Some 30 or 40 years ago I was a bit short of work and spotted a new local firm advertising for local NICEIC approved sub contractors so I applied and it turned out they won a contract to install upgraded heating controls in a strange triangular building near earls court. I've never done sub-contract work for another contractor before but apparently they supply all materials and I just have to get there and supply tools.

The catch was It was a concrete office block and there were long runs of plastic tube to be installed down the corridors. The first sign of trouble was it was in cold weather and heating on during the day but turned off overnight. So I simply asked where the slip couplers were. The look on the face of the main contractor suggested he had no idea what they were and why I wanted them and suggested I leave one end of the coupler loose and simply stuck the other one on the tube.  This continued right up to the boiler room at the end of each 'leg' on each floor.

I'm surprised I stuck it for as long as I did as the temperature difference must have been about 20 or 30 degrees and surprise,surprise it was all my fault when the joints separated. Never again!!

I had better not join in as my post will probably be removed with no reasons given.


Z.

There are some interesting posts in the archive.. I remember this one of Zs for example 

Nothing so odd to report for myself, but  a few funnies over the years.

I have been involved in needing to replace the shear pin on a generator set where in effect it revved up, then the contactor closed and put the genset in parallel with  an incorrectly phased supply -very much a red face moment. Well at least one of us ought to have been concentrating harder.

I have been stopped by a breathless range officer from hammering in an earth rod because of a risk of finding unexploded ordnance buried under where we were going to set up.  ("you are now going to put the lump hammer back in the truck, very carefully, and then reverse it out, very slowly and gently, and I am going to stand over there and watch")

I have been removing an elderly bladed fuse, in hindsight, perhaps with a little too much gorrilla muscle, and the board came of the wall on its fibre rawl plugs too.

I have removed the downstairs lighting fuse for a house, then removed the hallway light fitting and ceiling rose, and fitted a new fitting, only for the light to come on in my hand. Not on that circuit after all then...

On a similar note, I have climbed into the loft with the fuse of the circuit I was working on safe in in my back pocket, and then cut through what I thought was the right cable, and been greeted by a load bang and a flash, and a very nasty shock limited by the RCD.

I have also carefully laid in and plastered over a cable in a wall, and then a couple of weeks later, drilled into it.

Zoomup:

I had better not join in as my post will probably be removed with no reasons given.


Z.

Will you get a grip  - you've been told they've been moved  - not deleted


If you moan anymore we'll send you over to Mumsnet


OMS

I once went to a house the complaint was our downstairs plugs have stopped working so I find the ring main fuse blown a after a bit of investigating I found a length of thin 2 core flex with the wires pushed. Into a socket the flex went behind a large cage with what I found out later was a ferret in it then through a wall to some wall lights the cause of the fuse failure was that the cage was pushed up against the wall trapping the flex and biting through the insulation  there was a black mark where it had shorted. When I pointed out to the householder how dangerous what they had one was it didn't seem to register with him until I mentioned that the cage would of been live at full mans and it could of killed the ferret then he was full of concern and asked me to put it all right

Some people worry more about their ferrets than themselves or their family.

Surely, the ferret was protected as it was in a Faraday cage?


Its not so common when stripping out old cabling to snip one that's still live. Most people would have thought its unlikely to happen if you turn the power off and disconnect all the circuits from the consumer unit  Not us, my first job working for a builder was to pull out all the lead wiring in an old domestic property. Found all the upstairs lighting circuits in the loft and proceeded to disconnect using the side cutters, only that one of the cables was still live. Flash bang and temporarily blinded. Continued to chop away and another bang flash. We eventually found that the lighting circuit was wired into next doors power circuit.


Legh

Of course you are right the ferret would of been safe in his cage BUT just suppose he put his nose out through the bars and touched the wall or worse still if the owner had tried to lift him out then it's possible it could of been a much sadder end. Speaking of old cables my uncle once told me he went into a loft of a house that had suffered a water leak and looking into the loft after ahis eyes got accustomed to the dark he could see little flashes all over the loft turned out the cables had got wet and were flashing over in multiple places  needless to say he got down and pulled the lighting fuses pretty quick. Anyone else ever seen this??

Legh Richardson‍ You'd be surprised how common it is in larger houses. We had one entire street of houses that were all similar. (One of those Georgian Terraces). Being five storeys (plus basement) most of them had been used as flats at some point in their history, so fuseboards everywhere. It wasn't so much a case of "Identify the circuit it's on" but "identify the board it's on!"


Add to that that the sheer size of the place led to multiple LONG parallel runs of cable... so voltage indicator pens were hopeless, even the fluke ones.


Colleague just gave up, and I named his method "Testing ADS with an old pair of snips"