Some workers in desperation do desperate things.  And usually the desperate thing turns out to be, well, dumb.

One of the larger jobs I was on was a build of a thirteen story building.  As the electricians were finishing up our trim-out of the job, the carpet layers arrived.

I had made a habit of cleaning up behind me as I worked, so there weren’t many issues on my end with tools and debris lying about.  However others had not been so careful.

The carpet layers said that they wouldn’t do any clean up because, in their words, “That’s not our Job.”

There were many rooms that after being carpeted, had small lumps under the carpet.

That will wear out a carpet much faster.  And of course a worn out carpet will need replacement quicker.

It reminded me of a story I heard about a couple of carpet layers doing a job.  As they finished up and were leaving, one of the carpet layers couldn’t find his cigarettes.  As he looked about he saw a small lump in the carpet near the middle of the floor.

Taking his hammer he went over and pounded the lump flat.  Then as he was leaving the door, he saw his cigarettes on a window sill near the door.  He picked them up and put them in his pocket, but stood wondering what had been under the carpet.

About that time the lady of the house came hurrying up and asked them in an anxious voice if they had seen her parakeet.  It had gotten out of it’s cage and was nowhere to be found.

Smoking can be hazardous to your health.

And to the health of little birds.

For awhile, in order to make a living, I worked out of town.  Over a period of a couple years, I worked part time in Seattle.  I couldn’t afford to move there, so I stayed with our daughter and son-in-law and drove home every weekend.

This practice gave me a wide variety of experience.

Heavy fog was the most challenging condition I encountered.  For instance, at times I would follow a set of tail lights through the night, in the fog, on the freeway.  One time I followed a car right off of the freeway.  Then I had to figure out how to get back on the freeway and find another set of tail lights to follow.

Another type of experience was accidents.

One time my wife and I were driving home from Seattle when we observed a huge cloud of dust.  When we reached the location of the dust cloud, we saw that a car had gone off of the freeway and rolled.  The lady who had been driving the vehicle was standing by the edge of the road hugging a passerby.

I immediately thought of all kinds of back stories that could have lead to this eventuality.  However since the lady had help and we would have been holding up traffic, we continued on without stopping.

Seventy-five years of driving makes me appreciate the song that says; “It’s a jungle out there.”  (Even if I’m not OCD)

I have travelled by airline to get to some jobs.  Air travel is said to be the safest way to travel, but I don’t feel it.

For one thing, it is difficult to stop by the side of the road and visit with someone when you travel via plane.

Or to visit a roadside attraction.

In operating my own business, I became very competitive – well competitive for me.

If I was on the road, tending to business, and passing by a job site, I would wonder to myself; “Why didn’t they let me bid on it?”  Sometimes I would stop and leave a business card.  (Of late, the boys have put together a list of pros and cons for hiring AdenBecks to do their wiring.  They send it with bids or leave it in doorways where there is a project happening.  The last listing under the “Cons” of the home owner doing it himself is; “Being electrocuted is a bad thing.”)

One time I was working on a house when a fellow came inside to talk to me.  He was building a house up the road from where I was working and wanted to know how much I charged per hour.  He was quite disgusted with his contractor and was ready to fire him.

I gave him my business card and told him to call me anytime and I would come by and give him a price.

I never heard from him again.  Perhaps he made up with his contractor.  Or maybe he used my hourly rate as a negotiation tool.  Who knows?

One gentleman would get my price regularly, …. then do the work himself.  He would use my price to calculate his general contract, and do the work I had priced for him.  I don’t know how he handled the electrical inspection.

About that time I began to realize that electrical inspectors were our allies.  Over time the electrical code has become more stringent and non- electricians or contractors without an electrical license are no longer allowed to do the electrical work.

Now-a-days an electrical inspector has to pass the same tests as an electrical contractor.  It evens the playing field.

Even today, though, we still encounter some individuals that want to do their own wiring.  It is allowed if it is for their Own Residence.  They still need to take out a permit and have it inspected.

Sometimes an individual will do their own wiring on their “own residence” and in less than 2 years they will flip the home.  When the Washington State electrical inspection department catches them, there is a fine attached.

