The joys of new home ownership

raleighjeepguy

New Member
Joined
May 27, 2007
Location
Raleigh,nc
As an electrician I about crapped myself. Thought I'd share what a diy electrician is capable of.

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:fuck-you:
 
This is my surprised face.

I've seen so much crap around here I can't keep track anymore. Best one was probably at my wife's parents house. They had a branch circuit that connected to a breaker on both ends.
 
Well that's one checked and fixed, now for the tedious task of checking the remaining 50 outlets and switches in the house....:rolleyes:

I found some jacked up shi-at when I moved into my house too. Look on the bright side: the house didn't burn to the ground and at least you won't be paying $80/hr to get this corrected...
 
i always put "im sorry" notes with all my jack leg repairs. Atleast when the next owner moves in.....he'll get a laugh.
 
Dug up a water line once. 7 kinds of pipe in 10' of run. PVC, galv, copper, black plastic, etc where it was patched and pieced over the years. Even had one pc of gray plastic conduit, siliconed into PVC at one end, and hoseclamped with a piece of heater hose at the other.

I like the idea of leaving an "I'm sorry" note. :D
 
BigRedB2 said:
i always put "im sorry" notes with all my jack leg repairs. Atleast when the next owner moves in.....he'll get a laugh.
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You gotta be careful about that - alawyer can say that hsows willful negligence and opens the door for lawsuits.

Both the houses we've owned have been from the original owners (of like 40 years). That seems to have really cut down on the fubar factor.
Biggest thing I deal with here now is that the owner was also a house builder, and of course built his own house. So there's a lot of oddball/unusual quirks, where they did things the way THEY wanted and not "to the norm". Like, a wall w/o any outlets b/c that's where his wife knew she wanted to put furniture...
 
Damn...wish I could say that shocked me...
 
awspence said:
:lol::lol: this one is awesome.....
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It was *not* awesome at the time... :lol:

Spent who knows how long flipping breakers, chasing wires, flipping more breakers, scratching our heads, chasing wires back the other way, etc... before I finally got frustrated and shorted it out. Two breakers kicked. Sure enough, both of them powered the circuit from opposite ends.
 
saf-t scissors said:
It was *not* awesome at the time... :lol:
Spent who knows how long flipping breakers, chasing wires, flipping more breakers, scratching our heads, chasing wires back the other way, etc... before I finally got frustrated and shorted it out. Two breakers kicked. Sure enough, both of them powered the circuit from opposite ends.
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Ok im not an electrician but I understand a little bit. How do you do that. I mean seriously you would actively have to plan joining a branch wouldn't you?
 
My grandfather has been an electrician for decades. I used to help him out all the time when I was a kid. The stuff we saw amazed me. I'm at work so all I see is a red X on your pic, but I bet it wouldn't surprise me.

The best one was the little rowhouse in downtown Bethlehem, PA (my hometown) that had a main breaker go bad. The panel was literally a rats nest of wires, like when an electrical panel explodes in a sci-fi movie. Guy didn't want to spend the money to fix the wiring, just the breaker. We replaced it and got stung by hornets in his basement on the way out. Good times.
 
Oh, and my house is all jacklegged together too. Took me three days to figure out the reason the upstairs GFCI circuit kept tripping the breaker was because a non-GFCI outlet in the downstairs dining room was shorting out.

When I do electrical work in my house now, I just go trip the main breaker. :lol:
 
Blaze said:
My grandfather has been an electrician for decades. I used to help him out all the time when I was a kid. The stuff we saw amazed me. I'm at work so all I see is a red X on your pic, but I bet it wouldn't surprise me.
The best one was the little rowhouse in downtown Bethlehem, PA (my hometown) that had a main breaker go bad. The panel was literally a rats nest of wires, like when an electrical panel explodes in a sci-fi movie. Guy didn't want to spend the money to fix the wiring, just the breaker. We replaced it and got stung by hornets in his basement on the way out. Good times.
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Good to see more PA people.
You know quakertown, silverdale, and abbington
I used to live in those areas. Lots of EAGLES license plates down here.

:)
 
My Neighbor was telling me that the PO of my house bought and installed a Ceiling fan in our living room. well, there was no over head outlet so they installed one. they turned the fan on to find out that they had tapped into a 220V.

Scares me to think what else there is.
 
When I do electrical work in my house now, I just go trip the main breaker.
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I should probably never admit this but since I haven't done field work in 4 years I'll admit my stupidity. Every job I look at now is run by new code with seperate neutrals or a 2/3 pole breaker. It slipped my mind and only cut off the single breaker to work on the outlet. Only took me about 3 minutes to scare the shit out of myself. My g/f said I sounded like a 12 year old who got kicked in the nuts. :shaking: Its never about it hurting but always about the poop that flies
 
Oh and everybody should run around and make sure the face plate screws on your outlets are secure. Apparently there was one that was tripped out at my house. and my 1.5y/o daughter discovered it. i heard her "singing" and it sounded horrible. I turned round and saw her reaching again to both sides of the outlet like she was going to pull it out. SCARED THE HELL out of me!!! Immediately dropped what I was doing and went around checking ALL outlets.
 
bonecrusher said:
Good to see more PA people.
You know quakertown, silverdale, and abbington
I used to live in those areas. Lots of EAGLES license plates down here.
:)
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Yep, know them well.

I'm partial to the Phils myself, been running a Phils plate on the front of my trucks since I was 16. :)
 
raleighjeepguy said:
I should probably never admit this but since I haven't done field work in 4 years I'll admit my stupidity. Every job I look at now is run by new code with seperate neutrals or a 2/3 pole breaker. It slipped my mind and only cut off the single breaker to work on the outlet. Only took me about 3 minutes to scare the shit out of myself. My g/f said I sounded like a 12 year old who got kicked in the nuts. :shaking: Its never about it hurting but always about the poop that flies
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:lol: Been there before.

I've gotten to the point where when I get shocked I just mutter "fuck, it's still hot" and keep working. :lol:
 
bonecrusher said:
Ok im not an electrician but I understand a little bit. How do you do that. I mean seriously you would actively have to plan joining a branch wouldn't you?
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Who knows how it happens. We were gutting the basement to remodel it and found all sorts of fun stuff. Wires spliced into the middle of a run, stuff like that.

If I had to guess, I'd say there was probably a receptacle somewhere that had half of the duplex switched. The switch side was on a separate circuit until somebody else came along and joined the two together... but I never tried to figure it out. Once the power was off, we demo'd all of it.
 
Blaze said:
Yep, know them well.
I'm partial to the Phils myself, been running a Phils plate on the front of my trucks since I was 16. :)
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I'm a yankees fan myself.( Mom and Dad family from Long Island and Manhatten)

And speaking of blowing the main breaker I used to carry around a pocket knife and just short the circuit untill i was putting in an outside light barefoot and used my all metal buck skinning knife to break the circuit. Never did that again.
 
bonecrusher said:
Good to see more PA people.
You know quakertown, silverdale, and abbington
I used to live in those areas. Lots of EAGLES license plates down here.
:)
Click to expand...

I grew up on the other end, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, bout 20 minutes from Latrobe in Greensburg.
 
XJfreakHO said:
I grew up on the other end, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, bout 20 minutes from Latrobe in Greensburg.
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I'm grew up just north of that. A little town called Corry which is SE of Erie PA about 45 minutes.

These posts are cracking me up! I love laughing at these things. I'm sure I've done a few too!:shaking:
 
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