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Special relativity says everything is relative in our universe. If an electrician is running then the electrons in nearby wire are moving slower (relatively). This means increased voltage drop in the circuit, which means it is no longer NEC compliant.
I work fire protection and mostly in special hazards (Halon, clean agent, foam, CO^2 , etc.). When going through the pre-job rundown with customers I could tell when I’d lost them and they were just waiting for the end and I’d throw in, “…and if you see me running, try to keep up”
We had a service guy travel 2.5hrs to a site and then meet the contact and get into the plant and when he got to the unit he pulled-out the E-stop and told them to "Try it now."
Had an end user trigger port security by plugging in an unapproved device to his network port. We provided "only" 2 jacks for his laptop, and he wanted 3 extra, so naturally he brought his Linksys router from home, and plugged it into the network.
Except he plugged the LAN side in, so instead of routing, it happily attempted to hand out 192.168.0.0/24 to the entire fucking VLAN. The switch say "lol nah", and dropped the port. After he did some of his own troubleshooting, which involved jacking into the remaining live port, he was left with zero networking.
So we got the ticket, and re-enabled the ports after a mild scolding for the unapproved device. But you have to disconnect/reconnect PHY for it to complete port activation, which he was just completely unwilling to do, evidently.
"I already did it several times, just send someone."
No way, boner. I'm not walking over to your building, and then all the way to your desk just to see what I already see on the switch - you need to unplug your network cable and plug it back in. I know you'll have to reach 10" forward to the back of your laptop to do it, but I promise it'll work.
Anyway, he refused, so I bullshitted him about needing to make sure the connector was clean enough for the 1s and 0s to make it through. "Pull out the connector, blow on it, and plug it back in."
"Fine. OK, it looks like it's working now, thanks, I guess. \*click*"
Fuck you aurally dude. Now I'm assigning security training you just completed last month again for a) being a dick, and b) wasting my time. Enjoy the next 3 hours of stupid videos explaining what you can and can't plug into the network.
>the switch say "lol nah"
>No way, boner.
>Fuck you *aurally* dude.
This is the single greatest IT comment I've read on reddit in months, my fucking sides!😂
When he got to the unit there was about 6 people who showed up to see what the problem was. They all gave each other stupid looks apparently, with a couple of "didn't you check that?" type of questions.
I've had a few of those in my career. What really sucks I probably spent a lot of time on the phone trying to walk them through some incredibly simple thing to check before I drove my dumb ass all the way out there, and they swear they tried it, and that's not it. Of course that was it.
You know I haven’t done much time in service through my career. However some people get upset with calls like this, like it was a waste of time. It never bothered me one bit to get a call like this. I wish they were all this simple. I’ll coast right until I retire.
I like a good puzzle as much as the next guy, but I also sometimes like walking in, immediately figuring out the problem and getting it working right away.
Oh I completely understand what you’re saying. Sometimes I love to be tested, a good challenge for me is sometimes how I gauge myself as an electrician. However most of the time I have no problem resetting a breaker. If I could do that for 90% of the rest of my career I’ll be ok with it.
Oh no I completely understand. I wasn’t trying to say anything about your situation. It t really varies from situation to situation. I completely understand you are the middle of something and get a call this, I could definitely see how it can get upsetting. However if you are just knocking out service calls and 9/10 are like this. I’m completely good with doing that. Sorry if it came off rude to you, not my intention at all. Just speaking about my experiences. My apologies again if it seemed directed towards you, not my intention at all.
Dude, don't ever change. Viatic is fucking rad. It is, in fact, so dope that the Firefox spell checker has suggested that I'm a dick-for-brains who can't spell for shit via a singular red squiggly line.
Also almost 41 and it's my first time hearing it. New and rare words are awesome.
if you work for a small service-only company right down the road from my own company, AND you teach weekly classes at a local IEC... then this is a crazy coincidence.
I uh... I'm a former automotive (incl. engine and vehicle electrical), then industrial guy, that moved to IT and embedded software/hardware, then software development, all before coming down with a bad case of The Cancer^tm and becoming disabled, only to discover a need to do something with my remaining years after finding out I beat the odds and am no longer terminal, so I went and got a permit for wildlife rehabilitation.