All in all, there are some good laws, and some that aren’t so good.

Changing electrical advancements have included changes in the way cash registers work.  In fact, I am unsure if “cash register” is still an accurate description of the modern version of determining your bill at the check-out counter.  Maybe it’s no longer called the check-out counter anymore, either.

The old style cash register could pretty much be placed on a counter at any given spot and used as it was.  As the cash registers became electronically controlled, wiring and grounding became necessary – limiting their movement from where they were installed.  When bar code scanners were introduced the grounding requirements became more involved.

For the bar code scanners we had to run new circuits that would not pick up any stray currents that would interfere with the working of the scanners.

In one installation, the location of the scanner was 60 feet away from the circuit source.  The store was already in existence and was sitting on a concrete slab.  Since there was no basement, I could not run a ground wire underneath the floor.

I drilled a hole through the concrete slab and then drove a ground rod down to floor level.  I had no idea if there were any man-made and/or installed impediments below.  I was hoping that I would not “interdict” any gas lines, water lines, sewer lines, etc. with my ground rod.

I wondered why they couldn’t make a better system of wiring within the scanner itself so that the external grounding would not be necessary.  As usual with all of my good ideas, within a few years the manufacturers of the bar code scanners had done just that.

Of course, that necessitated replacement of all of the old scanners.  I guess you sell more equipment that way.   If you remember back a few of these blogs – (well more than a “few”) – that’s what happened with the bowling pin setter machines.

As the saying goes; “That’s the cost of progress.”

I have in my office an early vestige of such progress.  In wiring hotel rooms in the area, I saw how wiring operations have changed over the years.  Hanging in some rooms there used to be a sign indicating the progress of electrical technology.  The sample I have reads:

“This room is equipped with Edison Electric Light.  Do not attempt to light with match.  Simply turn key on wall by the door.  The use of Electricity for lighting is in no way harmful to health, nor does it affect the soundness of sleep.”

There are three ways to conduct electrical current from one point to another.

1. Under the ground through wires.

2. Overhead on poles through wires.

3. Through the air – with no wires

As radical as number three sounds, it is used today – sometimes with increasing regularity.  However at this time lightning is not controlled by humans.

I have always wondered why it isn’t possible to use the electricity produced by lightning.

You can use running water to produce electricity, and you can use electricity to provide running water.

You can use blowing wind to produce electricity, and you can use electricity to provide air movement.

You can use electricity to produce heat, and you can use heat to produce electricity.

Why not lightning?

Science has established that in a lightning storm, lightning rises from the earth to meet the lightning descending from the sky.  Therefore, evidently, there is electricity in the earth.  That brings all kinds of possibilities to mind.

For instance, when you park your car in the summer with all the windows up, the interior of the car soon becomes unbearably hot.  Between the hot upholstery and the super hot steering wheel I’ve been scalded numerous times.

Why not install an interior automobile system in a car for summer time heat.  When the summer time temperature in the car rises higher than the outside ambient air (and you would ONLY want this to operate in the summer), a generator powered by heat and ground effect electricity, could operate a series of small fans to bring outside, cooling air into the car to equal, or be less than, the outside temperature.

Voila!  Another problem solved.

I have replaced many poles for electrical reasons.  Most of the time, it took more than one person to do the job.  We would remove the meter, wiring, light fixture, grounding, etc. from the pole.  Then a crane would come in to lift the old pole out and drop in a new pole in the existing hole.  Then the meter, wiring, fixture, and all the rest would be reattached.

This was usually a whole day job for two men and a crane operator.

One time I was sent to replace a pole by myself.  I transported the new pole on my ’48 Ford flatbed pickup truck.  The large end was at the back of the pickup bed and the top end of the pole was angled up over the cab of the pickup.  Allow me to interject here, a short description of my pickup.  Along the back of the cab and sticking up over it I had a rack with round “stakes”.  These stakes were spaced along the length of the back of the pickup cab, about 1 foot apart.

Therefore, as I traveled with the pole on the pickup, it was held in place by one of the round stakes on each side of the pole.

