Put down the tool, and step away from ..
the house. What big mistakes did you make to someone else’s property while on the job? Ever create substantially more damage than the project was intended to make you in profit?
the house. What big mistakes did you make to someone else’s property while on the job? Ever create substantially more damage than the project was intended to make you in profit?
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Replies
Not yet. Maybe that means it's still to come.
We came close the day the guy I work with sawed through a gas pipe. Another time we dropped a tree on the utility lines, but pulled it off without breaking the lines or electrocuting ourselves.
Worst one I had was on the way to a job.
Lost a whole house load of storm windows and doors. After the insurance deductible, I still but them in for negative number. Lost more when the HO moved out without making their final payment to me.
Hard lesson learned about the difference between rope and web strapping for tie downs :(
Dave
Kind of related.
When I was a kid I worked at a lumber yard. Co-worker (grumpy old fart) was hauling a big load of windows and doors in an open flatbed. He flipped his Marboro butt out the window and the whole load caught fire.
Fired the same day.
Todd
Mostly close calls. "Significant emotional experiences" I like to call them. I think most of us, one time or another, have had the nick in the water or gas line, which really makes the pucker factor go into high gear in a hurry.
I had underlayment, recently too, that "should have" come out in a snap. Except. Between the guy who glued the dickens out of it and the termites, that thing took days to get out and clean. We were on hands and knees with everything we could think of trying, but it just came down to hammer and chisel. Nothing came out bigger than a fistful of splinters. What a mess. That's the breaks though. Really weird aside on that, the subfloor was ply, the underlayment was ply, the critters barely even touched the subfloor. Explain that. They go 15 feet into the house and decimate the underlayment but don't like the sub? My only guess is one had exterior glues and one didnt. They liked the one that didnt.
"A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you." -Bert Taylor
I can't think of any major mistakes, but my tape measure has cost me some money. Order something the wrong size, or cut a little too much off a custom pre finished moulding.
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It's only satisfying if you eat it.
My biggest eff-up so far is probably the big window order, all sized a little small. Fixable by adjusting the RO's. Either that, or getting the place sandblasted, only to discover that the underlying stucco was shot, and will all have to be demoed. Live and learn.
-- J.S.
Spilled a 5-gal. bucket of chocolate stain on a raw oak floor, million dollar home. Oops. Once did a commercial remodel, elec. was told not to cut any wires, but had to move one, and figured he could cut it and splice it before anyone noticed. All of a sudden the white shirts and ties started pouring down the stairs - turns out he shut down a huge (and I mean HUGE - it filled an entire room) computer system that controlled a nationwide trucking outfit. Cost them thousands, but they took it well, no litigation.
Edited 1/20/2006 2:13 pm by Huck
Here I thought that I could get thru this threadf without having to admit to anything, and you go and remind me...;)I was part of a crew doing an addition and remo of a small bank. P{art of it was making a static free room in the cellar for the monster computer to sort checks and stuff.I wasa doing something before the electricians got us power that far and as I hunted around the only receptacle I could find on that level( this bank had been built first in 1906 and had some subterranean chambers with rubble stone walls with whiskry flasks in the mortar) was one that had a light bulb string and "something else" plugged into it. Since I could't work without lights, I unplugged "something else".This was on a friday. I left that PM forgetting to re-connect "something else".turned out to be a sump pump, the first I had ever known. In a desert, who'da thunk?
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how aboutthis. In the customers attic replacing a squirrel chewed wire, goto cross over some a/c ducts miss stepping on the joist--plant your foot through sheetrock ceiling in the kitchen above the stove. Only about half the sheetrock on the ceiling fell on the floor.
MY own house.....Caught a 3/4" water pipe w/ a drywall screw. It was notched into the very bottom of a joist, and we were putting a new layer of sheetrock over an older "notched-up" one.
Was not a real problem until I took the screw out.
The best one that I have hear about I think happened in your back yard.
Company was using a crane to take down a tree in the backyard. Crane in the front working over the house.
Crane tipped over and make a nice slice all the way through the house.
My own was when I was finishing a basement for a friend. I was working on the shower in the bathroom. I unscrewed what I thought was just a trim plate off the valve. Seems tha it was part of what held the valve together. The guts of the valve where blow across the room, quickly followed a large jet of water.
Fortunately I had to rework all of the plumbing in the process and installed a couple of ball valve because a) the main valve leaked, and b) so that could keep water on part of the house as I worked on an other.
So I was able to make a mad dash out of the bath, through the part of the basment that I was finishing to the back of the basement and turn off the water before the place flooded.
