Slashdot Mirror
Solving a Wiring Mess?
FueledByRamen asks: "While trying to run a new power line for a large Sun mass-storage cabinet (located nowhere near a 220 outlet of course), I had the misfortune of needing to pop the lid on my main power distribution panel (previously opened in the late 80s). The whole thing is a rats nest and probably a fire hazard - old-style wiring with broken-down cloth/plastic insulation strewn everywhere, and the utility's incoming power cables have some sort of junction in them that's the size of a 1-liter bottle (on each wire) and is covered in layers of electrical tape. Even (gently) putting the panel back on jiggled something important, and there was a nasty cracking noise and half the breakers blew (all breakers in one of the 2 columns). I've worked with mains voltage in the past (wiring new rooms, installing lighting), but nothing on this scale, both in terms of complexity and potential for death. How do you industrious Slashdot readers go about fixing a mess like this (on a tight budget, no less) without getting a mains-induced glimpse at the great beyond?"
And the Gordian Knot: Just hack it through cleanly!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
... Hire CowboyNeal of course!!!
---
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Well, why not use wireless electicity distribution? There even is a RFC for it: 3252 :)
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
1. Let the thing catch fire
2. ??? (Collect insurance)
3. Profit!!
That's the kind of job they get to do.
Just go down to your friendly appliance store and get a can of "Cable-B-Gone" (tm)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'd use my tongue as a voltimeter. If i***BBBBZZZZZUUUHHHHHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!***
Are you sure YOU weren't the cause of the blackout of 2003?
You've got to be kidding right?
My god, I expected this to be signed "a recently unemployed power grid manager in Ohio"...
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/9654/t esla/projecttesla.html
2 1337 4 u!
I've worked with mains voltage in the past (wiring new rooms, installing lighting), but nothing on this scale, both in terms of complexity and potential for death. How do you industrious Slashdot readers go about fixing a mess like this (on a tight budget, no less) without getting a mains-induced glimpse at the great beyond?"
I Am Not An Electrician, and from the sounds of it, neither are you.
I'd suggest hiring one.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Heh, reminds me of a story. I used to work at Home Depot, and one of the regular electrical customers said that, in whack-job wirings like you have, he would be able to tell the difference between 110v and 220v by grabbing it the wire. If it hurt more, it was 220. If it hurt less, it was 110. He quit coming in one year, and I always wondered what happened to him...
You Insensitive Clod.
Port 80, we dont need no stinckin port 80.
You have two options:
1) Hire a professional electician at a very high rate of pay to rewire the box and make it safe.
2) Hire a burn specialist at an extremely high rate of pay to patch your smoking body together after attempting to fix it yourself.
5) Mike Tyson sounds like a girl.
4) Honey, that's just the PMS talking.
3) [Redneck accent]Hey y'all, watch this...
2) Betcha can't...
1) We'll save a lot of money by not hiring an electrician...
'Nuff said.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
No, you plug it in slowly and run away. Quickly.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I think what he really means is if anyone from /. is willing to do this for him. In other words, he's saying: "if someone dies, please let it be you and not me."
-- Kircle
I figure it used to be white, but now it is covered in dried-on red stains.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
come on now, with such technical jargon as "jiggled something important, and there was a nasty cracking noise" ... I'm guessing this guy is a professional, he just came to the wrong place.
So, lick the terminals to find out which ones are hot (works with 9V batteries). Then, standing in a bucket of water, grab a big handful of cables and PULL.
Ignore the fizzing and the smell of burning hair. Douse any lingering flames with gasoline.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
darwin awards.. funny!
But I want to see some pictures of this mess! How big? How many wires? How much current? How much insulating dust?
Come on man, we need photos of your darwin forray!
grep electrician yellowpages
What, you're scared of 220 Volts ? When we were growing up, we walked 200 miles through six feet of snow, wearing no shoes, and we repaired 2000 volt circuits with our bare hands. :-)
How do I perform brain surgery on myself?
What is the best way to travel about in a war zone?
What is the best way to tell my spouse that she needs to lose A LOT of weight?
How can I get close to the President while carrying a handgun?
How can I steal power from a high tension line?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Then get some popcorn.
First, take off your shoes and stand barefoot on the concrete floor. Now, whip out your schlong and commence to take a whiz on the innards of that power distribution box. Hopefully it will weld your peterhole shut so that you will become unable to procreate and therefore prevent further contamination of the human race with your obviously defective DNA.
actually, black duct tape works best for wiring. grey is for ducts, and red/white/blue/green look good on your '88 accord as racing stripes.
What's the 4 things you have to know to be an electrician? 1) 240 will shock you 2) 480 will kill you 3) 4:30 is quitting time 4) The boss is a son of a bitch Will get you into any electrician's union. What's the one thing you have to know to be a plumber? 1) Shit don't run uphill
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
What, you're scared of 220 Volts ? When we were growing up, we walked 200 miles through six feet of snow, wearing no shoes, and we repaired 2000 volt circuits with our bare hands. :-)
You call that tough. When I was a kid, we didn't even have hands.
Well shit, now we know how the blackouts occurred.
