fellow installers....one to make you laugh at my expense!!!

[moogwai]

was fitting a new heating system in a 3 story town house for my cousin this week,doing it by myself to keep cost down as they are skint!
whilst cutting through joists for my pipework i went through an unseen to me electric cable and blew the main fuse to the house as well as nextdoors house!!!
for the next 3 hours i had to work by torch light whilst waiting for npower to send an engineer to replace the fuses!!
beings as it was a town there were still 18 more joists to cut through (joist every 400mm!!) so in total darkness and by handsaw as my batteries for my circ saw were charging when i cut the cable....i had to make 72 cuts in the joists for my notches...my arm was killing me!!
also managed to hang and pipe up 2 rads by torch light and was amazed they were level when power was finally restored!!!! happy flippin xmas to me!! somethin always happens when you are doin a favor for someone!!! so go on have a laff at that!!

 

[Billy Bob Bob]

bad luck moogwai,still its not funny ,you could have fried yourself

 

[moogwai]

i wondered why my hair was smokin...i thought it was steam rising as i was working up a sweat in a cold house!!! and i ddddevelopped a ssstutter!!! i guess i was lucky gas man..thanks for your conccceren.

 

[mkflow]

lol
always when doing 'love jobs' something always goes wrong.
did lovely little job for mate months back, replace rads power flushes etc. finshed job thought oh i will move van and park it on drive as getting dark easier to put tools away, reversed van and bang backed into his front window frame, breaking back light on van and window ledge.

 

[dontknowitall]

Yonks ago my parents asked the builders to make a hatch in a ceiling. They also asked them to remove a heavy steel water tank from the attic. Builders asked if they could drop it through the ceiling, then make it neat. My parents agreed.

Builders picked the tank up, dropped it above the attic floor and it fell through.

Then it disappeared through the floor of the room below.

And then the downstairs floor ...

... until it stopped in the cellar.

Oops!

 

[moogwai]

Yonks ago my parents asked the builders to make a hatch in a ceiling. They also asked them to remove a heavy steel water tank from the attic. Builders asked if they could drop it through the ceiling, then make it neat. My parents agreed.

Builders picked the tank up, dropped it above the attic floor and it fell through.

Then it disappeared through the floor of the room below.

And then the downstairs floor ...

... until it stopped in the cellar.

Oops!

lol....thats ace!!

 

[gasmarc]

that is mental lol, years ago while i was doing a refurb the lead water main coming out of the concrete floor sprung a leak .So i did the sensible thing and lifted the floorboards as near to the concrete floor as possible, There it was the old lead main I reach below the floor and started cutting it with my metal hack saw and for some reason I stopped and lifted another board only to find i was cutting through the lead pipe supplying the electric meter, if i had cut through any further i would have been brown bread

 

[Penged]

Hi Gasmarc
That was amazing what ever made you stop when you did, goes to show those who stop check there work should be prized.
Better to be slow and thorough rather than quick and dead.

 

[gasmarc]

i dont know something said to me to stop,maybe it wasnt my time , i have worked in a sparks house before and told him to switch everything off ,I shouted down to him had he isolated the mains only to get a shock , so very clued up these days but anyone can make a mistake

 

[dontknowitall]

i dont know something said to me to stop,maybe it wasnt my time

That's the first thought that occurred to me!!

 

[gasmarc]

maybe gods giving me loads of small shocks along the way building up to a big one lol, i do remember having a very late night on the beer and a very early start the next morning, only to find myself getting an electric shock from a boiler stat while standing on a kitchen work top ,that was a sobering experience I can tell you lol

 

[moogwai]

that is mental lol, years ago while i was doing a refurb the lead water main coming out of the concrete floor sprung a leak .So i did the sensible thing and lifted the floorboards as near to the concrete floor as possible, There it was the old lead main I reach below the floor and started cutting it with my metal hack saw and for some reason I stopped and lifted another board only to find i was cutting through the lead pipe supplying the electric meter, if i had cut through any further i would have been brown bread

jeez mate...that was close!!! i didn't even know they fed electric with lead pipe....will certainly be looking out for that in the future!!

 

[gasmarc]

yes on very old properties as i found out myself lol

 

[Avatar]

This is a good reason why to make sure you get good power tools, (particually recipricting saw/drills) that are double insulated and use them religiously . . .

If you were using a hand saw and cut a 230v wire you would be more dead than Elvis!

Being a plumber i have a healthy fear of electrical wires and the like - there is always a slight risk of doing something stupid, even if you are carefull usually. Better be double sure and use insulated tools when working in areas of high electrical risk!

 

[gasmarc]

yes very good point on the power tools ,but we all make mistakes sometimes that are not always our fault, I had a mate who put a kango through a serious mains cable supplying our whole area which he managed to take out in a flash, fortunately he was not killed but received some serious flash burns, He had been instructed by the foreman to cut these dead cables out

 

[quality]

jeez mate...that was close!!! i didn't even know they fed electric with lead pipe....will certainly be looking out for that in the future!!

Even flat twin and earth used to have a lead sheath years ago , though it was flat twin then with no earth

 

[gasmarc]

you would not tell the difference between the main and the main if they were side by side