I saw a 'photo' of that crane incident. It looked like someone had taken a 1' wide butter knife and cut straight down thru the house. None of the materials directly adjacent to the cut were distorted. You'd think that a cut like that would whack some of the siding out of line or something. Maybe not. If the crane boom came down right between studs and joists, all it would really have to go thru would be the rim joist. Anyway, it looked like a very easy fix, or maybe a hoax.
There's a company not far from here that moves houses. They have a big yard full of houses they will sell you and move to your lot. Lots of water here, so they do a lot of barging. They get the house on a tractor trailer and drive it right onto the barge. On one move here they somehow lost the house as the truck drove off the barge onto ramps and onto the beach. Destroyed the house. Terrible publicity, of course, but that house disappeared in a very short time. I think they must have brought an excavator down and crunched it up and thrown the pieces back onto the barge under cover of dark.
A similar thing happened to another company bring a large-ish modular home over by barge. Somehow the tow line snapped and the thing ended up on the rocks. The newspaper ran a couple of photos of the barge and house stranded. They got it off when the tide went up and it sits a couple of miles from my place.
I've heard at least one horrible story about a test plug coming out and flooding a house full of hardwood floors. The plumber had all of the drains and stacks under test for a large remodel. Fortunately the jurisdiction here permits air pressure tests of drains.
Trimming a new house this morning, and the maple 1/4 round was a little too fat to fit under a few window sills, I put the feather board on the table saw and started taking a shave off a test piece...ziiip it was gone.Wait, there it was behind me on the floor. I thought, "wow that was lucky it didn't put a hole in the wall"... until I looked up and saw the now ventilated slider. Dang Hey, pocket doors can't come off the track if they're nailed open
Here's the pic.View Image
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
Didn't actually cause any damage or cost but, I managed to create quite a scene in a church/school.
First day of what will be a 2 month build of a pipeorgan in Alabama. The church has an attached K-6 grade school on site.
We start unpacking parts and tools and of course the boombox..I realize the room is SO big and "live" the box just wont do. So, I wander around in the closets and mechanical room and LO and Behold! there is the COOLEST soundsystem I have ever seen, I mean stacks of stuff all in nifty racks.
I fish out SRV "The Sky Is Crying" CD and get it to work, then Istarted fiddling with sliders and knobs and pushing various speaker selections...all while my buddy in the other room is now telling me on the walkie talkie we use when tuning an organ, how I need more bass, or less MIDs etc.
Finally we agree on the EQ and get back to work. Not 5 minutes later in comes a VERY RED Preacher..and he says "what in GODS name are you doing"? I say " um, building an organ" He says " NO, the MUSIC".. "well, we need music, to make musical instruments, it is like good luck" I said.
"Yeah, but it is playing over the WHOLE school PA system in every class room" He was spitting like Bill Cowher at this point.
"OOOOOPs."
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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A friend of mine in western Kansas decided that he didn't like a cap on the end of a pipe that was leaking. Apparently over time corrosion had taken hold and there was now a thin spot. This was on a about 2 1/2 - 3" pipe so now armed with a new cap and a pipe wrench he loosened the cap. This is where the plan goes bad! He had planned to remove the one cap and slip the other on. Of course this is on one of those water towers that they use in smaller to towns, about 10-12' in diameter and 80-100' tall. He forgot about the water pressure at the base when filled. The cap blew off. Didn't bother to stop when it hit the neighbors fence, made a nice hole. Without that little cap holding the water back a nice little trench was dug. As the water level dropped the location of the trench moved closer to the base of the tower. Finally the level of water dropped significantly enough to allow the new cap to be installed and the leak stopped. Of course by then the damage was done. There was a hole in the neighbors fence, a new muddy ditch, a couple of lawns that were going to need to be mowed, & everyone in town knew what happened and was going to make the most of it!
By the way he is still the mayor and owns the local plumbing business and actually does very good work.
you win.
