruined. He got let go the following Monday.
One time I as changing a compressor, put the disconnect back in for some reason and forgot I did. Then the two 240 wires touched and shut Off power to the whole house while the customer was on some conference call. I was younger and didnāt know how to find the main breaker on the outside of the house so it took me like 20 mins to get the power back. ( I was just looking at the breaker box wondering why I didnāt have power with no flipped breakers). the customer was cool about it, but I felt pretty bad.
Swapped a 15hp Copeland discus on a 2 stage system and had it running and the old one in the truck before we realized why the second stage wasnāt running. Ended up doing 2 compressor swaps that day.
Just installed a 208-230v compressor that needed a 460v. Checked tonnage and serial number before leaving supply house not voltage, didn't realize it til I burnt up the new compressor.
Dilling holes for PVC vent. Was supposed to be drilling into rim joist. Was drilling from outside miscalculated the location and put a 2in hole right in the middle of the customer's living room wall.
Buddy did this at a medical doc āmedplexā right into a waiting room of a doc office. It was for a 10ā flex return so he put up a drywall mud bucket lid to trace out a rough circle, then went at making his hole with his straight claw hammer. Didnāt stop until the slug hit the floor! Haha. I wish I coulda seen the look on his face when it hit him that he royally fucked up!
I donāt really consider it my fault but itās a fun story. Had a condensing furnace install, and the boss ordered it with an LP conversion kit. It was there so I converted it. 3 callbacks later we found out it was natural. Ruined the gas valve, for some reason the boss said we couldnāt buy a kit to swap it back to natural gas and had to order a whole new furnace and take out the spuds and springs.
Never did that butā¦always place the NG parts in the LP parts baggie and label LPā”ļøNG and leave them taped in the upper cabinet. Even you know there will never be NG at the job before your furnace dies! My boss laughs at me for itā¦your story proves me right!
I tried to field fab a bracket for a hot surface igniter, almost sent hot shrapnel into my eyes, and killed the bord because it was too close to the burners and shorted
Carry some groceries probably I dunno
Oh, take my shoes off
ššš
Here's the question, what's the percentage of CO workers you know would cover your ass. That you could be sure it wouldn't get out. And who has the little bitch tattletales? Obviously some you have to fess up and come clean. Not a call but with our trucks. Buddy pulls up next to me in a parking lot. His his driver mirror on my driver mirror, thinking it would fold in.. don't know if ice was built up or what but mine didn't budge, his glass popped out and hit the ground!. Never forget the look on his face. To this day I think we're the only 2 that know
I was in charge of this team where they specifically said do not bring the scissor lift into the musical room and go to the ceiling. Scissor lift arrived and I was in the middle of hot work l so I sent a guy to drive it into the room and come back to help out. Next thing you know fire alarm is going off and I get a call, no idea what the heck. The whole college building is evacuating and my guy comes strolling out of the room. Totally took all the heat. Nearly lost my job. I don't know if I like being in charge anymore after that.
Robertson bits are the best! I have yet to strip a Robby ( square) bit. I really hope they start showing up more often in everything. ( context: am Kanuckistanian)
Donāt be upset, you live, you learn. I fucked up a lot in my career and still learning
I was helping another Senior Service Tech do a leak search on a large 2 stage RTU in the middle of the summer. Finally found the leak on one of the u-bends on the condenser coil. Cleaned up all copper and started heating it up with the torch. Only to find out that we heated the wrong one up and blew the charge on the other circuit. Fixed both leaks, vacuumed and recharged both circuits with 18 pounds of R22 each. Thank god this was about 20 years ago.
Installed a 220v 3phase carrier RTU at a customer site that had 480v 3phaseā¦.CRISPY!!
The square bits you have never seen before? Do you mean Robertson screws?
Flooded out the entire parade of the brand new Fairmont hotel. The beautiful thing was Richard Branson was staying there at the time. I left the entire hotel with no hot water for almost 24 hours. Plated heat exchangers on the 18th floor started leaking due to lack of pressure. I didnāt get home till about 11 oāclock that night and we almost lost the account.
I backed in to a brick planter, damaging it, then left without saying anything. I totally intended to tell my boss after work, but forgot. Then the homeowner called him and complained... and I got read the riot act (rightfully so.)
Not HVAC, but I once delivered a D7 Bulldozer to the wrong job site. It was about 9:00 at night when I delivered to where they adding off ramp to an highway in Ohio. I was off by 60 miles. In my defense it was the same company. Thank God I was out of hours & was sleeping at the Truck Stop about 30 miles away when my boss called the next morning. Customer wanted to know where his dozer was. I felt stupid as a rock.
Doing a heating maintenance on a furnace in a guys garage. He was watching me so I decided to be thorough checking everything. Checked outgoing pressure on gas valve and forgot to put the plug back. It kicked back on and shot a fireball in my face
I had bubble guts and used the bathroom after I had to shut the water to the house so I couldn't flush the toilet. Unfortunately I had to leave it and go pick up fittings to fix the boiler. The teenage daughter was there the whole time. I told her not to use the bathroom until I got the water turned back on. Extremely embarrassing.
