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?"
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?
Maybe it's just me, but some things are worth paying for. I prefer juice in my stomach, not coursing through my entire body...
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Hire an electrician.
sPh
That's the kind of job they get to do.
Are you sure YOU weren't the cause of the blackout of 2003?
I might not speak for everybody but I'd imagine that the majority of people went "Hire an electrician" when they read that story. I really don't think you want to be mucking around in there with "some sort of junction in them that's the size of a 1-liter bottle" as you don't appear to know what that is (neither do I).
I know you want to save money but you're likely to fry the electric equipment in your establishment and might take yourself with it. Hiring a professional would likely be cheaper in the long run.
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.
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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
There's also insurance reasons as well. Having someone other than a qualified electrician do the work can void your fire insurance.
send an email to your PHB that says things like "fire hazard" "risk to operations" "danger to employees and $$$$ equiment" "violation of code" and/or "insurance risk". That should get you the authorization you need to do whatever needs to be done - which, as others have pointed out, is HIRE A PROFESSIONAL.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
... then you shouldn't be doing it.
Sorry, but this is the kind of thing that only years of experience can help with. If you didn't look at it and already know how to approach the problem, you probably shouldn't be messing around in there, unless you have all the time in the world to experiment and learn your way through the mess.
First I was surprised that IANAL advice hasn't landed some "Ask Slashdotter" in prison. Now we're aiming for our first fatality?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
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. :-)
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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
Don't resign. A worker can notify his supervisor that due to what the worker believes that doing the task placed before them will put them in imminent danger, he can refuse to do that task. The worker then needs to fill out a form or two and contact the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. The worker cannot be disciplined for refusing to work in a dangerous situation.
I've felt both a time or two (accidentally). 110 is really more of a tickle and certainly won't kill you.
You've got to be respectful of it but with 110 I didn't even realize I was being shocked until well after the fact.
Dude, 110 volts is most certainly enough to kill. True, most of us have been "tingled" by 110/115 a few times, and didn't die... all that proves is that we were lucky on those occassions.
For an interesting discussion of why low voltages *can* be deadly, see this page.
The bottom line is, lower voltages tend to be "safer" due to the resistance of your body, and the fact that low voltage power sources also usually have a fairly low current capacity. But try wetting your hands and grabbing the leads from an arc welder set on 200+ amps sometime, if you don't think low voltage can f#@k you up.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
How 'bout putting up a picture of that mess for us to enjoy?
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Don't have one of those? THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT FARKIN' QUALIFIED TO DO THE WORK!
If you have not had the correct training, you CAN NOT safely lock out equipment. Sure. You locked it out. You stuck your wiggy in the wall socket to make sure you got a buzz. You tested each terminal and they were all dead. You started stripping wires. You reached way into the cabinet to unscrew some terminals in the back. It got dark and the building's outside lighting circuit turned on. Guess what? Someone ran the lighting circuit through the box.
oopsie.
You don't know what you're doing. Neither does the person who "told you how" to do this safely. Hire a professional.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
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.
I used to write software at a high-energy physics lab. The technicians would put padlocks that only they had keys for on switches when they powered something down. Removing someone else's lock was grounds for immediate dismissal. If someone accidentally left a lock on something, they had to personally remove it or (you guessed it) face dismissal. They took these rules very seriously.
it's not the volts it's the amps that getcha
God, I knew someone was going to say that. Ohm's law... I=V/R. If the voltage goes up, so does the current. They are not mutually exclusive.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
Basically, don't fsck with the stuff unless you know what you're doing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
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I lived in a rented house in college that had what turned out to be dangerous wiring.
LESSON 1: Polarity
Here's a cool tip for you. When wiring up electrical outlets, if you reverse the hot and the neutral lines, you actually create a voltage potential between the outlets. I discovered this because I touched the stove and the refridgerator at the same time accidentally. I got a huge jolt, shook a bit, and called the land lord.
LESSON 2: Breakers and Wiring Guages
If you should ever run wiring in your house, you need to make sure that the breaker that you use matches the capabilities of the wiring. If you should decide to run wiring into an attic using 15 amp capable wiring, it is a bad idea to put a 30 amp breaker on it. It's an even worse idea to hook up approximately 27 amps worth of electrical heaters to this circuit because it will cause the wiring in the wall to catch fire. Of course if one assumes that the person wiring the house isn't insane, you may not know to avoid plugging in said heaters.
LESSON 3: DOCTORS ARE NOT ELECTRICIANS
Eletricity isn't brain surgery, and just as you don't want an electrician siticking sharp metal objects into your brain, you don't want a doctor futzing with wiring. Actually I suppose if you are a doctor who does know how to work with electricity it would be okay, but the one who had previously owned our house had no clue on the subject. Worse, he had no clue and he mistakenly thought that he knew everything.
So, if you look in the electrical box and it instills fear in you, call a professional. Don't even think of doing it yourself.
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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?