Ok JB, we gotta hear the story on this one! That photo is amazing.Reminds me of an incident that happened here a few years ago. Lady hires a "Here Today Gone Tomorrow" type of tree service to remove a very tall tree in her yard. Crew promptly drops said tree straight through the living room whereupon they quickly gather their tools and split. Guess she won't do that again...A few years ago I owned a commercial landscape maintenance company. Landed a Fortune 500 client just as they were completing their new corporate HQ. Well, sort of... Their plan called for a total of 4 buildings but they would build one, move in and begin the next one. (Great idea there Einstein!) As a maddening result they were always having one contractor after another doing various things around the campus like installing fencing, guard shacks, etc. Naturally they were forever breaking water lines, cutting wires and so on. Worst part was, they'd never tell me what would be happening next leaving us to twist in the wind when the irrigation mysteriously quit because they'd cut the pipes yet again. Anyway, justice was served when yet another unannounced contractor arrived to start digging yet another hole. Only this time, they severed the main fiber optics cable cutting off all telephones, Internet, etc. Just damn! Hated it for 'em! :-)
Heard a story from a nice lady at a customer service counter buying everything to renovate her home.
They had just purchased the house. Seems the old dishwasher in her house had a bad coupling/hose and it had burst. They went to find the main water shut off (not sure why the diswasher didn't have a valve of it's own, or maybe it did and they did not think of it). They couldn't find the shut off valve. Long story short and a sledge hammer later, they found the shutoff boxed in behind the drywall in their finished basement. By that time the entire 1st floor was flooded with significant damage in the basement too. What kind of @!$&X# boxes in the shutoff valve with no access panel??!!
Anyway, a lawsuit and year later they were finally putting the final touches on her house.
TimYou buy a cheap tool twice and then you're still stuck with a cheap tool!
There was my adventure with Flory, my site foreman.
We got asked to do a pressure tap on a watermain (there's some funky tools for this!) only this was a High pressure tap on the main feed from the water tower, some coupla hunnerd feet above us, and no, there wasn't a shut off between it and us.
Bugger this one up, and you got several hunnerd thousands of gallons of water comin down on ya. REAL QUICK
Now this was just west of the water treatment plant, and it was all gravel, so to expose the main, there was a really large hole, carefully excavated.
The city works manager , WW foreman all instructed flory to make sure everything was OK with the tapping machine before we started. He said he did. So there we were in the ditch, the Works manager, the WW foreman, the sub-foreman, and at least a couple of city councillors lookin down on use.
Tapping machine chained on, we start turning the drill. When it breaks through, we stop, and let the pressure equalize. One of the gaskets starts easing out of place, we finish drilling. By this time, the gasket is well out of place and a stream of water is spraying. It's gotta be 1/4" in diameter and it is spraying out maybe only 100', maybe more, but it's at substantial pressure. We get the drill out, get the tap in , tap the hole, get the shut off in, and that's done. Everyone in the know just shaking their heads, Flory had horsehoes up his butt to be sure.
Next day, we had to set a manhole collar over our work. Flory is the most experienced hihab operator too! So we drive up to this largish excavation, and Flory chains up the carefully sculpted bottom unit which is gonna straddle this massive cast iron water main.
To quote him" piece of cake. He lifts this massive chunk of precast concrete up off the truck deck, extends it out back and starts swinging it over the pipe.
Suddenly there are expletives, the swinging concrete suddenly starts swinging the other way. He had forgot to set out the stabilizers.
Stabilizers set, Flory tries it once again, He lifts the piece again, extents the boom fully and starts swinging. Now we all know that a pump can only maintain so much pressure, so even when fully extended, the pump could hold the concrete , but once the swing hydraulics started moving it, why there just wasn't as much pressure, so as it swung, the boom started lowering.
This sucker is going down, and theres no way to stop it. No room for adjustments.
Flory's horsehoes musta been plentiful, cause the poor fella in the ditch who was expecting to be able to carefully position this beast, now had to do it right the first time, and in about 1/10th of the time he mighta hoped he had. To boot his life was at risk, cause water pressure that high can just cut you in half.
Down it went, and damned if it didn't end up in the right place. No City councillors around to watch that miracle.
A month later Flory came into the shop and complained about the high cost of his auto insurance. Seems he had been ticketed three nights in a row, driving through the same stop sign, by the same cop.
Duh.
Eric
T,Actually that pic was just on my hard drive. Bill Hartmann and someone else were talking about it so I posted for all to see.Fortunately I was not involved (that's my story...)
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
I was working on the shower in the bathroom. I unscrewed what I thought was just a trim plate off the valve. Seems tha it was part of what held the valve together. The guts of the valve where blow across the room, quickly followed a large jet of water.
I did the same thing, but I was on the third floor of a condo building. Luckily, the condo had it's own shut offs, and the customer was able to shut the water off. I just stood there, and tried to direct the majority of the water into the tub.
After the water was off. The worst part was I was soaking wet, in the dead of winter, outside cutting granite shower panels.
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It's only satisfying if you eat it.
