Own up! What's been your biggest moment of stupidity?!

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DNS1

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Apr 8, 2011
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My ridiculous error today made me think of this! Here's my balls-up of the day...

Doing a board change, fairly simple, small flat.

Old board out, new board up, easy peasy so start testing the circuits. First up, electric shower, total of about 50cm run of cable as bathroom is immediately behind the board.

Continuity is fine, although a bit of a pain as there was very little slack in the cable at the switch, just enough to get the probes in.

Move on to IR, and get a strange reading between L and N. No problem I think, it's the neon in the switch, so I reach round the corner and pull the cord to disconnect it. Same reading....

Clearly there's a fault either at the switch or in the run over the ceiling.... So I get up in the loft and find the cable, nothing visually wrong, but manage to feed enough slack through to get the switch off the ceiling and disconnect it. Check both runs of cable individually, no IR problems at all. At this point I have to go to the wholesalers to get another reel of 6mm as it's too tight to get to the switch and the new board.

A fair bit of faffing about in a boiling loft later, all is reconnected and ready to test again. Same problem...

It's then that I twig what went wrong... When testing the first time, I'd reached round the corner to isolate the shower and pulled the bloody pull cord for the light instead of the shower! DOH!

That's my embarrassing cock up of the day... Anyone care to share theirs?!
 
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Nice one, I have too many to list!
 
Biggest moment of stupidity was in 2001 when starting the 1st year on sparkies course,took the wrong turn should of been a plumber lol
 
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One of my regular builder clients
Today as it happened

2nd fixed his lounge sockets 10 in total
Polished chrome sockets that were left on top of the polished chrome fancy lights near the polished chrome effect fireplace

Vaguely remember the wife wanted low profile white accessories
I thought there should also be a double pole switch for that fire, but only a light switch available,same tumbler type

Job done and packing up the tools when in walks builder with wife leading the way

The chrome sockets were bought ten years ago,they were still in their B+Q packging,they were left as a gift for yours truley
Now work out the error
 
trev said:
They were bringing the sockets in with them?
Click to expand...

Not quite
I had already bought the sockets and just assumed she had decided to go all fancy chrome so I fitted the sockets that were a gift for me
Now I have to change the dam things for white tomorrow
 
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One I'll own up to. Testing time on a shop install years ago, was talking the apprentice through the testing sequence, why it's done that way and what results to expect. To save a bit of time I showed him the global IR which he immediately pulled me up on for doing something wrong. "Don't be daft" I said "it's perfect"
"No Trev you duffed it"
I decided we'd crack on otherwise I'd be there all day arguing with a daft lad. we finished everything up and I asked if he had any questions.
"Just one really" He said
"Don't the MCBs have to be on for the global IR"
Took a good few days for the dust to settle on that one.
Eeyore!
 
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Using an old PAT tester class 2 appliance on wet work bench and sent 4Kv through it..... i had my belly against the workbench and got the Zap!!! of my life!
 
My biggest moment of stupidity....trying to explain to client (a woman) why her husbands DIY's have caused the installation to fail its periodic.

1) No sleeving on any additions, + no containment earthed where applicable.
2) Radials upgraded to 32A with 2.5mm cable to stop the 'tripping' - yes i laughed in amazement at her before you ask.
3) Cables run in cavity walls (yes some may argue this, but i cant stand it - so i made a comment to be awkward because they were being awkward)
4) spur off spur off spur off spur pretty much everywhere - standad.
5) light fittings not earthed where appropriate.

The list goes on...i know you lads have the same problems day in day out. it's all fun and games.
 
Wayyyy to many to list.
Music at work. Got a few songs I can't help but dance too. Twist and shout comes on. Few people singing it, I join in and do me bum jiggle dance as im 2nd fixing. LSF cable snips slip, smash me in the face blood pouring and everyone looking cause I stopped singing must have done a lil scream :(

2nd year of apprenticeship...testing a void property. Board not marked so was told to go around and see which lights were working/not working.
Pull cord in bathroom....woosh!!! Pulled the flush instead, builder had removed the toilet pan day before ready for floor being latexed!!
Latex man turned up 20mins later to a flooded bungalow!!
 
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I was fitting approx 20 GU10 downlights, was a right ballache pulling the cables through without making extra holes, no access from above. Managed to do it, took me the best part of a day. Result looked perfect though. Homeowner came back and pointed out I'd installed them in the wrong room.
 
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kingeri said:
I was fitting approx 20 GU10 downlights, was a right ballache pulling the cables through without making extra holes, no access from above. Managed to do it, took me the best part of a day. Result looked perfect though. Homeowner came back and pointed out I'd installed them in the wrong room.
Click to expand...

priceless.
 
from this moment on, you will be known as kock-up kingeri.
 
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Was given my job card to go fault/fix a cooker .... got to job was let in by carer for dear old lady and went about my work (replaced blown hob element), Everyone happy so i left - got back to base and was dragged in office accused of ----ing it off as the customer had called complaining i hadn't turned up and she had booked time off....

Half an hour arguing my corner even showed him the blown element i took out so he rang the customer to confirm details --- id only been given address of similar named next street and after enquiry it turned out at the same number on each street the names matched and out of sheer coincidence they both had rung in to different companies to have their cooker repaired..

I imagine the other company turned up to his job getting told he'd already been lol
 
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^^^^^ lol I've done the same.

