That’ll Hold ‘Em

I have had my share of run-ins with different trades working on the same job.  For some reason electrical boxes prove to be invisible to sheet rockers.  I have been on jobs where more than one electrical box, installed at electrical rough-in, was subsequently covered by sheetrock.  In commercial jobs they can be covered by two layers of sheet rock.

Today a “tick-tracer” can be used to find a box.  Just power up the circuit and go find the hidden box by the live electricity behind the blank wall.  However, before tick-tracers were invented you could get close to the area by holding a straight edge against the wall and looking for a slight bulge.

On a job in Glasgow, Montana we were working on a three story hotel.  When we came back to do finish work on the first floor the boxes were covered and we complained to the sheetrockers.

When they rocked the second floor they went back and cut open the boxes for us.  They didn’t cut around the outside of the box.  The cuts were on the inside of the box footprint.  That did two things.  It left the sheetrock bulged out at the box location due to being hung up on the outside edge; and it chopped up the insulation on the wiring inside the box, leaving us to repair the damage to the wiring.

On the third floor when we finished the rough-in I left the power on to the circuits when we left.  When the sheetrockers started cutting into the live wires, the live circuits burned the dickens out of their saw blades.

The carpenters and sheetrockers were not all that happy with us but it was the last floor and we all lived through it.

Another thing I have run into with the guys that do taping and mudding is an electrical box full of plaster.  When perf-a-taping a joint if they had too much plaster they sometimes filled our boxes with it.

One of the men I worked with returned to a job to put in the switches and receptacles to find that all the openings in the kitchen had been filled with plaster.  The tapers (we called them “mudders”) had plugged our boxes and finished the walls so that the boxes couldn’t be found.

The electrician complained to the mudders and their reply was “That’s your problem.  You find them.”  So the electrician took a hammer and started down a horizontal pathway where the boxes should have been, pounding holes in the sheetrock.

The mudders came in screaming; “What are you doing?”

He replied; “You covered them, I’m finding them.”

I thought they were going to kill him.  But it did a good job of adjusting attitudes.

By the way – the electrician’s name was Buster.

Conduit Explosives

Since the 1940s there have been technological improvements in electrical conduit.  Over the years, in using conduit for electrical work, I have run into some unusual circumstances.

For instance, when building on top of a concrete slab very often the conduit will be put in place in the floor before the cement is poured.  The conduit ends are located so as to come up within the space of a future wall.  Then as the building goes through its various construction phases there are wiring raceways in which to pull wire.  When a wall is constructed where the conduit has been stubbed up, new sections of conduit are attached as needed to get to the termination points.

To run wire through the conduit a semi-rigid wire (called a fish-tape) is run through the conduit to an opening, wire conductors are fastened to it, and then the wire is pulled back through the conduit to the point where you are working.

There are a certain phenomena surrounding open ended conduit.  Some people are fascinated by an open conduit end, and will drop things into the open conduit.  I guess they just can’t help themselves.

One place we were working was next to a fast food place.  Someone emptied a bottle of Coca-Cola down one pipe.  When the liquid evaporated it left behind a substance of sticky syrup in the pipe.  Contrary to how cola works with your digestive system, this instance made it impossible to push a fish-tape through the conduit.  The only solution was to dig out the pipe and replace it.

Sometimes people would drop a marble or a little rock down the pipe.  The drag produced by these items made it very difficult to get wiring pulled.

One time, at a job site next to a college dormitory, the dorm residences used the open conduit as urinals.

Worse than that, yes – worse, was the time we terminated some conduit stub outs inside a location for concrete pillars.  Unknown to us the concrete workers had allowed some wet cement to get into the open pipes.  When the cement set it was impossible to get the concrete out of the pipe.  When we returned and attached the next sections of conduit to the stubbed out ends, we didn’t know about what was now in the conduit below.  Of course we found out when we attempted to fish the wire into the raceways.  Our boss suggested that we drop lit firecrackers down the open pipe to blast the concrete away.  It was a good idea that worked on some, but then we found one conduit that had too much concrete in it.

The ensuing blast took the conduit right out of the concrete pillar, taking a chunk of the pillar with it.  The conduit was split open, so we cut the bad piece out, put in a fresh piece of conduit, and continued.  We let the cement finishers figure out how to deal with the disfigured pillar.  However we learned to cover the open ends of conduit.

I know of at least three times where someone deliberately drove a nail through the center of the conduit into the wood framing.  On one of those occasions I was able to push the fish-tape past the nail underneath it and attach some of the wires and pull them back through.  Then I sent the fish-tape through one more time and got it to pass the nail on the upper half of the conduit, attach the rest of the wires and pull them through.

I never heard that it electrified the nail.

Bank Jobs

Montana weather usually can mean a work shut down in winter months.  Generally we planned for it by stocking up on basic necessities and food, as well as paying ahead on loans.

The 1^st National Bank was a plus for us all.  The boss told us that he had bid the job at bare cost just to keep us working.  We really appreciated that, and we were determined to make it come out ahead.  We were going to work extra hard.

When the light fixtures came in, which he had ordered, he assisted us in stacking them in an empty room.  When he looked at the invoice that had come with the fixtures he said; “Oh!  This is great!  They threw the light bulbs in free.  That gives us about $400.00 profit on the job.”

When we finished and all the numbers had been run, he told us he had come out with about a 10% profit.  Everyone felt good about that.   I don’t know how the other contractors did, but I do know there were some surprises on the job.

In the banks I have worked on there are two vaults.  One is a cash vault and one is a paper vault.  Each vault has about 18” thick concrete walls enclosing them.  They are outfitted with breathing tubes so that if someone gets accidently locked in the vault they won’t suffocate.  These tubes are placed on an upward angle out of the vault so that someone inside cannot toss items out the tube to someone else outside.

In this bank the two vaults had been placed side by side for many years.  There was a partition wall between the two vaults, and the store located in the same building.  The store had moved and the bank was taking over its space.  The decision to expand the bank also included a renovation on the vaults.  The two existing vaults were to be combined into one, and a new vault installed a distance away in the new portion of the bank.

The plan was to pour concrete to fill in the existing vault doors and cut a new door on the side of the vault that had abutted the partition wall.  Two men were going to jack hammer the opening in the vault for the new door.  The job was going to take two men and a rope suspension for the jack hammer to get the new opening in the vault wall.  It was, after all, an 18” thick wall, the jack hammer was heavy, and the door was going to exceed six feet in height.

When the two men started the jack hammer it practically fell through the wall.  When they showed the bank president, he got as pale as a sheet.  The wall had been constructed out of clay tile, not 18” thick concrete.  It had been that way since the bank had been built.  Anyone could have hid in the adjoining store over night and broke into the vault with an ordinary home owner’s claw hammer.

Making the door and taking out the partition was not a big problem.  However a whole new 18” thick concrete wall had to be built.

If you attempt to break into a bank vault, make sure it is very, very old and has been built by a contractor that cuts corners.