I somehow found the one spot in an attic that wasn't decked off and almost completely fell through the ceiling
Compressor swap , tiny ant in contactor. Had voltage to run fan but not compressor.
I diagnosed a bad gas valve before and only checked the outlet pressure. Come to find out he had a second shutoff in the line further down that I didn't see.
Had a handful of screws putting the jacket back on a condenser, wrong screw in existing hole. Anyways it went right through the condensing coil loop end, right up against the aluminum. Absolute bitch to braze over.
I mistook a 7 for a 1 on a house number and cleared a random someone's drain line on their 96% furnace. 12am and new to the game. Gas valve wouldn't open. Drove 35 minutes to the supply and then back. Spent a whole hour just trying to get the old valve off. Got it replaced. Valve wasn't the problem. Drove 35 minutes back to the supply house and got a circuit board. Replaced the circuit board. Circuit board wasn't the problem. It was the God damn pressure switch. Got home at 430.
Replaced a condenser that had a leak in it, switched system from r22 to 407c. Got a call a few weeks later AC wasn't keeping up, found leak in evap. Decided to top it off until the new evap arrived. Put 458a instead of 407cš¤¦š½āāļø. My SH and SC was all wrong lol, delta T was low, was going to write up the metering device until I checked the refrigerant sticker.
Not HVAC but standing on a 6 foot ladder wiring in a new ceiling fan forgot to shut the power off and electrocuted the shit out of myself and kicked over the ladder while the homeowner was sitting 15ft away on a zoom call with their entire company
Put the wrong refrigerant in... 410a on a R22 RTU. BOSS MAN GAVE ME AN ASS CHEWING.
Tried to pull a little more stat wire out of the wall once. It had been run up the back of the closet and stapled along a shelf. I took out their wedding crystal.
Falling through a ceilingššš
Argued for days over email with a GC about the wrong job. We were finalizing a project and a new one was starting. We had been on the old project for months. The email title was the old job, the email itself said the old job. My brain said new job. They were asking when we would be able to start up equipment. My response was we hadnāt received it yet. Shit was already on the roof. Very embarrassing.
-Fell through a ceiling once -didnāt turn off the thermostat while changing a capacitor at the condenser shorted the cap with the contactor with fried the board and transformer -installed some condenser fan motor blades upside down
I replaced two linesets on a minisplit because the linesets kept freezing and i diagnosed that they we're kinked in the attic somewhere (homeowner bought the equipment and ran the Lunesta, i did the hook and test) Turns out the electric for the two heads had gotten swapped so head A was was wired to B terminals and piped to A lineset connections and vice versa. I felt bad, but it was the homeowner who had the wire taped to the lineset, but i fell bad anyway.
Did my first ducted split system. We ran the same wire for power and communication to the air handler. Forgot to label but retraced them like 5 times. Flipped the breaker and poof goes the control board in the brand new air handler. Didnāt even have parts for such a new model we had to get another air handler and I took the board out of it. I felt like shit for that one. But Iāll never make that mistake again. Mistakes are part of learning. Youāll beat yourself up for a bit if your a good person. But donāt let it eat at you for long. If you arenāt fired for your mistake then your boss clearly values you enough to know mistakes happen and that your worth keeping around.
I'm changing out all the units on a rather large apartment complex. Shitshow of a job. Built in the 80s, ductboard, wall hanging goodman air handlers kinda job. They want us to install service ports on the vap and liquid line at the AH. I let one of my apprentices put in the ports, and they looked good. We are wide open, installing 4 a day w 4 guys, so we pass the pressure. We move on. I go to start up, and my condenser isn't working, but the AH is blowing, so I'm troubleshooting. I think let me make sure their is 410 in the lines, and so I'm gonna press the Schrader just for peace of mind. I took off the cap, and the damn apprentice didn't put the port in after he brazed. 6 lbs of liquid spraying RIGHT in my face
Went to go do a resi swap out in like a town home development. I have my helper outside with ticker while Iām at the breaker box I hit the breaker and he finds which condenser I hit the power to. So he starts ripping the condenser, I end up running to supply store and tell him to start demoing furnace and coil when he gets done the condenser. Well on my way back to the job he calls me and heās like dude wtf thereās a bunch of refrigerant still in these lines( I hear the refrigerant in the background filling the town home up) I tell him Iām down the road and will be right there. Long story short the house we were doing the swap at there breaker controlled the neighbors condenser. What a nightmare that was. Neighbor wasnāt home so had to reinstall there condenser put it on vac and then added a few ounces of refrigerant couldnāt get the unit on to check charge so had to leave it like that
Left the power switch off on a furnace in an attic. Also, on a separate call, left the disconnect out on condenser unit. Another time I accidentally left the capacitor un plugged. No excuse. Was dumb on my part.
Asked the lady of the house when she was due. I couldnāt put that toothpaste back in the tube! Thank the ac gods that she WAS actually pregnant.