When I got to the job, the old pole was out already.  I cleaned out the hole and angled a flat board into the hole as a skid plate down into the hole.  I slowly backed my pickup toward the hole, lowering the large end into the hole.

About this time I realized that as the large end went down, the smaller, top end of the pole would rise off of the rack of the pickup and would reach a state of uncontrollable activity.  It could roll sideways or twist and fall, or any other number of catastrophic eventualities.  If it did so while I was in the cab, … ooops!

Just down the hill there was a parked car – directly in reach of the pole should it go that direction.  I realized that I should have provided a guide of some kind at the back end of the pick up to prevent any such occurrence.

My procedure became one of back up a little, check the pole, back a little, check, back a little, check, etc. etc. etc.  Eventually the pole was high enough and the larger end was far enough into the hole that I could manipulate the pole by hand.

After I had the pole up I sat down on the back of the pickup and rested until my heart had slowed down to a normal speed.

I contemplated how I would build the needed guide for the next time I needed to plant a pole singlehandedly.

I never had to do a pole like that again.

Also, I never built the guide.

Sometimes it’s better not to work alone.

On a commercial job in Spokane, Washington, we had a man come up from California to work with us.  At that time the Union allowed one man to work in our area or on our job from out of state.  The man that we had was made our foreman/superintendent.

At the time the electrical regulations in California were not as strict as the ones in Washington, and this man had done mostly residential work in California.  With all that being said, and looking back on the experience, I developed a bit of a pre-judgment about him.

From my perspective he seemed a bit shy of the necessary knowledge needed for a commercial job.  This to me was especially evident in the way he wanted the heating wired and installed.  I felt that his experience in the warmer climes of California was skewing his requirements for heating in Washington.

Then I found out, realized, had pointed out to me; that the facility we were wiring was to be a manufacturing plant for electronics.  The heat generated by the manufacturing process was being re-allocated for use as building heat.

I realized that the knowledge deficiency had been my own.

I should have given the California guy a little leeway.

This particular job had a feeder ran in three 4” conduits with Number 4/0 wire.  There was a junction box in the ground on each of the conduit runs.

When you run parallel runs of wire feeder, each individual wire is required to be of the exact same length, insulation, and size.  Some electrical inspectors are very strict about this requirement.  When we came to make up the wires in the bottom of the 600 Amp panel, it was impossible to keep the wires the same length as we landed them in the terminals.

I made some objections about the circumstance, but no one objected to changing the length of the parallel wires.

I learned that this rule had a lot of leeway.

My bad.

When I first started working and carrying a lunch, the current available lunch carrier was either a paper bag or a metal box.  The metal boxes had a round top where a small thermos could be carried.  The thermos would hold hot or cold liquid.  (It was not wise to put both in at the same time.)

Many workmen became very imaginative about the use and design of their lunch box.  For instance one of the first innovations I saw was a change in the thermos carrying portion of a metal lunch box.  The thermos size wasn’t large enough for some guys.  They would open up the end of one side of the box so that it would accommodate a longer thermos inside.

I mentioned previously about the guy that installed a “hot-plate” in his lunch box.  He took the heating element out of a clothes iron and installed it in his box.  He put a metal plate on top of it and fed the plug and cord outside the box.  He would put a cup of soup and a sandwich on it and fifteen minutes before lunch his box-lunch would get plugged in.  I wondered what he would do with his fruit or metal eating utensils, but it worked for him.  At lunch time, he had a hot meal.

I expect an electrician could have added a thermostat to the arrangement, but I never heard that anyone did.

When I first started hiring employees, I encouraged them to bring a lunch and not go out to a fast food place.  My feeling was that a healthier lunch helps you think more clearly, and promotes continued high production for the full 8 hour day.

After a few years you couldn’t buy a metal lunch box anymore.  Now they are all made of “melt-able” materials.  However with new technology you can get a lunch box that will keep your food warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

I have also seen the next iteration of that old “heated” lunch box.  You can now purchase a lunch box that works off of a 12 volt system to provide heating or cooling.