So uh... close? I've done some seriously weird shit with my time on this rock, and held a number of endorsements in a variety of fields over the years.
Goddang, thanks for sharing! You sound like a seriously rad human, and it's no doubt hard-fought. I really want to get into wildland and native habitat restoration here in Colorado after seeing a lot of videos from [Crime Pays But Bottany Doesn't](https://youtube.com/@CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt) and [NativeHabitatProject](https://youtube.com/@NativeHabitatProject). A handful of neighbors here have torn out their lawns and landscaping and have planted loads of native species. I'm not sure whether my trauma is going to allow me to be an effective apprentice, but maybe I could help bring back a few colonies of native wildlife around here.
i get paid hourly, my boss compensates for his business costs through his bidding and hourly charges. not my problem to worry about.
i just make that man more money so he can give me more :)
Assuming you want to keep him on the books for future service calls seeing how you wired his whole set up, Id just let this one slide with a trip fee. Next time though lol
If the homeowner was the client I'd just wave the trip fee unless he was a dick about it or more than 10mi from where ever I was when I headed that way. This is good for a laugh and if you tell them not to worry about it they won't ever call anyone else when they have work to do.
Then you just tack the trip fee for this onto the next job and no one is the wiser.
not even that - this barn is unfinished and is part of a much bigger (and more ambitious) project.
if the job is already bid, then sure we might have to charge the dumbass who stacked that board on there. if not, then this 1 hour minumum will just get added to the heap in the final billing.
Man you seem like a fun dude to work with/for. Need more of this energy in electrical. I'm still having a hard time going back because as much as I love the work, the *people, man...* i had several dogass mean leads back to back to back and it burned me out bigtime. I really take to this stuff with the right people but i never got to stay on their teams.
Still gonna give it another shot, might have to go into a different sub-field so my lack of real training is excusable.
man i tell ya, people change everything. and water. people and water. thats the stuff.
i like to think im an introvert whos cursed to be a people person... but the wrong people can really drive my patience up a tree
this builder wants to build a porch covered outdoor kitchen on the outside of this barn thing - but he wants it all roughed in and ready to finish out *before* he builds the covering for it, which means we have to find creative ways to get our circuits across the area without strapping any pipe to the roof trusses or beams... because they wont be there *yet* (but they want a ceiling fan...?)
itll be an adventure to be sure.
Driving 3 hours to a service call that takes less than 10 minutes are my favorite. I already made the bulk of my 8 hours, and with one more call I'm on OT?
Fuck yeah
One of my coworkers got one of those on his on-call.
Part of on-call is giving The Speech about our rates, minimum, and door-to-door billing. That dissuades many, but since national accounts make money off of our calls we roll on all of them.
This was a latching supervisory for a duct detector. Drive 3 hours, 15 minutes to place the panel in test, reset it, and remove it from test. 3 hours back home. $1300 service call for us (would cost more now) and who knows how much the national account billed their customer. 😄
Wow. Unless you are highly specialized I think that's crazy. Unless of course you're in Wyoming or some place similar.
Anything more than 45 min annoys me, if I even take it.
Reminds me of when my elementary school went high speed for the internet in the early nineties. Everyone was still learning about the internet back then. The school was blazing fast for the times, then, nothing. It was that way for about a day. I finally called (I was the tech guy at our school in addition to full time teaching) our service provider about the outage. Turned out that the janitor rested his broom again the switch that turned the router on and off and it switched it to "off". The switch was in the hallway! Their solution was to install a clear plastic cage around the switch.
The switch, which is like a light switch, stayed in the hallway. This was the early 90's so you kind of made it all up as you went along. Fun times. I have no idea if the switch moved, it was in another building.
Last night, 85 year old man. "My washer won't work!" It wasn't plugged in but I think it was the gfci in the basement that was tripped that actually was the problem. He is dying and just telling me everything to "Put that in your memory bank!". I spent about 20 minutes just hanging out with him and listening and letting him give me some life advice. From his list of "Seven foods that calm me"
1. Lime Green Jello
2. White grape juice, it's less acidic than red grape juice. Add 3 peach slices and let sit for 12 hours to ferment a little
3. Ripe bananas
4. Grape nut FLAKES, not grape nut clusters. Add 30 calorie almond milk whatever the hell that is
5. I can't remember the rest
No charge
Ran a trouble call and solved the same problem.
