In the electrical trade, I think perhaps there are more parts and pieces for material needed than in any other trade.  There are different types of wiring that each requires their own list of materials, as well as some parts that are common among several processes.  For instance, the different types of wiring installation include; house wiring, commercial and industrial wiring, fiber optics, electronics, explosion proof, repair and service work, harmonics, etc.  Some of these types of wiring require very specialized materials.

Manufacturers continually bring out new equipment, new support materials, and updated methodology.  The NEC code is, if not re-written, continually updated every three years to keep up with emerging technology and material capability.

I have worked in all of the types of wiring noted above except fiber optics.  Electronics is one of the more recent types of wiring – which coincidently I am having difficulty learning.

The result of all of these types of electrical work is that your work vehicle must be able to carry a wide range and variety of material with you when you go to a job.  One of the reasons we need shelves and drawers is because the material needs to be kept dry, dust free and undamaged.  Sometimes it means knowing how and what you can substitute to do a job properly and completely.  That in turn impacts the vehicle you use for a work vehicle.

I have seen many different designs that electricians have come up with in order to provide material transportation.  One of the better vehicles was a telephone truck, but they were designed chiefly with low voltage work in mind.  The best one I have seen is a high topped van which can contain many shelves and drawers.  These days I think the best one is the Dodge Sprinter Hi-Top in three different sizes.  One of the electricians that worked for me referred to it as an “electrician’s Cadillac.”

Most of the time when I worked for other companies, I was given a pick-up to use as a work vehicle.  As a result I usually had material on the dash, on the passenger seat, under the seat, you name it.  Due to circumstances, one time I had to provide a ride for my wife in my work vehicle.  I had a very difficult time finding room for her….inside.

I told my boss that I had given my wife a ride in his pick-up on the way to work.  He eyed the front passenger seat and said; “What did you do?  Pick her up and set her on top of all the stuff?”

The electrical industry does a lot of experimenting on the result of short circuiting; especially in high voltage and high amperage conditions.  The man on the job often experiences … er … experiments with these situations by accident.

One time I was working on a large electrical panel located in the office of a business.  The business owner told me that I could not turn the power off as he was in the middle of making payroll using a computer.

In the course of my work I discovered a loose connection in the deep interior of the panel.  Very carefully wending my way through the maze of wiring and connections, I was trying, with great diligence and care, to tighten the connection with a screw driver.

Of course this would be the time that the screw driver would slip.  It did.  There was an explosion.  For a few seconds I couldn’t see.  Slowly my eyesight returned and I recovered from the electrical flash.

Fortunately, I was wearing glasses.  There were bits of copper that had splattered on, and welded themselves to, my eye-glass lenses.  The arc ruined about 3 breakers and disintegrated a number of buss jumpers.

The owner came running out of his office saying (loudly); “I told you I couldn’t have the power shut off!”  What could I say?  It took me a couple of hours running around town to find the parts I needed and to install them to get the power back on before the day ended.

For some strange reason I was never sent back to that job.

The above account reminds me of another instance where an electrical disconnect, rated for inside (weather protected) installation, had been used in an outside installation.  There were two guys working on the job.  One was standing behind the installation and the other at the front of it.  This particular installation had electrical gear on both sides of a board.  The whole unit was standing out in the middle of nowhere particular, unprotected from the weather.  The guy at the front tried to turn off the power by activating the improperly installed “inside” disconnect.  The electrical disconnect would not operate because water on copper had effectively “welded” it in place so that it was stuck.

The guy in the front jerked real hard on the handle and the whole thing blew up in his face.

At the hospital he was told the one thing that saved his face from being fried was his heavy beard.

Such instances are what have prompted many OSHA safety rules and NEC requirements for properly using equipment rated for the environment in which it is installed.

Tools

In the electrical trade there is a lot of ditching and back-filling involved in many jobs.  It’s not just a matter of going into a warm, heated building and dinging around with small hand tools.  Among electricians, there is a difference of opinion as to who should dig the ditches and do the back-filling.

I was never particular about whether or not to dig ditches.  If it would speed up the job or save money for the home owner, I was not too proud to dig.  To do a proper job of back-filling you had to tamp the earth down.  There were tools for this.  One type of tamper you directed from behind and it vibrated heavily.  Another type of tamper was called (appropriately) a grass hopper.  A grass hopper had only one handle like a shovel with a motor on it.

The grass hopper would leap into the air and come down and tamp the soil.  It worked all right, but you had to be in rhythm with the grass hopper.  I haven’t seen one for many years.  I think I know why.

One fellow was using one and it leaped up into the air and caught him under his jaw.  They hauled him away to the hospital.  I don’t really know how badly he was hurt.

Another tool used in construction is a floor sander.  Normally electricians don’t use floor sanders, but they can be working on jobs where a floor sander is in use.  One shop I worked in was located in a building that stretched from street to alley.  This arrangement did not provide much parking.  Across the alley from the shop was a hard wood floor laying shop.

Everybody from both shops wound up parking in the same alley.  One of the guys from the flooring shop was very particular as to how and where everyone parked.  If someone was parked incorrectly, he would cuss the person out, never saying politely; “could you move your vehicle?”  No one liked him.

One day I was working on a house out in the country.  This fellow was sanding the floor while I was on the job.  The home owner made coffee for us and called us in to the kitchen to take a break, but Paul, the floor sander, just kept sanding away.  Finally he stopped and joined us for coffee.

He took some pills with his coffee and said that he had tried to go a bit longer but just couldn’t.  We asked him what the problem was, and his story completely changed my feeling about him.

He had had sinus trouble and had gone to see a doctor about it.  The doctor performed surgery on his sinuses and then gave him a prescription for pain.  The doctor informed him that he must take the prescription immediately or he would suffer a blinding headache that he wouldn’t be able to live with.

What the doctor didn’t tell him was this was a lifelong prescription and that the pills cost fifty cents apiece (in the 1950s).  He had to take them every 4 hours.

If it had been me, I would have been cranky too.