Edited 1/21/2006 11:08 pm ET by dustinf
I worked for a contractor once who sent the roofing crew to the wrong address.................yes they did.................and no the guy didn't stop them ......but he sure appreciated the free roof job!
my biggest mistake i would never admit to here for all to see, but a word of advice....never try to plunge cut a 1' piece of hardwood flooring on your tablesaw with your bare hands.
Cutting an old growth kiln dried doug fir beam ($$) for a mantle: the measurement was 11'5" and was cut 115". Dang.
That was the last time I measured finish materials in feet and inches--it just messes me up.
"Cutting an old growth kiln dried doug fir beam ($$) for a mantle: the measurement was 11'5" and was cut 115". "
I did something sort of like that once.
Salesman went out and measured an existing building. They were adding onto it, and wanted the new 70' trusses to match the old ones.
He wrote down the span as 70', and the overall height as 10 5 1/2" and turned in the order.
I designed the trusses and made them 10' 5 1/2" tall. But when they got to the jobsite, they were several inches too tall.
Turns out what he MEANT was 105 1/2" tall. So we had to re-build $7,000 worth of trusses.
It looked to me like there was a space between the "10" and the "5". But there was no tick mark to designate feet.
Somehow I slid by without getting in TOO much hot water...
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
No customer signoff on the drawing?
Nope - Things around here aren't generally done that way. The contractors don't want to look at ANYTHING before the trusses are delivered, lest that somehow incurr some additional liability. If you don't look at the truss layout before the trusses are delivered, then nothing that's wrong is your fault. Heck, we can't hardly even get blueprints out of 'em. No way would they ever verify the dimensions of existing trusses.
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
I can't get trusses without signing off on their shop drawing.
Had a similiar thing with feet and inches happen to me.First off I hate throwing out a really nice cope--just something about it drives me nuts.In any case--working a job on a GCs house and he is working on the E-center at the fireplace where I have to put up a piece of crown.I sez to the guy--Hey Erik, mearsure the piece of head crown over the mantle and I'll make it while you finish up.He call out , what I hear was 57,was acually 5'7".Dang--and wouldn't you know it--no other cope was shorter than 57--believe me I checked--Mike" I reject your reality and substitute my own"
Adam Savage---Mythbusters
<<Ever create substantially more damage than the project was intended to make you in profit?>>
Maybe. <G>
I was supposed to just be patching the roof.
A foam roof.
A foam roof over corrugated metal.
A flat foam roof over corrugated metal.
A flat foam roof over corrugated metal that had been leaking a long time and was really rusty.
A flat foam roof over corrugated metal that had been leaking a long time and was really rusty and had a truly terrible amount of water laying in the space between the rotted metal and the saturated foam.
Right up until the time I fell through the roof.
This was back in the days before computers when secretaries used electric typewriters. So one second she's typing away, the next second she has a pair of size 13 workboots in front of her face and the typewriter is overflowing rusty water, bits of steel, and chunks of foam all over the desk.
I don't think I've ever heard a scream quite like that. I think that was the most excitement that office had seen in years.
A king can stand people fighting but he can't last long if people start
thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist (1879-1935)
I was about 22 or 23 years old,had been framing for about 4 years.My boss at the time gave me and this other guy with about the same experience as me are first little 1500 sq ft. new house to frame.we were stoked.the plans had dimensions to the center of this long hallway wall .so we pulled whatever measurment it was to center of the wall yelling across the building to each other ,to add 1 3/4" to either side of center .so we snapped out that wall and continued to snap out the rest of the interior walls pulling numbers off that hallway wall.done.so we think we kick ####.plate it on tuesday start framing ,plumb& line (dont remember how that went although we probably wanted to get back to bangin nails.) so now were rollin joist.Done,shirts off probably on are heads.joists are up ,time to block.throw in all the 14 1/2"regulars.get to the last special,12" for me ,my buddy had like 13 3/4".whats up.we're runnin around scratchin are heads why are we off.blah blah blah.turns out we snapped that first wall out 1 3/4" and all the other walls corners and channels were all tweaked.boss was coming by at the end of the day.I dont think i have ever worked so fast pullingnails and sawzalling plates,channels.It looked like a bomb went off.
Had a customer with a leaky flat roof on his business. Mid winter. too cold and wet for a major repair, besides it was Friday.
Talked to a guy at a roofing company who said they had a dry product they could spread. It would create a temporary seal for a couple of months until the weather warmed up and they could do a proper hot repair.
