Tough Day...week?
Posted: June 15th, 2009, 2:36 pm
Since I am laid off at the moment and no new prospects for work at the moment I decided I would use this time to do some charity work for my church...they have several buildings and a regular full time maintenance crew and even they need help from time to time.
The A/V guy had a list as well as the head maintenance guy.
The church maintains a mission house. It is 30+ years old...had partially burned at one time and had major repairs done to it. Then there is "bubba" who came along and "fixed" things along the way.
Needless to say it was electrically in a mess. (Residential wiring is always the worst to begin with...this went beyond the call)
Anyway the church wanted me to install some lights and new fixtures in the house. Replacing bathroom lights was easy enough...so was the outside lights.
The wiring of the new lights in the basement was different though. The lights were used from the church building to start with...salvaged from some renovations they had done.
First I had to clean up and verify the wires I seen (nothing labled) meaning that rerouting them as needed and taking out others that weren't needed. Trying to reuse as much of the existing wiring as I could.
One half went fine...the second half wasn't so good (used as storage and office for our maintenance lead). Someone had done some creative wiring on one of the fixtures and it caused a dead short...my investigation of the short caused another one...finally it all worked out fine.
Then this morning while I was working on pulling some Coaxial cable the pastor called to tell us that he has no lights.
I went to investigate...one of the wires was broken in the ceiling. I knew it was hot while working on it...but I got hit anyway...120 volts from a three phase panel right across both arms and chest while standing on the very top of a ladder...when it threw me loose I about lost balance and with the Pastor and Associate both in the office (trying to have a meeting) I let out a word meaning fecal material really loudly...(for those that need help "shoot" is close enough)
I quickly got the tracer on it and found the breaker...after trying the breaker it was labled to be. (more of "bubba's work there too)
The maintenance lead and I both broke out laughing at the whole situation at the end of it all...Good thing the secretary was gone...
The A/V guy had a list as well as the head maintenance guy.
The church maintains a mission house. It is 30+ years old...had partially burned at one time and had major repairs done to it. Then there is "bubba" who came along and "fixed" things along the way.
Needless to say it was electrically in a mess. (Residential wiring is always the worst to begin with...this went beyond the call)
Anyway the church wanted me to install some lights and new fixtures in the house. Replacing bathroom lights was easy enough...so was the outside lights.
The wiring of the new lights in the basement was different though. The lights were used from the church building to start with...salvaged from some renovations they had done.
First I had to clean up and verify the wires I seen (nothing labled) meaning that rerouting them as needed and taking out others that weren't needed. Trying to reuse as much of the existing wiring as I could.
One half went fine...the second half wasn't so good (used as storage and office for our maintenance lead). Someone had done some creative wiring on one of the fixtures and it caused a dead short...my investigation of the short caused another one...finally it all worked out fine.
Then this morning while I was working on pulling some Coaxial cable the pastor called to tell us that he has no lights.
I went to investigate...one of the wires was broken in the ceiling. I knew it was hot while working on it...but I got hit anyway...120 volts from a three phase panel right across both arms and chest while standing on the very top of a ladder...when it threw me loose I about lost balance and with the Pastor and Associate both in the office (trying to have a meeting) I let out a word meaning fecal material really loudly...(for those that need help "shoot" is close enough)
I quickly got the tracer on it and found the breaker...after trying the breaker it was labled to be. (more of "bubba's work there too)
The maintenance lead and I both broke out laughing at the whole situation at the end of it all...Good thing the secretary was gone...
