An electrician scared me today

[smjcuk]

Had someone bring me a Megger mulititester today which wasn't working. Crusted in shit it was. Right mess. Opened the battery compartment and the culprit was obvious. Leaked Duracell AAs (cmon they always leak) and corrosion. The terminals had broken off the battery holder it was that bad. Levered it off, cleaned up the terminals and no banana, the wires were crimped as well and got warm with a fresh holder. So I opened it up, made up a new cable with PP3 clip and job done. Works a treat. Good day.

However the guy turns up, thanks me and explains that his boss has requested they sign off tests on what has been done so they have to actually test stuff. Turns out this is a company meter... Further conversation suggests:

1. It hasn't worked for about a year.
2. It's his only meter so he's been not using one at all for at least a year for anything!
3. In all that time he hasn't even checked a single earth strap, socket or anything properly.
4. He really thinks its just an inconvenience and suggested that if you turn it on and it works then job done.
5. The guy installs heating systems, gas (even more dangerous) and does general residential electrical work.

What a total asshat. I dread to think of the latent death traps he's left around.

Needless to say, reported to LA (whos company subcontracts to) and HSE.

[Mechanical Menace]

4. He really thinks its just an inconvenience and suggested that if you turn it on and it works then job done.

Please tell me this is a joke post.

I am one truly lazy bastard, and that approach may be fine for quick tests of personal projects where the only person you'll put at risk is yourself, but even with my less than perfect grasp on what is appropriate language I can't say what I think about this on here.

[SeanB]

Common for that to happen, you often find miswired stuff and such in especially older places, where there has been decades of work by assorted people. That they never used it for a year after it broke is just that the time pressure and such meant they didn't use it, and the habit carried on. that a light will work in a socket is not exactly an indication it is fine, it just means live is connected somewhere to one terminal, and the other has continuity to ground, with absolutely no assurance the polarity is correct or that the ground is connected, or that they are using neutral as ground and have swapped neutral and ground.

If you have seen some work I have seen you would not be surprised, some even done by the municipal electricians. no grounds, missing ground strapping on water heaters, missing covers on breakers, missing breakers and relying on the 200A fuse to provide protection to a 4mm cable feeding street lighting.

[smjcuk]

Indeed. Common but still scary.

4. He really thinks its just an inconvenience and suggested that if you turn it on and it works then job done.

Please tell me this is a joke post.

I am one truly lazy bastard, and that approach may be fine for quick tests of personal projects where the only person you'll put at risk is yourself, but even with my less than perfect grasp on what is appropriate language I can't say what I think about this on here.

Unfortunately not which is why I reported the bastard.

[electr_peter]

Sad, but true story. Just because a person is electrician/technician/... does not mean he/she a) knows about stuff and, most importantly, b) did a job properly.

I have seen obvious dangerous wiring defects before, so I try to double check my private property myself.

[SeanB]

You want scary, look at builders. there pretty much everything electrical is optional, including insulation, plugs, sockets, wiring size, tool casings.

When you see 5 extension cords placed in a socket, using the 2 wires twisted together and held in place with a strategically placed matchstick, with a brick as cable relief. The cable was something that looked like it was more sellotape than wire, the only reason the tape was there was to keep the wires apart mostly.

[smjcuk]

Yeah very good point. My father in law is a builder. They have a plumbed in toilet in the middle of their living room with wood on it as a table. It was a bathroom but he's 'not quite finished the plumbing yet'. Plus he cleans his kitchen surfaces with tyre shine.

[SeanB]

You can hide a multitude of sins with plaster or Rhinoglide. At least for a while, or the first heavy rain.

I am not a good brick layer, I can put them down, but they will not be as good as the guy who does this for a living for the last 20 years. I suck at plastering. I will hire a guy at $20 per day to do it and as well his Daga boy to do the mixing. All I have to supply are the materials, wheelbarrow, spade, cigarettes and 2 2l cokes and KFC and a loaf of bread for lunch. That will get me around 10 square metres of plaster in a day comfortably. I can then afterwards do the sanding, priming and painting.

[timofonic]

4. He really thinks its just an inconvenience and suggested that if you turn it on and it works then job done.

Please tell me this is a joke post.

I am one truly lazy bastard, and that approach may be fine for quick tests of personal projects where the only person you'll put at risk is yourself, but even with my less than perfect grasp on what is appropriate language I can't say what I think about this on here.