I do the math, call the owner, give him an estimate and get the go ahead. The roofing company shows up with half a dozen guys at about 3pm. Talk about service! This was great! They thawed the ice with tiger torches and scraped back the gravel on a 600 sq/ft area around the leak.
Buddy comes up to me and explains what they've done and says the 35 bags they have spread should catch the leak but you never know, the deck under the tar is corrugated steel and the leak could originate outside of the area.
I told him at $5.50 a bag, go ahead and put another 35 bags down.
He says, "Its not $5.50 a bag. Its $65.50 a bag!"
Back in college I worked at one of the worst Friendlys resteraunts in the whole chain, and my location was known as being the butt of all jokes. If you where bad, but couldnt get fired, you got sent to this location. I worked as a waiter, and pulled in pretty good money in tips, but the it was pretty rough.
One day the manager asks
"can you do electrical work?"
me being 19 and knowing everything says "well what do you want me to do?"
manager "I want you to replace a ballast"
he shows me the ballast and it looks simple enough
me "sure, how tough can it be?"
Next day show up with a pair of linesman pliers couple of vise grips and a few screwdrivers.
I turn to the manager and say
"You need to turn the power off"
"ok"
"Are you sure the power is off?"
"yes"
"really sure? I don t want to die"
"yes, I am totally sure"
So I set to work cheerfully dissasembling the ballast. The last step of the process is to pull all three wires out of a metal housing and then thread them into a new housing.
As I pull the wires through there is a MASSIVE blue spark, a huge zapping noise and I almost pee my pants
me "holy crap! You said the power was off!"
manager "yeah, guess I was wrong"
me "you &%&#$# moron"
manager "hey, at least you didnt die"
me "thanks"
other server "how come this register doesnt work?"
manager "huh?"
at this point an amusing fact comes to light. (get it a pun!) For some reason instead of having the very sensitive registers on their own circuit, all of the registers where on the same circuit as the light fixture. The surge/spike suppressors where overwhelmed by my little blue zap, and allowed the full force of the spike into the registers melting all the important bits creating a 10,000 dollar modern art paper weight.
Now, we faced dinner with no computers only two people with the math skills (me be one of them) to do the math to add up checks.
It was this very moment I decided that I was not an electrician, not going to be an electrician nor was I ever going to mess with the stuff again. In fact, I am really proud of my self when I change light bulbs.
The funny thing is no one got fired even with all the damage that was caused, but I was never asked to do anything other than wait tables or cook.
Digging a post hole on the front of a house for a footing for a wheelchair ramp. I had called "Digger's Hotline" and they had marked the gas pipe. I was about 2' away from their paint line when I shoved the post hole digger down, and severed the gas line.
When the gas company supervisor showed up, I mentioned the paint line still on the ground. When I asked if I would get billed for it, the service guy looked up and said "No you shouldn't. There is no tracing wire with the pipe, and this should never have been marked."
Had another small incident replacing a few treads on an old stairs going into the basement. I had taken a quick glance to see that there was no electric or plumbing underneath, but I didn't see the owner's deer rifle hidden under the steps. Cutting out a tread I thought I was going through a pretty big nail with the sawzall, but I had actually cut off part of the front sight, and boogered up 4" of the barrel.
Built a display cabinet for a bar/restaurant. When I measured the job, the width was 5'2". So I built the cabinet, had a plumber unhook the wine taps, Muzak guy was there to unhook the sound system, went to slide the cabinet in place, and I'll be darned if it wasn't 5" short on each side. Seems I built it 52". All the custom glass doors and shelves........ouch$!$!$!$!
Bowz
Years ago i cut a hole in a 45gal barrel with a oxy- acetylene torch , or nearly did as i dident think to ask what had been in barrel before as a result i blew the end out of the barrel , which we found 6 months later about 1000 ft away
no one injured but i have a hearing loss to this day
Reciently was digging a hole with the hoe for a customer to place a clothes line pole
hit what seemed to be a piece of cement so i pounded a little hader and saw some smoke come up , got off machine and looked , guess what it was the 200 amp feed for his house and i had cut 1 leg of the feed plus the phone and tore one leg of the feed out of the main breaker ; overaall had to replace main breaker , 6' of triplex and splice underground ,phone cable ,cost over 2000 because of needing inspector and emergency crew and being a farmer he dident have water for his cows till 11pm
in the mean time i was attending the wake for my stepmother 30 miles away all this trouble for a 5 minute job lol
Did a job for a lady that required some huge footings 6'wide 8'long and 5'deep for these 14' block towers she wanted me to build and have a copper archway installed across them over her driveway called up MISDIG they mark the ground and run flags and there was nothing marked for ten yards of my footing locations. Go rent the mini backhoe and start digging my helper yells to stop shut the machine off and see the ground smoking and cooking the sand into a glass ball around the wire I had just severed next to it another unidentified wire. A few seconds of watching the smoke show and then an explosion a few blocks away. Power company shows up power line not marked on any of their grids. Unidentified wire turned out to be a fiberoptics line $250,000 to replace the guy said. Explosion was a transformer down the street don't remember what he said the replacement cost on that was. Didn't cost me a thing because I called MISDIG and they screwed up. Luckily nobody got hurt.
