My Dad was doing some re-plastering and decorating. When he had 'finished' the hall light, the front room light and the bedroom light would not work individually. If the bedroom light and one of the others was on then they would light dimly. If all three were on the bedroom light was quite bright but the other two were very dim. Some kind of series parallel combination.

But worse was that the hall light switch had no back box and that bit had been re-plastered. He pressed the switch into the wet plaster and the whole new plaster area was live.

 

I had a home made iron like that when I was a kid. And used a pump up kero stove to heat it. One day, after soldering some tin plate with it, I laid it down on the concrete I was working on, then a little later, reached over to pick something up and placed my hand on the concrete to prop my self up. unfortunately, I forgot about the iron. For quite a while, I had an iron shaped burn on the palm of my hand!
Ah! Memories

 

My first soldering experience was with a Weller soldering gun. That and a spool of solid core tin/lead solder. What a holy mess I made with that. But without any direction from anyone at all, I used a rotary switch to power a DC motor from batteries, either forward or reverse. The off position was (unintentionally) a dynamic brake. Took an airplane propeller and mounted it on the motor and using styrofoam I made an air-boat out of an old sprinkler, the kind that sprayed a fan of water and oscillated from one side to the other. Played with that for hours. And I was SEVEN YEARS OLD when I did that. Without any help from anyone.

Also took dad's brand new gasoline powered lawn mower apart because I wanted to see inside the engine that made it work. Dad was miffed. But he took the time to explain how it worked. In my mind's eye I could see the four cycles. I put the lawn mower back together - learned something about torque and aluminum - and cut the grass. Then I cleaned up the oil mess I made. Dad made sure I put oil in the motor before running it. Pop was a pretty good old bird. Grew up in the depression; so he knew how to make a thing or two. And he taught me.

I miss him. Gone 24 years now. "(

 

He pressed the switch into the wet plaster and the whole new plaster area was live.

AWESOME! I've seen people plaster over a box with live wires inside, but never a switch set in plaster. I don't think I could ever top that one. (not a contest here)

 

When I was teaching I had a bunch of bad wiring pics.. When I retired I left them for my replacement..
I've found a few more since and email them to the school.. On a slow day I would put them up on a big screen and have the students critique them...

 

When I was teaching I had a bunch of bad wiring pics.. When I retired I left them for my replacement..
I've found a few more since and email them to the school.. On a slow day I would put them up on a big screen and have the students critique them...

Quite possibly the one with the empty breaker positions closed off would meet code. But it is certainly ugly.

 

 

Hard hat but no safety glasses... Tch tch tch... Must be a model!

 

 

Well, if we are going to go all in on safety pictures:

 

Hello,

Here are some "Instrumentation fail" pictures:
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/socratic/sinst/doc/fail.html

Bertus

 

Hello,

Here are some "Instrumentation fail" pictures:
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/socratic/sinst/doc/fail.html

Bertus

Interesting stuff and what becomes more interesting is some of the pictured sensors, like the Rosemount stuff is not quite low end inexpensive. Hard to figure how anyone could spend $3,000 on a pressure gauge and manage to get the manifold backwards but go figure I guess.

 

Interesting stuff and what becomes more interesting is some of the pictured sensors, like the Rosemount stuff is not quite low end inexpensive. Hard to figure how anyone could spend $3,000 on a pressure gauge and manage to get the manifold backwards but go figure I guess.

It is not that hard for stuff to get connected wrong. All it takes is a dumb supervisor and piping techs who do not understand drawings. And probably the backward manifold connection was easier or looked better. All the tressure transducers in one neat row instead of being at the sampling points is a perfect example. 15 feet of stretchy hose and the pressure servo would not stablize, only oscillate. So I had to correct that myself. and was not liked for making it less pretty. Oh Well

 

You are given a problem. You look at it and come up with a solution. You do the calculations and check the required specifications and generate some sketches. You do some rough estimating and put a proposal together. It comes back approved (or not) and now you have a set number of dollars to implement the solution so the calculations and sketches get turned into specifications and drawings and a bid package gets put together and a contractor is awarded the contract. Material and equipment are in the construction warehouse and the contractor comes on-site and construction begins. I go out to the construction site to see how the job is progressing and the instrument/electrical techs start asking me questions. Huh? I put all of that information into the construction package! So I ask him "where are the drawing and specifications?" Invariably the answer was "back at the shop", "in the truck", "I don't know", etc. Most gets done by the seat of their pants from prior experience with no regard to the construction package with all the details spelled out. It always amazes me when we finally have a startup and it actually works. I had one job where the electricians had never wired a motor control circuit in their life and had no idea what a motor starter was. They had been doing commercial construction with all packaged equipment that only required a power feeder. That was the same job where the 750MCM triplex 3 phase 400A 480V feeder was bolted cross phased. A DEAD SHORT when the substation feeder breaker was energized.

 

A couple of locking methods....

 

Padlocking a lightbulb... I'm guessing Russia?

 

Padlocking a lightbulb... I'm guessing Russia?

I would have thought the cost of the lock outweighs the cost of the bulb.

Ron

 

I though they were trying to hold up the pipe.

 

When my cousin came back from touring Russia she said there were 2 things you could not depend on. Toilets having paper or restaurants having food. They have to remove the cars wipers when they park or they will be stolen. So I guess they have more locks than lightbulbs...

 

My guess is buying one lock is cheaper than buying several bulbs, and the labor to put them in..