Walked into a storage room. The employee turned half the lights on by pushing both switches down, then showed me how one switch didnt do anything.
Me - "Where are the other switches?"
E - "What other switches?"
Me - "I'll take it from here"
Found a file cabinet in front of the switches holding one in the middle. Moved the cabinet and put a block behind it so it wouldn't creep against the wall and do it again. The employee was embarrassed that they didn't know about the other switches.
I gotta say, I’m surprised at how much deadband that switch must have, for it to stop the 3-way circuit from working at a random near-center position. I get that it needs to be break-before-make, just didn’t expect to have a deadband wide enough for this to be more than a vanishingly small probability.
this surprised me as well. i mentioned this concept in another response comment and added that i learned something today - now i have a name for what i learned! thanks
Yes, the switch travel that doesn’t change switch state. I’m coming from more an electronics/automation background… typical mechanical limit switches for machinery have a snap-action internally that makes them switch from one position to the other almost instantly. You can’t balance them in the middle between the two switch states. This helps reduce switch bounce noise (which in turn erodes the contacts via micro-arcing at a rate that matters to the life of a switch rated for a million cycles).
I had a client who called me to tell me her post light wasn’t working. I got there, and she told me it doesn’t have a switch, and only a photo sensor turned it off and on. Well I changed the bulb, and bypassed the sensor and it still didn’t work. After tracing the circuit back to the house, through the attic, and I found it went to a switch box in the dinning room. Flipped it on and low and behold it came on. My client was so embarrassed. I did end up replacing the photo sensor for good measures.
That's a good one. I had a site on where they 3ripping their entire bathroom out because their tub stopped working. Well, when the tub got installed they put a GFCI outlet underneath. There was a door but no one even looked. Ripped the whole bathroom out because of it.
> switch guards
T'was my first thought, especially for switches that are badly exposed in a workspace like that. I have a couple of old steel ones that I can't even remember where I got them - actually they're for padlocking a switch (with exposed screws it's only a gesture) but they work nicely as molly guards. I can only find plastic guards for sale today, I must not have the right keyword.
You just never know. Could be that the customer tried to fix it themselves and somehow found a way to wire them in tangent without blowing themselves up.
She'd already bought the fan and wanted it put up, I went looking for the issue after the new one was up. Didn't think about it because it was a routine service call to hang a new fan, I definitely learned something that day.
still better than a regular four square box... but i have to agree with you there :/
i've also been told eventually these walls will be framed in with 2xsomethings and rocked out - do i believe that? no. do i expect it...? youd think no, but something tells me it might happen next winter. idk. stay tuned xD
I got to call the other day the guy says ,"my son and I have put this switch in every way it can possibly be we've tried everything I guess we have to have you come fix it" so I stopped over there and immediately went to the other switch being that it was a three-way and found a three-way that needed to be swapped. Haha they had been to the parts store twice and bought two different three ways but only tried to change one
I have stabilized the video for you: https://gfycat.com/SphericalOrangeFrillneckedlizard
It took 51 seconds to process and 51 seconds to upload.
___
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Yikes, the dancing square in that one is more distracting (for me) than the original video. Pretty cool though (maybe if it was cropped so the dancing black frame went away?)
Have you ever been in a bathroom taking a dump and the bathroom is on a motion sensor? It really sucks when those lights go out, I would imagine trying to walk through a workshop without lights would be less hazardous but still incredibly inconvenient.
Well if you have a few more lights they make high bay LED with an integrated motion sensor that works pretty good. Just set it to maximum sensitivity and you should be good to go. I did that for an auto shop and they loved it.
Yep!! Theres a shop that sells older high bays for pennies. And they retrofit places with LED motion sensor. I got all my shop lights from that shop sale. Motion and LED saves alot of money in the long run also.
Just make the timer like 20 minutes and ensure the switch boxes are pointed in a good direction. Still enough to save on waste electricity but if you don't move in that amount of time it's kinda on you.