LOL. Yup. If they miss it they are on the hook. Once saw a ditch witch eat a main feed for a cable system. Knocked out cable TV for something like a 40 mile radius including a mid-sized city and a few towns. Guy at the cable company when he was asked about underground cables or wires had sworn their were none anywhere near where the work was getting done. D'oh.One small tip. IF you are ever on a machine that cuts a high voltage feed stay put and keep your hands off the controls. Years ago a local guy saved his own life when he cut a major feed and stayed on the trencher after the engine cut out. It took something like four hours to him to be determined as missing and that power was out on part of the industrial site.They finally turned off the power and he was able to limp off and water the brush. His crew made fun of him sitting up there for so long. At least they did until the repair crew, well insulated and prepared, turned on the power and read something like 7200v from trencher to soil. Getting off could have cooked him like a Ballpark frank. He said he got a clue that he might not want to step off because there was the sound of 'frying bacon' coming from the dirt.Crane operators are sometimes taught if they contact high voltage lines to jump well away from the crane and baby step, feet held together together, their way out of the area. If the rig is not on fire it is often better to just stay put and let someone outside kill the power.Lately I see more heavy equipment operators wearing lineman's insulated gloves and dielectric boots when working areas that have power lines. I'm not sure if that is the new standard but it seems to be a smart way to go.
Well when i was about 20 i was trimming a house and needed a robertson bit for my drill all i had was a stubby screw driver so i set out to cut the handle off with a hack saw.i thought this was talking to long so stupid me brings it to the chop saw.So i set out to cut the handle off and as soon as the blade touches the handle it was gone looked for it for awhile hum.. it was gone .the homeowner comes along we are talking i look over his head ther it is stuck in the ceiling.whooppsss
never tried that again went out and bought 16 bit's
> IF you are ever on a machine that cuts a high voltage feed stay put ....
A couple years ago, a local TV news crew here cranked their microwave mast up into high voltage lines. The reporter in the front seat of the van was fine until she decided to get out and see what all the commotion was about. She ended up losing both hands and a foot, and very nearly didn't live to tell of it.
http://www.engsafety.com/safetypg2/Personal/Stigall/KABC.html
-- J.S.
To all:
I rounded a corner once " going a little to fast !!! " with about 6 sheets of 1/2" plywood on the roof rack.
There was a telephone repairman working on a pedestal about 10 ft. from where they spread out like a deck of cards, he didn't budge an inch :-). Not a word was said. All I can fiqure, he was waiting on me to get out of there so he could change his britches.
To make it worse I was working out of town, in a small town & didn't know the lumber yard, they wouldn't deliver on that day? I was however welcome to come load & pick up myself.
All-in-all toted those sheets 3 times.
I drained 80,000 gallons of water in a nice lady's yard last year. There was a city water tower next door...utility locator service missed the 8" output main that was on easement across her lot. My auger would do 48" deep, the line was at 47. :(
A friend of mine said a cabinet shop he worked at sent him after a unit of melamine a few blocks away. Because it was a short distance and the load was banded, he didn't strap it down.He was crossing the RR tracks. The load shifted, the bands broke, scattering melamine across the tracks.The crossing lights start flashing.Two guys in the car behind helped him clear the tracks just in time.I love stories like this because I thought this stuff only happens to me.
Mines not that dangerous, but more disruptive.
I was in dental school working for a building supply company, driving truck.
The Forman said, take this load down to our downtown store (Columbus, Ohio). It was about 4:45pm
I took off with 50 5gal cans of roofing tar on the flat bed truck.
Turned off the freeway on to High Street, the main street of downtown Columbus. Turned left, and all 250 gallons slewed across the truck and splattered across 4 lanes of rush hour traffic. It was july and hotter than blazes.
Cars skidded, spun and banged into each other. It was glorious. The cops came, called the company, they sent out dumptrucks with sand, and bucketloaders to pick it up.