18 years old and the gaffer trusted me to do small installs, he drops me and the tools off at an address to put up a security light whilst he shoots off to do a quote. Just finished and I was setting the timer when a woman from down the road walked up and asked if I was from ******* company?

Yes lov, why do you ask?

"Because this is house number 46 and you should be at my house at number 64 putting that light in!"

Boss got the numbers wrong way around lol. The woman at 46 did not say a thing, just thought her landlord had just sent someone. Did'nt get paid for it btw.
 
I remember a site visit from my NVQ assessor.

id installed a plant room full of pumps, panels ect. The bloke turned up and was impressed. I explained how the system worked (water feature display and filter pump system) and he then asked me to carry out some dead tests.

I linked L-E on one of the pumps, and couldn't get a reading at the terminals in the panel! I started flapping, checking tightness of terminals ect, when he said to me 'you've proved the isolator is doing its job'.
id only left the isolator off!

ive done lots if other stupid things too.

i once fabricated a very tricky set of bends& setsin 300mm heavy duty tray.
there was no room to use manufactured ones, and the measurements had to be perfect.
i fabbed it up, painted it, and it looked brilliant. I was pleased, and the older fellas were saying what a good job I'd done.
when I took it upto the top of the boiler stack to install it, I'd got one of the bends the wrong way around!!!!
i cut the tray at that point, refabbed a new flat bend & external 90degree bend the right way around and altered some joiners to bolt the two bits together!
It looked good, but took nearly twice as long as it should!!
 
here's mine. from this morning. been going to bond water at home for ages. up till now it's has a temp. bond in garage to the gas pipe. accessed the stop tap by cutting out a chunk of the cupboard back, then drilling hole through wall to put bonding cable in. bloody gas pipe buried under render. as you can see, muggings found it with SDS.

CRW_0037.jpg
 
ting was. it looked just like a nice wide mortar joint to drill through. here's the "after" pic. no cigar for neatness of soldering, but it don't leak. i've had a match to all the joints. just got to get the 10mm bonding in now.

IMG_0038.jpg
 
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I must admit I've come very close to hitting gas pipes before, they have a habit of being present when you least expect them!
 
When I was younger, much younger, I ironed a shirt for a Friday night on the ****. When I put it on and checked myself in the mirror, I'd realised that I'd missed the collar. having already put the ironing board away it occurred to me that the iron would still be hot enough to straighten up the said collar. So, because i was now rushing, without taking the shirt off I placed the iron onto the collar. Needless to say I didn't pull that night, mainly due to the red brown triangular burn on one side of my neck and having to explain it! Luckily i'd only done one side!!! ;-)
 
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went to the farm and got collared about a new machine they'd bought and it had stopped working,the makers had said they'd send an engineer out but he hadn't been sent yet and they wanted it working.I rang the company and said if they were ok i,d take a look at it for them,they were more than happy naturally as it saved them sending their man out.Now I was on the phone with their man for an hour and all I had tool wise was a couple of drivers and a test lamp,so I set to and all the tests pointed to a faulty rope switch on the safety system,the guy on the phone told me to bypass it and they'd send me another to replace it with,not happy with this I told him to pop one in the post that day and the machine would stay out of use until it arrived.Realising that these units had block switches in them I thought I'd open it up and see if a spare block that we had would fit,I opened the switch and spotted the problem straight away,a wire was just resting on the terminal instead of being in it.If only I'd taken the switch to bits in the begining.
 
Doh... another classic again from me...

Board change the other day, but only got time to test and energise the circuits on one of the RCDs.

Doing the rest today, 4 simple radial circuits, all tested fine so connected to the MCBs and energised... Nothing... 5 minutes of messing about, but no voltage anywhere...

Oh yes, that's it, this is the board where I cut the busbar too short so had to get another one... Only thing is, it's still in the toolbag!
 
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My biggest blunder was a pretty bad one but taught me to pay attention to what I was doing while talking!
We were re-wiring condensor units on the roof and after doing a few I set my first ever apprentice to do the one next to me.
Anyways while doing this we had to mount new isolators with old colours going in and new colours out. (See where this is going?)
So anyways he asked me why the colors had changed and what would happen if you got em wrong.
So I explained to him and said to be v careful not to mix the blues and the blacks up etc etc.

Anyways job done, Breaker on back on the roof and turned the isolator POP!

********.....

And one first hand lesson as to what happens if you put the blues in the wrong terminal for the apprentice!

Thankfully it did no real damage other than to my pride as that was the first and last thing I ever blew up LOL
 
not a disaster, but made me feel a complete idiot. plugged in MFT in socket as a start to read the R1+R2 values. got a reading of >22kohms. head scratching for 15 minutes then realised i'd not cross connected the conductors in the CU. DOH.
 
telectrix said:
not a disaster, but made me feel a complete idiot. plugged in MFT in socket as a start to read the R1+R2 values. got a reading of >22kohms. head scratching for 15 minutes then realised i'd not cross connected the conductors in the CU. DOH.
Click to expand...

Classic LOL
 
Done a stupid one today. As I am the company QS I like to check random readings that our testing guy has recorded.

Was testing RFC continuity on a few circuits in a db and writing down results to compare with his. On the third circuit I got an open circuit r1 so checked rn and r2 both open. Then I realised I was using one probe and a pencil instead of the second probe which was dangling round my ankles :)
 
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good job it wasn't live testing then. :21:
 

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