I wanted to buy one for each of my men, … but they weren’t inexpensive enough.

Everybody has the right and privilege to work on their own projects.  In fact the Do-it-Yourself industry is growing.  Whether or not a person does their own work or hires it done, the job must still abide by the laws governing inspections.

I have noticed that there is a great deal of difference in workmanship, usually depending on the experience factor of the person who performs the work.  There have been a few cases I have seen where a “Do-it-Yourselfer” has been so particular in his or her work that the job was as good as a contractor.  But that result is not common.

On the other hand I have seen workman in a particular trade do work so bad it could have been done by “Joe’s Pretty Good Garage Mechanics and Tradesman Coalition.”  Through the years I have looked at the finished product of Electricians, Plumbers, and Carpenters.  After awhile I could identify the company and the tradesperson involved by looking at the work.

Usually the difference was most notable between professional and non-professional.

On one job I watched a number of teen-aged boys on a scaffold trying to put up a sheet of 4’x8’ sheet rock.  (The process for fastening sheet rock has changed over the years and I won’t comment on what is the more correct way to do it here.)  These boys were using the process of placing the sheet rock in position, nail the corners, and then decide it was in the wrong location and remove the sheet.

When you remove a nailed piece of sheet rock, the nail heads pull through the sheet.  This leaves a small nail-head size hole on the front side and a large divot of missing sheet rock on the back side.

The crew of teen-agers did this so many times that the sheet they were using became as limp as a dishrag.  I guess they left it up to the taping and mudding to cover up.  When it comes to taping and mudding, you can really tell the difference between professional and non-professional.  A professional taper can tell the difference between a professional rock hanger and a Do-it-Yourselfer.  (Just as much as a painter can tell the difference between professional and non-professional taper.)

One time we were on a job where the sheet rock dust was about ¼ inch deep on everything.  It turns out that the rock hangers had been using a table saw to cut the rock to fit.  Their clothes looked like they had been grinding grain into flour.  It is usually not best to fit the rock so close that there is absolutely no space between pieces.  (Then again, I’m not a sheet rocker or a taper and I don’t play them on T.V.)

Speaking of which, when my wife and I were building our home we used a lot of pieces of sheet rock left over from jobs we had been on.  We wound up doing a lot of extra fitting and finishing.  We also used some 4’x12’ sheets, which were hard to handle for two (inexperienced) people.

Years later I found that there is a tool for sheet rock hanging.  They have a ceiling jack for the purpose of putting up large pieces of sheet rock and it works like a charm.

Which is why, generally speaking, no matter how much you know or want to do your own work, people with the right tools and experience will generally cost less than a D-I-Y project.

One time I was temporarily out of work.  There wasn’t much going on and I was sort of “on-call” for little odd jobs.

I was called in to do an emergency job about 30 miles south of town.  It was a small town that had an old septic management system.

The town’s sewage was piped down to a large tank outside of town.  There were two submersible pumps that would pump the sewage from the tank to a nearby, manmade, pond.  For lack of a better term, you could call it an “open septic pond.”

The two submersible pumps were regulated by a set of controls that would work one pump at a time and use them alternately.  There was one, critical, flaw in the control set up.

If one pump failed, the controls would not automatically turn the second pump on.

One pump had failed.

Remember, the pumps were submersible pumps.

Raw sewage is not fun to deal with.  What could I do?

First I rewired the controls so that the alternate pump would start working and continue to work until the second one was back on line.  Then I pulled the second pump and, as carefully and cautiously as I could, secured it in the back of my work truck.  I then went as rapidly as the law allowed to a well known motor/pump repair shop and delivered the “mess” to them.

Then I went home, cleaned up, and burned my clothes.

Some days later I was called by my employer.  They informed me that the motor repair shop had called them and had informed them that there was nothing wrong with the motor and pump.

I replied that they probably had not wanted to open it up and look at it.

I also told my boss that they could send someone else to re-install the motor.  It wasn’t worth it to me for just a couple hours of work.  (After all, I had a limit to the amount of clothes I owned.)

I never heard anymore from anyone about that job.

And that was a good thing.