When I went back to the store, they asked me why I hadn't secured the load. I said "The foreman loaded the truck".
They said BS, and fired me.
The best part is, I didn't have a truck licence, and the cops never asked to see mine.
Whooo Doggies.
Stef
Edited 1/26/2006 7:39 pm ET by fatboy2
Sooooo, that was you?
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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I am still looking for the guy driving the truck with an open tank down I-65 in Louisville about 43 years ago.Don't know what it had it, but appeared to be some kind of lacquer primer. All I know was that it was gray and dried fast.Passing the truck and "mud" splattered on my window. Hit the wipers and it smeared and dried instantly.By looking out the side window I was able to get off on the left side and used an ice scrapper to make a big enough hole to get home.I cleaned the windshield, but had a body shop polish it off the body, but it still left pock marks in the paint.
I knew a guy who went to NJ to interview for a job.It was a very hot day in the summer and there was a section of freeway closed because it was on fire. It seems some local organizations had made quite a business "disposing" on toxic waste. They would load a tanker up, open a valve, and go. Enough of this happened that there was enough flammable waste on the road to burn.Maybe that's why you had pits in your finish.
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
NJ and toxic waste - synonymous.
"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." Invictus, by Henley.
"Turned off the freeway on to High Street, the main street of downtown Columbus. Turned left, and all 250 gallons slewed across the truck and splattered across 4 lanes of rush hour traffic."
This remdinds me of sitting at an intersection in Raleigh, NC ~13 years ago and watching a septic tank size concrete drainage junction looking thing slide off a flatbed semi into the intersection. The truck was making a left turn in front of me and 3 other lanes of traffic. It is a miracle there was no damage to anything except his big concrete thingy, some asphalt, and pride.
a.
Wow , ya had to know . I mean you had to. Your employment would be ceased that evening. <G> Did ya get any over time with the spill?
I was working at the lumber yard for my father delivering with a 2 ton truck -flat bed. I was at the crisp age of 16. Id been actually driving for a while before that age and ony landed two tickets with only a motor cycle liscense I recieved at 14.
I had loaed 60 bags of cement , 30 per side on the bed. I could have loaded pallets but that would have been two moves . One from the pallets to the edge of the bed and then off to the ground. I was much smarter than that . So I adjusted the loader where they would slide off to the edge of the bed from the loader.
I was doing what I normally did which was driving as fast as the truck would go and using the 2 speed in hopes of being a 2 ton race truck driver. I encountered a long straight stretch where the truck was running top end at about 70 miles per hour. There was a curve I figgured that truck could handle and it surely did. But there was a hump that I didnt see or calulate in that curve. 60 bags of concrete left the truck bed and came down. The left side had shifted to the middle of the truck. The right side looked like an explosion . There wasnt a single piece of paper left over an inch sqaure on the road side.
Tim
You should have billed the city for street sealing.
Your story reminds me of two others.
One, on Steiner Street in San Francisco, which is steep, the lumber driver unstraps his load of plywood. He breaks the bands on the unit so that it can be unloaded by hand and the entire thing slides down off the truck like a deck of cards.
Another, a driver with a semi-load of 12 foot sheetrock hits the railroad tracks too hard and pops a unit in half. It was not supported in the middle for some dumb reason.
They sel those half pieces really cheap of 12 ft rock too.
Tim
"...6 sheets of 1/2" plywood..."
I was about to stop and help a guy last week that somehow dumped about 20 sheets out of his pickup...during rush hour...on a 2 lane city street....under a railroad bridge.
It seemed, as is always the case, that the entire planet was behind him trying to get home from work.
Before I got to him another guy stopped and helped him get the last few sheets.
As best I can tell, he loaded them originally with the tailgate down...or it opened on him.
At least, this time, they were going in with the gate up.
a.
could have cooked him like a Ballpark frank
My dad worked for the power company as a meter reader. He told me about an incident with a bucket truck. Seems the operator swung the bucket into a power line, no problem for him, but the guy leaned up against the truck got his butt and soles of his feet burned pretty good. There was another guy near the truck, and the juice arced to him also, and burned his feet.