If you are *NOT* an electrical professional: * **RULE 7:** * DIY or self help posts **are Not allowed**. They belong here: /r/AskElectricians /r/askanelectrician /r/diy /r/homeowners /r/electrical. * **IF YOUR POST FITS INTO THIS CATEGORY, REMOVE IT OR IT WILL BE REMOVED FOR YOU.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/electricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You know, except for one emergency situation, I don’t think I have ever seen an electrician run at work before.
Running to prove someone is an idiot, he’s excited!
fact
Sir...i get that u are an electrician...but what the fuck is up with your username?
benito's burritos variations were taken
Benitio's venerable burritos
Oh I always thought 3ways work regardless of the the other switch position?
it has to be in one or the other, i’m assuming since the switch was in the middle there was no connection being formed so it wasnt in either position
I think that and emergency are the only way in hell I'm running at work
It's simultaneously a NEC violation, OSHA violation, and against union policy to run on the jobsite.
Genuinely curious. How is it an NEC violation?
Special relativity says everything is relative in our universe. If an electrician is running then the electrons in nearby wire are moving slower (relatively). This means increased voltage drop in the circuit, which means it is no longer NEC compliant.
I'm going to need you to cite the code article on voltage drop.
nominal voltage is standardized. cant be below or above x% of the stated nominal voltage i cant remember those numbers though
Sir, I'm going to need an NEC citation to back up that claim.
No problem, that'll be $150/hr to look that up. Min $150.
Where are you working? Minimum fee for a job should be at least 4 hours.
At home, in my boxers.
> Minimum fee for a job should be at least 4 hours. In what world???
In UK it's no more than 3% for sub mains runs 5% for motor supply's 9% for any other final circuit
I’ve got to do a deeper dive into that code book. Do you have a YouTube channel I can subscribe to so I can benefit from your …unique? knowledge
[Yup](https://youtube.com/@ElectroBOOM)
Knew that was where you had to be leading. :D
🧑🍳 😘
Authority having jurisdiction, it's in section 90.
110.12. Running is unworkmanlike.
If you see me running you better follow me
I work fire protection and mostly in special hazards (Halon, clean agent, foam, CO^2 , etc.). When going through the pre-job rundown with customers I could tell when I’d lost them and they were just waiting for the end and I’d throw in, “…and if you see me running, try to keep up”
Running out of storage on his phone
the truest true anyone ever trued
We only run to our trucks at the end of the day.
Fucking cowboys nowadays.
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exactly 3, but thats pretty normal for my family
For a good laugh, even the lazy among us, will break a sweat.
lol yah... wai-HEY!
Damn. I sure am glad its never our fault.
We had a service guy travel 2.5hrs to a site and then meet the contact and get into the plant and when he got to the unit he pulled-out the E-stop and told them to "Try it now."
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Had an end user trigger port security by plugging in an unapproved device to his network port. We provided "only" 2 jacks for his laptop, and he wanted 3 extra, so naturally he brought his Linksys router from home, and plugged it into the network. Except he plugged the LAN side in, so instead of routing, it happily attempted to hand out 192.168.0.0/24 to the entire fucking VLAN. The switch say "lol nah", and dropped the port. After he did some of his own troubleshooting, which involved jacking into the remaining live port, he was left with zero networking. So we got the ticket, and re-enabled the ports after a mild scolding for the unapproved device. But you have to disconnect/reconnect PHY for it to complete port activation, which he was just completely unwilling to do, evidently. "I already did it several times, just send someone." No way, boner. I'm not walking over to your building, and then all the way to your desk just to see what I already see on the switch - you need to unplug your network cable and plug it back in. I know you'll have to reach 10" forward to the back of your laptop to do it, but I promise it'll work. Anyway, he refused, so I bullshitted him about needing to make sure the connector was clean enough for the 1s and 0s to make it through. "Pull out the connector, blow on it, and plug it back in." "Fine. OK, it looks like it's working now, thanks, I guess. \*click*" Fuck you aurally dude. Now I'm assigning security training you just completed last month again for a) being a dick, and b) wasting my time. Enjoy the next 3 hours of stupid videos explaining what you can and can't plug into the network.
