I was put in charge of wiring a building for a distribution center.  Material for the job was transported from the factory to a distribution point, sorted as to destination and reshipped to the customers or to their job sites.

When the main panel for our job came in it was about seven feet high, four feet wide, and two feet deep.  It was a floor standing model and took three 800 amp fuses.

I was working that time with a young apprentice.  When the panel was hooked up to the power and ready to be turned on, I told him; “Shut your eyes.”  I did it to pull his leg a little.

I hit the power and “BAM!”  It blew a hole in the side of the panel wall about 10 inches across, and fire blew out the hole.  The apprentice said; “Wow!  I thought when you said ‘shut your eyes’ that you were joking.”

I tried to convince him I thought I was joking too.

We discovered that the factory had run a screw from the outside of the cabinet through the metal into a main buss.

An 800 Amp fuse is pretty expensive.

My mistake was that I had assumed that, coming direct from the factory, everything had been checked out for operation and safety.  In this case, … not so much.  Since that time I have found a number of cases where product came from the factory in a faulty condition.

When such a large scale mishap occurs, the company sends an engineer out to see if the product is still usable.  The lesson I learned on that job is, you never assume anything.

While I was still on the job at the distribution center, my company hired a young girl from Labor Ready as a runner.  She had picked up some wire for me to use on the job.  Instead of bringing 2/0 wire (for 200 Amps), which was what I needed, she brought #2 (for 100 Amps).  No one had explained the difference in wire size and function to her.

It reminded me of the old electrician’s joke about an apprentice bringing wire to a journeyman.  The apprentice said that he couldn’t find a roll of #12 wire so he brought two rolls of #6.

Electricians don’t really like digging ditches.  Not only is it difficult to do, it’s not really a “skilled” labor job.  And customers don’t appreciate paying an electrician high wages just to dig a ditch.  However, from time to time it is necessary.

Running conduit under a road, across a parking lot, or under a drive way always involves extra caution.  Today, much of the conduit buried in the ground is made of PVC.  But it wasn’t that long ago that the buried conduit was rigid metal pipe.

I had acquired a number of ends that could be pressed into the ends of threaded rigid pipe.  One end was a pointed piece of metal.  Another end was a “cap” that could be pressed onto the pipe that would enable you to strike the pipe without damaging the end.  They were very handy when I needed to run conduit under a roadway.

I would dig a ditch about 10 feet long, press on the pointed end and the capped end on a length of conduit, and drive the conduit under the roadway.  When the capped end was nearly covered I would remove it, screw on another length of conduit, attach the capped end to the next length of conduit and continue driving.  When you got through to the other side you simply removed the ends and continued connecting conduit until the raceway was complete.  The press-on ends kept the inside of the conduit clean from dust and pebbles too.

One time when I was doing this a fellow was on the job site working with his back hoe.  I suggested that if he could turn his back-hoe sideways and use the hydraulic arm to push the pipe through the dirt, it would be helpful.

He did so and it worked like a charm.  I got two hours of work done in a few minutes.  Later on I learned that there is a piece of equipment available for this purpose called a “Pipe Pusher.”

This is all good and well unless you encounter a large rock.  I heard that one crew was using a Pipe Pusher when they struck a rock.  The pipe bent and came up through the roadway, right through the asphalt.

When that happens there is no alternative.  You must stop traffic, dig a ditch, lay the pipe, backfill the excavation and resurface.  In the end that saves no time or money.

Back at the job where I had used the back hoe to push the pipe, I had run the conduit next to the building and entered the structure through an L.B.  (An L.B. is a metal elbow with a cover.)  Some months later I returned to do additional work, and brickwork had been installed on the outside of the building.  It had been installed right over the cover of the L.B.

I had to explain to the homeowner that covering up an access point, like an L.B. cover, was a “no-no.”

If I had known they were going to do the brick work, I would have left it out far enough that the cover would be exposed.

Lesson: We live and learn.

While working in the Davenport hotel I was introduced to a number of new and unexpected circumstances.  For instance:

Surprise 1. All rubber is not all rubber.  The front desk had a large number of control operators underneath it.  At that time the hotel was busy, and the management of the hotel did not want to shut off any of the electrical power while I was working on the front desk area.  Consequently I had to work on it hot.

I decided I would use a rubber mat while I was working on the controls.  I took an old truck tire inner tube and cut it open and made a nice mat to stand on.  It didn’t seem to work too well as I was constantly getting bit by electricity while I was working.  I couldn’t understand it.  Finally I convinced the management to shut off the circuits I was working on.  I later learned two interesting pieces of information.  One, – that in the making of those particular types of inner tube, the manufacturers use metallic compounds in the rubber for strength.  And two, – You can get a manufactured rubber mat for the specific purpose of working in such situations.

That would have been good information to have.

Surprise 2.  All of the old panel boxes had the neutral wires fused.  Today that is definitely a no-no.

Surprise 3.  There was very little access between floors, except in one instance there was about a four foot space between the ceiling below and the floor above.  We cut an access hole in the space to do the wiring between those two floors.  I was working in dust that had accumulated over a 75 year period.  Not a good idea.  I’m not sure how much it affected my health, but it was at that time I had a round of pleurisy.

We would remodel the rooms one room at a time.  To run the new electrical in the rooms, we would cut a notch in the plaster, lay the conduit in the notch, and the plaster crew would cover over it, and the painters would cover the damage.

The panels were old fuse type panels and we replaced them with breaker type panels.  We would use the new panel interiors and throw the new can away.

I never had the opportunity to work on the recent major renovation of the Davenport Hotel, but I often wondered how much of the work we did back then survived.

I guess, either way, that might be a surprise too.