When I worked for a rental company, we were putting in a vinyl floor in a kitchen. Boss said he had flipped the 220 breaker, so I took apart the range plug. Later putting it back together I thought I felt a little tingle, so I was extra careful. When We went to turn it back on "hey, wadda ya know. There's another 220 breaker down here in the corner of the panel. Looks like it says 'Range' on it"
Bowz
Re: ... "hey, wadda ya know. There's another 220 breaker down here in the corner of the panel. Looks like it says 'Range' on it"Rule number one for helpers and aprentices: Never, ever take anyones word that the power is off. Everyone on a crew should have their own Wiggy and use it as a matter of habit. If yourt favorite diety tells you the power is off I expect you to, with all due respect and deep apoligies, test it yourself. No exceptions. No 'But he said ...'. You make your own calls and cover your own bets. You have to know and only the operator, the guy with his butt on the line, can make that call. Everyone else is just guessing.
I have found myself checking even when I shut it off myself. Easier than doing the "happy electric dance".
A fella told me that about trailers one time and Ive never ever for got it .
Who ever is driving the tow rig checks the trailer and the load . No exceptions.
Same deal with a loaded truck.
His responsebility. Ask the officer.
Excuse me , its time for Cops right now !
Tim
Edited 1/28/2006 7:53 pm by Mooney
We built 6 upscale townhomes in the posh City of West University, which is a city within the City of Houston.
We poured a new slab behind one of the finished units for a new unit. the front unit was finished, occupied by the developer and also used as a sales office. The only access was down a small alley. I needed to pick-up the form boards so I took my truck adn trailer down the alley, nopt thinking about the sewere excavation that was inadequately filled the week before. The front of the truck found the sewere excavation when rounding the corner, sank and pulled the trailer I was hauling up close to house cathing the gas entrance and pulling the pipe loose. Gas started blowing out.
While I found the problem, the city inspector caught the real heat and the inpector in charge required the plumber to dig up the sewer line, check for damage and backfill with stabilized sand. (sand and dry concrete mx). Stabilized sand was the requirement missed by the inspector.
Anyway, as I was praying, freaking our and on the phone with the utility company, positioned safetly out of the way, a utility company truck / heavy duty with an 8 man crew pulled up....not 5 minutes after my incident. I told them I was impressed at how fast they responded. They said they were on a service call across the street, and knew nothing of the problem. They devoted their attention to me and the problem.
They shut off the gas, pulled my truck and trailer out with a heavy duty winch mounted on their truck and fix the gasline in about an hour. With utmost sincerity, I asked them if they were really from the utility company or were they a band of angels. The leadman told me they were really from the power company, but I still doubt it today. He said they were suppose to charge me, but would not even report the incident. Ah ha....they were angels...thank you Jesus.
Not anyone I know, but roofers doing some work on a historic church here in Chicago burned the place down a couple weeks ago... http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20060117-21294300-bc-us-churchfire-1stld.xml
Seems they started the fire with their torch, couldn't put it out, called their boss to tell him what had happened & then bailed. Never even called 911. When they got down off the ladder, a church official asked them if they were done (he didn't know about the fire yet) & they mumbled something about not speaking english, then split.
On a lighter note, I once gave the wrong address to a gutter sub. Ended up paying for gutters on both the garage they were supposed to do, as well as the neighbors garage, LOL!
Seems they started the fire with their torch, couldn't put it out
Used to rent a shop with a guy, who's dad had a sheet metal company. One of the sheetmetal workers did the same thing to the city museum. (though they did call the fire department) Big old brick mansion. Took about 3 million to repair, and upgrade to having a sprinkler system throughout the building.
Bowz
Many years ago a manufacuring client of mine hired someone to install an underground solvent tank. I think it held 1500 gallons or so of TCE. The installer forgot to put a plug in the bottom of the tank. 1500 gallons of very nasty solvent went into the ground, into the water table and eventually into a public well supplying drinking water for several thousand people. The environmental damages were well into eight (8) figures. I hate it when that happens.
Man, I can't top any of these. But a friend needed help, and I was installing an access door into the stone foundation of a 120-year old house he was renovating. He was using extension cords running from the house he owned next door to power the saws and drills and lights. I needed to bolt the basement door frame I was building into a very rough opening, and after checking behind the celiing joist I was drilling through, didn't see anything. POW! Smoke, bright blue light, and a melted drill bit. I had picked the one bad spot and drilled the live main feed into the house.
What??? "You didn't tell me this house had working electricity! Why are we using extension cords from next door?" It turns out that he had shut down the power at the fuse box but never turned off the service into the house. It still doesn't make sense to me, but I did not burn down his reno. I could easily have done so though.
Dusty and Lefty and Cautious now
See now, this is where you wanna have George Bush doin' all your labor, 'cause he can't think of any mistake he ever made (OK, whip me, I just couldn't resist).
Bruce
Between the mountains and the desert ...