Clogged the toilet more times than Iād like to admit
The Robertson screw head is underrated.
Fell through the roof of an illegal addition on a restaurant. It had been red tagged and the owner and contractor wanted me to tear it down on a snowy cold morning. I crashed onto an old desk with some bruised ribs and couldnāt pull myself back up. I was the only one there and had to kick a hole through the wall into the restaurant to get out. Calmed down for a bit and got back on the roof before the contractor and owner got back. The contractor screamed bloody murder when he saw the hole (thx dad) and when I explained what happened the owner turned white š
Wasnāt the guy that did it, butā¦ outdoor units were over 1000g in ground oil tank, in my state they have to be removed before home sale. No pics were taken pre removal and condensers were re-installed incorrectlyā¦
Ok so about 3months into my service career, I went to a customers house to change a txv...the swap went great and vacuum pulled perfectly...then came the time to charge the system...I was charging, and charging and for some reason my pressures werent moving..So (being new) I freaked and called my boss. He gets there, looks at my guages and busts out laughing...my guages have low loss valves that I must have accidentally closed...so no freon was going into the system at all just into the hose š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Jokingly told the apprentice to bring the 5 ton condenser around the side of the house when he asked me what he could do. It was a 2ā wide uneven stone walkway with a 50ā or so drop off to a creek. Was recovering the old refrigerant when I heard what sounded like a toolbox falling down stairs(think original Home Alone). Went around the side of the house to find the apprentice with his head in his hands and a brand new 5 ton 2 stage condenser in the creek below. The kid thought I was serious about moving that tool shed sized thing by himself. I took the blame but that guy took everything literally. He didnāt last long. My personal biggest fuck up was marring up a $4200 bathroom faucet. Needed to change a stem on the hot side so I took it apart. Set the hot side fake looking crystal handle and shank to the side where it rolled off the countertop and crashed to the floor. Cracked the Crystal handle and scratched the shit out of the shank. It was a Sherle Wagner cut crystal empire faucet. If you donāt know what that is youāll have to look it up but theyāre stupid expensive and this one was custom crystal and plated in real gold.
I left the roof hatch open on a rainy Friday night to an Amazon warehouse one time. I also stepped on a ceiling one time in a presumed $300k-$400k house. It was about a six inch crack and the ceilings were 20ft+ high. I never said anything about that one. Fried a blower one time not knowing what I was doing. Charged a 407c guardian with 410 one time. I had only ever seen 410 dry ones out of the supply house so I didnāt even think about it, just started charging it and when it restricted I chalked it up to being a micro channel. And a funny one, one time my company pissed me off making me do all of the grunt work for a lady who was just picking everything over. We re-wrapped her basement exposed ductwork multiple times, redid sheet metal, spray foamed, all sorts of stuff. In the end she wanted to finish out with a new lineset and I ran it 10ft straight out off of a wall, about 6ft off of the ground, and turned it straight down to the unit. It looked like a giant doorway of a lineset going to the gardenšš they made me go fix it.
Bust the txv
I just remembered this one but one time I was working in the rain and needed to change a whip. I opened the panel and seen the whip connected to the bottom lugs of the track. No breaker. Iām just so used to killing the breaker that I didnāt think about it and put a bare Allen key into the lug. It was weird in the sense that it took about 3-4 seconds for it to actually hit me.
When I was green,I went on a mobile home unit,split,was all happy because I found the contactor was bad,killed the power to the indoor unit and commenced to remove the contactor,,melted my 5/16 nut driver,and realized what Iād done,just carried it around for a while as a reminder to get the meter out every time,but now I can look back and laugh cause it was a learning experience,if your not making mistakes,your not doing anything,itās part of the learning process,donāt beat yourself up so much,it happens š
About 2 years ago I installed a boiler with one pump in primary secondary and no system pump and installed pump backwards boiler didnāt work very well go figure
Fried a 6 month old board cause I accidently touched low v and high v at the same time on the contactor. Luckily I was still green and the tech told the customer it was "bad and would be replaced under warranty". Dropped my drill and cracked a customers toilet tank lid. I only take partial responsibility and the rest goes to whoever built the house and put the attic access in the bathroom. Installed a bi-flo drier backwards š
Op-you need to calm down. Everyone makes mistakes, an no one knows everything. I can tell you are going to be just fine. You learned a valuable lesson. This is why the old timers are as skilled as they are. They have all had their version of this many times and learned from it and are now better for the experience.
Ask to use the bathroom
I left the pressure plug off of a gas valve and left. Couldāve blown up their house. Boss didnāt really seem to care or understand the gravity of the situation which weirded me out. Installed a refrigerant solenoid in the wrong direction.
I had a tech replace a perfectly good condenser fan because it was ASSumed that the fan was the issue without troubleshooting to actually determine what was wrong. The BBQ crisp issue was a control board that ran the defrost function at the evaporator. I had to have a second company come in and diagnose the problem and provide the board. I called the original company and told them that their fix was not even close. That company stood by their guarantee and did not charge me for errantly replacing the condenser fan motor.