Humorless sig goes here.
Ha!
:
A friend of mine and I were leaning over a running engine on opposite sides of the car.
He touched an ignition cable and the current went
- Up his arm
- Down his legs to earth
- Up *my* legs to crotch
- from my crotch to frame of car that I was leaning against to look in engine bay.
Ow. Sure didn't see that one coming!
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
You can expect lots of sissy comments from posters afraid to improve themselves by learning something new. Ignore them.
Roll up your sleeves, don some rubber gloves, and start by straightening out that mess.
If you've ever made a really clean rackmount you know what to do. Make all the wires go in straight lines with nice ties keeping them together.
Now, I'm sure you've seen a movie where the protagonist has to defuse a bomb by cutting the correct colored wire, often in conditions that impair his color perception. This is very similar. You should use the same basic strategy, which is hover the wire cutters over each wire and drip sweat into that bubbling, crackling maze of death. Try not to flinch when each drop of sweat causes an electrical arc to sparc towards your face. At the last second when you think the entire box is about the explode (determined by sound) quickly cut the wire that seemed LEAST LIKELY. Note it is very important that you do NOT cut the wire that you were hovering over for a long time because it seemed right. That is the wrong wire and cutting it will kill you. Cut the one next to it.
Next add 'High Voltage Electrical work' to your resume and ask for a raise!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
a recently unemployed power grid manager in Ohio?
Big pansy! You call not having hands tough. When I was a kid we didn't even have bodies.
Good god man, leave that mess alone and hire a professional that knows what they are doing. Don't ever put your life in the hands of Slashdot; are you utterly insane?
I'm half expecting the next "Ask Slashdot" to start, "Dear Slashdot, This morning I was diagnosed with acute Apendicitis. I've fooled around a little with self dentistry in the past, but I'm not entirely sure I'm up to a job of this magnitude..."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
- Up his arm
- Down his legs to earth
- Up *my* legs to crotch
Nothing but net!
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
"Oh boss, I've just found some more work for those Indian outsource guys"...
What's that?
Oh OK, "the Indian qualified electrician guys who specialise in handling hazardous situations that will almost certainly kill a geek techo who would only consider tackling this kind of task as a way of getting the receptionist to throw a smile in his direction for once"
Happy now?
Seriously though, there is life outside whatever burnt out dot com shell you are currently living in, with only the roaches keeping you company. You need to get out and get your bare feet on the grass for a while. Smoke something. Lie in the sun with your eyes closed. Try and forget there was ever a place and time when you thought it would be smart to do your own high voltage wiring.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
>> Don't you have any interns at your place?
> No, no... temps.
No, no, no... redshirts.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Coming next on Ask Slashdot:
I've been getting bad headaches for weeks now - they're getting worser and I'm seeing flashing lights. Can the slashdot community give me any advice on do-it-yourself brain surgery with a dessert spoon and a screwdriver ?
This question has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard on Slashdot. The man must be a complete cretin to even consider asking for advice.
I worked at a medium sized amusement park while in college. The park was over 35 years old and much of the wiring and junction boxes were equally as old.
Late one summer night, with the park full of people, all the lights on 'main street' went off.
I was nearby the park's main junction box and helped one of the engineers, an unassuming guy who had worked at the park for years, by holding a flashlight while he started work on the box.
The box was ancient. Cloth wrapped wires. Giant fuses. Old rusty exposed mechanical switches. The works. For whatever reason, one of the main switches had popped open. The engineer first tries popping it back in place. The lights flicker and it just pops back out.
The guy looks at me and says "Point the light at the ground. Help me find some old wire". He searches around with his hands for a minute and finds a snipping of some very heavy guage plastic insulated wire.
To my shock, the guy closes the switch shut with one hand while using the other to hold the insulated part of the wire and *arc-welds the switch shut* with the wire's exposed conductor! Sparks flew, the lights snapped back on, and I damn near shit my pants. This good old boy engineer didn't even blink. "That should hold it until we can get someone out tomorrow".
The only thing I can figure is that he was somehow electrically insulated, perhaps from his huge set of balls for even considering something like this.
The key too handling high voltages safely, is to become a good resistor
So resistence...is not futile?
That's nothing
Where I work (warning ugly website ahead) one of our top salesmen was out on a startup on a 4160VAC starter. The customer asked him how wide the stacks were, so he took out his metal measuring tape and measured across the phases.
He was ok, by sheer luck, but the measuring tape has two very decent burn marks at each end where the voltage jumped out and grabbed it. He was thrown back quite a ways and didn't want to move for about twenty minutes, but he lived.
Take a look at the BOFH articles: (http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html)
You've got plenty of ideas there about what to do with the main power distribution panel.
And you know what? It could be fun.
- "They misunderestimated me."
"Dear Slashdot, I've noticed that I need a root canal. I bought a Dremel and the biggest cordless drill they had at Home Depot, and I have a bottle of tequila. Can anyone advise me about how to proceed with doing the root canal on myself?"
Was that before or after you repaired the 2000 volt circuit?
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
You would need something to fill the hole with. Don't forget the solder and 50watt iron.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.