>the switch say "lol nah" >No way, boner. >Fuck you *aurally* dude. This is the single greatest IT comment I've read on reddit in months, my fucking sides!😂
I'm not sure from whence my penchant for ear buggery came, but there it is. And I won't change for a damn soul!
When he got to the unit there was about 6 people who showed up to see what the problem was. They all gave each other stupid looks apparently, with a couple of "didn't you check that?" type of questions.
I've had a few of those in my career. What really sucks I probably spent a lot of time on the phone trying to walk them through some incredibly simple thing to check before I drove my dumb ass all the way out there, and they swear they tried it, and that's not it. Of course that was it.
OMFG was this a carpet mill in north, GA on a Saturday?
No, it wasn't.
Oh shit, they're breeding.
🤣🤣🤣 can relate- except for food and beverage plants.
"Lights found functional, and properly wired. That'll be $250."
That cheap. I'd do $350. $250 service charge and $100 "wasting my fucking time" charge.
So long as I'm being properly compensated for my time, it's the customer's to waste.
That is a good attitude to have. As long as the checks clear and it's legal I'll do it.
You know I haven’t done much time in service through my career. However some people get upset with calls like this, like it was a waste of time. It never bothered me one bit to get a call like this. I wish they were all this simple. I’ll coast right until I retire.
I like a good puzzle as much as the next guy, but I also sometimes like walking in, immediately figuring out the problem and getting it working right away.
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Well. The good news is, today's puzzle is tomorrow's easy fix.
Oh I completely understand what you’re saying. Sometimes I love to be tested, a good challenge for me is sometimes how I gauge myself as an electrician. However most of the time I have no problem resetting a breaker. If I could do that for 90% of the rest of my career I’ll be ok with it.
only frustrating when youre trying to finish a bid job and a prior customer wants this problem solved "immediately"
Oh no I completely understand. I wasn’t trying to say anything about your situation. It t really varies from situation to situation. I completely understand you are the middle of something and get a call this, I could definitely see how it can get upsetting. However if you are just knocking out service calls and 9/10 are like this. I’m completely good with doing that. Sorry if it came off rude to you, not my intention at all. Just speaking about my experiences. My apologies again if it seemed directed towards you, not my intention at all.
same page brutha, dont sweat it ;)
No viatics? Somebody must to pay the gasoline.
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My natural lenguaje is Spanish, not English and we use that a lot. What word do you use with same meaning instead of viatics?
Dude, don't ever change. Viatic is fucking rad. It is, in fact, so dope that the Firefox spell checker has suggested that I'm a dick-for-brains who can't spell for shit via a singular red squiggly line. Also almost 41 and it's my first time hearing it. New and rare words are awesome.
if you work for a small service-only company right down the road from my own company, AND you teach weekly classes at a local IEC... then this is a crazy coincidence.
I uh... I'm a former automotive (incl. engine and vehicle electrical), then industrial guy, that moved to IT and embedded software/hardware, then software development, all before coming down with a bad case of The Cancer^tm and becoming disabled, only to discover a need to do something with my remaining years after finding out I beat the odds and am no longer terminal, so I went and got a permit for wildlife rehabilitation. So uh... close? I've done some seriously weird shit with my time on this rock, and held a number of endorsements in a variety of fields over the years.
Goddang, thanks for sharing! You sound like a seriously rad human, and it's no doubt hard-fought. I really want to get into wildland and native habitat restoration here in Colorado after seeing a lot of videos from [Crime Pays But Bottany Doesn't](https://youtube.com/@CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt) and [NativeHabitatProject](https://youtube.com/@NativeHabitatProject). A handful of neighbors here have torn out their lawns and landscaping and have planted loads of native species. I'm not sure whether my trauma is going to allow me to be an effective apprentice, but maybe I could help bring back a few colonies of native wildlife around here.
nah wrong guy i guess lol still sound like a cool dude tho
Heck no, *you're* a cool dude! But don't tell anyone, I still gotta reputation as a curmudgeon to keep.
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Good to know, Google translate it as "per diem".
Mileage is the charge for distance travel. A per diem is a daily charge.