You would be amazed that's even a lot more common in Spain too, specially because our high unemployment rate makes quite common to have unregulated jobs everywhere.

Government tries to solve it in very wrong ways, just lile everything else. So finally they just make the rich get more money and the rest to have less, it's the perverse plan of politicians.

[daqq]

Sad, but true story. Just because a person is electrician/technician/... does not mean he/she a) knows about stuff and, most importantly, b) did a job properly.

Even more sadly, the same applies for ANY profession. Everywhere you have people who:

have the knowledge, have the skill, have the equipment and have the professional ethics needed to make a high quality job that another professional will see and say "Nice work!"

Fake the knowledge, somehow hack/slap it together and don't give a rats ass as long as it works and they don't get sued, and when another professional looks at their work they vomit.

[Monkeh]

You can hide a multitude of sins with plaster or Rhinoglide. At least for a while, or the first heavy rain.

I am not a good brick layer, I can put them down, but they will not be as good as the guy who does this for a living for the last 20 years. I suck at plastering. I will hire a guy at $20 per day to do it and as well his Daga boy to do the mixing. All I have to supply are the materials, wheelbarrow, spade, cigarettes and 2 2l cokes and KFC and a loaf of bread for lunch. That will get me around 10 square metres of plaster in a day comfortably. I can then afterwards do the sanding, priming and painting.

Sanding? You need to get better plasterers.

[Red Squirrel]

The part that sucks is this guy can legally do electrical work for other people just because they have a piece of paper, but someone who might actually be able to do a better job can't because he does not have the piece of paper.  Of course this does not reflect on all electricians.

[Rerouter]

It also does not reflect all the people that think they can do better without ever looking at there local standard, or even having the basics of understanding to know what they don't know,

My own house was wired by a first year sparky apprentice prior to us buying it, who thought he knew better, and between the twisted and taped actives mine-field in the roof, no grounds run to any outlets, and every active and neutral reversed on the sockets,

While i am not trained, i can comfortably say something was wrong, found a neighbor who was a sparky, i ran all the wires with his supervision, he tested and terminated, and 2 weeks, and a few cases of beers later we could finally be confident in our mains wiring,

[Carl_Smith]

My own house was wired by a first year sparky apprentice prior to us buying it, who thought he knew better, and between the twisted and taped actives mine-field in the roof, no grounds run to any outlets, and every active and neutral reversed on the sockets,

A great many years ago my parents bought a house and I discovered that none of the outlets in the basement level had ground connections.  I pulled them out of the box and found that in every one they had twisted the incoming and outgoing ground wires together, but not connected them to the outlet.  The outlets upstairs were wired properly.

At the time I declared that this meant the electrical work in the basement was done by the homeowners when they finished the basement level some time after the house was built.  An electrician would either do it right, or know that if they weren't going to connect the grounds to the outlets that they didn't need to waste their time twisting them together and stuffing them in the back of the box.

These days I'm not so sure of that conclusion....

[VK3DRB]

Not surprising.

1. Three metallic light fittings here had no earth because the bozo electrician forgot to connect the earth wire.
2. My father got an electric shock in his new house because the idiot electrician had a 240V active wire touching the bathtub underneath.

To make matters worse, it is illegal in this state for a competent electronics technician or engineer to do their electrical work, thanks to the Electrical Trades Union and interfering government do-gooders.

[SeanB]

Sanding? You need to get better plasterers.

Only small areas where you have to repair the odd pin hole, or around electrical fixtures where you always have to do minor cleaning of the mud left inside and then touch up to get them perfect.

Painting I used to have Joseph, who would paint without a drop sheet, but never left any spatter. We joked that we would never give him road marking white, as it would dry on the brush. Good work though, 3 days to do a room properly. first day, clean the wall, fix all the imperfections. Day 2 first coat and leave to dry day 3 second final coat. He could do a large area in that time, moving from room to room as the first was drying. On pension now, along with his wife, but his daughter is working as a cleaner in place of her.

[David_AVD]

My own house was wired by a first year sparky apprentice prior to us buying it, who thought he knew better, and between the twisted and taped actives mine-field in the roof, no grounds run to any outlets, and every active and neutral reversed on the sockets

How the hell did the missing earths and swapped A-N not get checked by the supervising electrician?  He was just as much to blame for the outcome as the apprentice.

[Rerouter]

his father owned the house at the time......