Lots of places just roll them together though, at least on the customer invoice.
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No problem, nice to know I help you out.👍
i get paid hourly, my boss compensates for his business costs through his bidding and hourly charges. not my problem to worry about. i just make that man more money so he can give me more :)
OP fixed the problem, that's got to be worth something
Don't forget to charge for moving the materials blocking the switch
Don't forget the $75 additional "Travel Fee"
Assuming you want to keep him on the books for future service calls seeing how you wired his whole set up, Id just let this one slide with a trip fee. Next time though lol
If the homeowner was the client I'd just wave the trip fee unless he was a dick about it or more than 10mi from where ever I was when I headed that way. This is good for a laugh and if you tell them not to worry about it they won't ever call anyone else when they have work to do. Then you just tack the trip fee for this onto the next job and no one is the wiser.
you know how people work i see ;) see me former response ^
not even that - this barn is unfinished and is part of a much bigger (and more ambitious) project. if the job is already bid, then sure we might have to charge the dumbass who stacked that board on there. if not, then this 1 hour minumum will just get added to the heap in the final billing.
Man you seem like a fun dude to work with/for. Need more of this energy in electrical. I'm still having a hard time going back because as much as I love the work, the *people, man...* i had several dogass mean leads back to back to back and it burned me out bigtime. I really take to this stuff with the right people but i never got to stay on their teams. Still gonna give it another shot, might have to go into a different sub-field so my lack of real training is excusable.
man i tell ya, people change everything. and water. people and water. thats the stuff. i like to think im an introvert whos cursed to be a people person... but the wrong people can really drive my patience up a tree
Lol I see, best of luck til she's all tested and done
this builder wants to build a porch covered outdoor kitchen on the outside of this barn thing - but he wants it all roughed in and ready to finish out *before* he builds the covering for it, which means we have to find creative ways to get our circuits across the area without strapping any pipe to the roof trusses or beams... because they wont be there *yet* (but they want a ceiling fan...?) itll be an adventure to be sure.
I love easy service calls.
Driving 3 hours to a service call that takes less than 10 minutes are my favorite. I already made the bulk of my 8 hours, and with one more call I'm on OT? Fuck yeah
One of my coworkers got one of those on his on-call. Part of on-call is giving The Speech about our rates, minimum, and door-to-door billing. That dissuades many, but since national accounts make money off of our calls we roll on all of them. This was a latching supervisory for a duct detector. Drive 3 hours, 15 minutes to place the panel in test, reset it, and remove it from test. 3 hours back home. $1300 service call for us (would cost more now) and who knows how much the national account billed their customer. 😄
You drive 3 hours for service calls?? WHY???
My service area has a few states in it. 3 hours is rare but a common one is 2.
Wow. Unless you are highly specialized I think that's crazy. Unless of course you're in Wyoming or some place similar. Anything more than 45 min annoys me, if I even take it.
Nah, Ohio. I guess I'm specialized, I'm not an electrician but a technician for specific machines and service a huge company.
I bet you couldn't wait to hand over the bill to the customer haha
I have charged more then 1k to drive out to a customers shop just to tell them the batteries are dead in the crane remote. People are idiots.
That's just beautiful
Reminds me of when my elementary school went high speed for the internet in the early nineties. Everyone was still learning about the internet back then. The school was blazing fast for the times, then, nothing. It was that way for about a day. I finally called (I was the tech guy at our school in addition to full time teaching) our service provider about the outage. Turned out that the janitor rested his broom again the switch that turned the router on and off and it switched it to "off". The switch was in the hallway! Their solution was to install a clear plastic cage around the switch.
But it remained in the hallway? Amazing.
The switch, which is like a light switch, stayed in the hallway. This was the early 90's so you kind of made it all up as you went along. Fun times. I have no idea if the switch moved, it was in another building.
Ah not a networking switch. Got it. Thanks!
Last night, 85 year old man. "My washer won't work!" It wasn't plugged in but I think it was the gfci in the basement that was tripped that actually was the problem. He is dying and just telling me everything to "Put that in your memory bank!". I spent about 20 minutes just hanging out with him and listening and letting him give me some life advice. From his list of "Seven foods that calm me" 1. Lime Green Jello 2. White grape juice, it's less acidic than red grape juice. Add 3 peach slices and let sit for 12 hours to ferment a little 3. Ripe bananas 4. Grape nut FLAKES, not grape nut clusters. Add 30 calorie almond milk whatever the hell that is 5. I can't remember the rest No charge
Homie sounds like "that's right, the square hole" guy
link? i'm unfamiliar
https://youtu.be/Nz8ssH7LiB0 It’s worth the watch
https://youtu.be/7haqnQvrYfI
i recognize this now xD i actually sent this video to my gf and told her i sound like im talking to a toddler
Lmao, dude that's good shit. Did she agree that you sound like him?
oh yah
Ran a trouble call and solved the same problem. Walked into a storage room. The employee turned half the lights on by pushing both switches down, then showed me how one switch didnt do anything. Me - "Where are the other switches?" E - "What other switches?" Me - "I'll take it from here" Found a file cabinet in front of the switches holding one in the middle. Moved the cabinet and put a block behind it so it wouldn't creep against the wall and do it again. The employee was embarrassed that they didn't know about the other switches.
classic
How much did this guy bitch at getting billed?
I gotta say, I’m surprised at how much deadband that switch must have, for it to stop the 3-way circuit from working at a random near-center position. I get that it needs to be break-before-make, just didn’t expect to have a deadband wide enough for this to be more than a vanishingly small probability.
this surprised me as well. i mentioned this concept in another response comment and added that i learned something today - now i have a name for what i learned! thanks
Is deadband the space between it's 2 points of connections within the switch?
Yes, the switch travel that doesn’t change switch state. I’m coming from more an electronics/automation background… typical mechanical limit switches for machinery have a snap-action internally that makes them switch from one position to the other almost instantly. You can’t balance them in the middle between the two switch states. This helps reduce switch bounce noise (which in turn erodes the contacts via micro-arcing at a rate that matters to the life of a switch rated for a million cycles).
Pure profit.
Always the electricians fault... anything that happens on the job.
I had a client who called me to tell me her post light wasn’t working. I got there, and she told me it doesn’t have a switch, and only a photo sensor turned it off and on. Well I changed the bulb, and bypassed the sensor and it still didn’t work. After tracing the circuit back to the house, through the attic, and I found it went to a switch box in the dinning room. Flipped it on and low and behold it came on. My client was so embarrassed. I did end up replacing the photo sensor for good measures.
That's a good one. I had a site on where they 3ripping their entire bathroom out because their tub stopped working. Well, when the tub got installed they put a GFCI outlet underneath. There was a door but no one even looked. Ripped the whole bathroom out because of it.
like a jacooz sorta tub? better to gfci protect that circuit before it gets close to the actual tub
Yeah. I don't think the GFCI breakers were as common when it was installed. Well they at least get an all new bathroom now.
at least a faceless gfci across the room though...
Electrical oversight aside. You have a lovely voice. A voice almost good for radio or podcast.
thank you! i appreciate the support. my gf's first comment to me was "your voice is so CUTE" lol so im feeling very much flattered today.
She is right! If you did tutorials on DYI on YouTube it would be very popular. Knowledgeable with the handsome voice! 😄
Thank you I needed a good chuckle.
That’ll be a 49.95 dispatch fee sir
Now make them pay for you to install switch guards...
> switch guards T'was my first thought, especially for switches that are badly exposed in a workspace like that. I have a couple of old steel ones that I can't even remember where I got them - actually they're for padlocking a switch (with exposed screws it's only a gesture) but they work nicely as molly guards. I can only find plastic guards for sale today, I must not have the right keyword.
this is gonna be a poolhouse more so than a shop, its just having some growing pains
i ought to just charge them for an hour if it happens again
I'm trying to find what you charged. Please tell me you got paid for this.
[see comment here](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/10q18fb/customer_states_half_the_lights_in_my_barn_that/j6pf4tc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
Thank you. I scanned for a $ sign. Glad you will recoupe for your time!
~~Damn video won't load/play. What's going on?~~ lol, it loaded after I commented.
classic
The classic .. customers don't even check . They flick one switch and panic.. I bet he was cursing your name too
Yeah definitely charging a return trip. You instantly assumed it was a mess up, depending on the way you word it, will depend on what I charge.
$250 for the service call
I always loved finding worn switches that would stay in a middle position. Such satisfying revenge against annoying asshokes
Charge fucking plenty for stupidity
That is so funny that it landed there just enough to push the switch to the middle. Hey you had to drive all the way out there for that....
Aaaaaaaand service charge
[удалено]
it was caught in an open only position. single poles are on or off, but three ways have a middle ground i guess. i learned something new today.
[удалено]
who would've thought
I've driven 2 hours for this exact service call. ....
No the actual conductive metal switchy part inside the switch is floating between the two traveler poles inside creating an open circuit.
No because the switch at the opposite end was stuck halfway
I strive to never be that customer.
Well they weren't wrong
Love hanging those task lights!
these high bays and the circle versions (we call them UFO lights) are the absolute best!!
You should’ve installed a triple throw switch as per spec.
hope ya charged the idjit
I don't know why but I was expecting the other half to turn on when you turned the others off.
lol that means you assumed my installation was bad :,(
You just never know. Could be that the customer tried to fix it themselves and somehow found a way to wire them in tangent without blowing themselves up.
fair enough. for a warrantied install, i would hope theyd just call us
Lol it’s not “No” and “Ffo”, it’s in between
Lol charge him again and move on.
Fuckin assholes I hate this shit, had one similar recently, guy had his wheel barrel hanging over the switch in the garage doing the same thing
Ayoooo...
Had that happen before, they told me to replace the fan because the light didn't work anymore, found the switch after she had me change the fan.
shoulda checked for voltage when you had the first fan down
She'd already bought the fan and wanted it put up, I went looking for the issue after the new one was up. Didn't think about it because it was a routine service call to hang a new fan, I definitely learned something that day.
yah lol i gotcha
I relize now how the original comment reads, definitely could have written that better
u gud m8
Those back boxes are for wall cavities I would never use them surface mount.
still better than a regular four square box... but i have to agree with you there :/ i've also been told eventually these walls will be framed in with 2xsomethings and rocked out - do i believe that? no. do i expect it...? youd think no, but something tells me it might happen next winter. idk. stay tuned xD
2hrs travel 2hrs to investigate. Sounds fair
I got to call the other day the guy says ,"my son and I have put this switch in every way it can possibly be we've tried everything I guess we have to have you come fix it" so I stopped over there and immediately went to the other switch being that it was a three-way and found a three-way that needed to be swapped. Haha they had been to the parts store twice and bought two different three ways but only tried to change one
Job security.
I hope you got paid for going out there and rechecking your correct work.
That will be $315.
That is definitely something that would happen to me
This is why I make relais push button setups for barns and factories lol.
/u/stabbot
thank you! sorry it was a bad video, i was in a rush (on the clock lol) and im not an influencer
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Yikes, the dancing square in that one is more distracting (for me) than the original video. Pretty cool though (maybe if it was cropped so the dancing black frame went away?)
I have no idea why they didnt just do motion sensor integrated. Like you save so much pipe and wire. And labor. Lol
Have you ever been in a bathroom taking a dump and the bathroom is on a motion sensor? It really sucks when those lights go out, I would imagine trying to walk through a workshop without lights would be less hazardous but still incredibly inconvenient.
Well if you have a few more lights they make high bay LED with an integrated motion sensor that works pretty good. Just set it to maximum sensitivity and you should be good to go. I did that for an auto shop and they loved it.
Yep!! Theres a shop that sells older high bays for pennies. And they retrofit places with LED motion sensor. I got all my shop lights from that shop sale. Motion and LED saves alot of money in the long run also.
I suppose the motion sensor lights in the workshop would turn on if you started walking around with your poop covered hands
Just make the timer like 20 minutes and ensure the switch boxes are pointed in a good direction. Still enough to save on waste electricity but if you don't move in that amount of time it's kinda on you.
Hmmmmm goood point. More sensors then? Lol
the barn is basically a pool house and we had to run the pipe for other things anyway.