Storytelling by an Electrician

Leviton T5325-WMP M22-Straight Blade Tamper Resistant Duplex Receptacle, 125 V, 15 A, 2 Pole, 3 Wire, 10-Pack White Piece

[planetplanet]

Wholesome, fun, and informative all at the same time. Quality Content right here!

[loveislife]

Hey Sparky! That was a great story I think many of your subscribers would love to hear more stories like this. Please share some more with us!

[mojitos]

I love this kind of stories where everyone is so sure that there's something horribly wrong somewhere and it takes a keen eye to notice the tiniest oversight and provide the simplest of fixes.

[eugenepolan]

I took the vacuum cleaner into my daughter's room and plugged it in to a wall outlet, but it wouldn't run. It was just working a minute ago when I was vacuuming in a different bedroom. I went down to the fusebox and found that the fuse for my daughter's bedroom outlets was blown. I screwed in a new 15 amp fuse, went up to the bedroom and vacuumed the floor. I thought it was odd, but life was busy back then and I didn't ponder upon why the fuse was blown. About a week or so later, I was grabbing a screwdriver out of the kitchen tool drawer and I noticed arc damage on the shank of the blade. Believe it or not, but with no power connected a lightbulb lit up over my head! I looked at the other screwdrivers in the drawer and three of them had arc damage. When I asked what had happened, my kids admitted to inserting the tip of a flat-blade screwdriver in each side of the outlet and laying the shank of a third screwdriver across the shanks of the first two. After their little experiment abruptly ended, they put the screwdrivers back where they came from and never mentioned a word about it until I asked. The kids were in 3rd and 4th grade at the time.

[Logan_Explores]

This channel is exactly why YouTube was created! Thank you for sharing your skills and passing knowledge on to us youngsters!! Lol.

[billybilodeau]

My boss once sent me on a service call to find out why some parking lot lights were out. The two other crews we had couldn’t figure it out. I started out doing all the basic stuff, checking breakers, time clocks etc. but everything seemed fine. It was a big lot. I realized I was doing all the same stuff the other guys did and it didn’t help them. So i started walking around the lot. As i walked around the back of the building I smelled something foul, like a dead animal. I soon realized it was coming from a pole sorta hidden in some trees. I told the apprentice to bring my tools over. I opened the cover and got a big whiff of rotting smell. Dug around and pulled out wads of matted fur and bones. I could tell it was two squirrels because there was two skulls inside, perfectly dyed green from the copper oxidizing on them. They got down there from the open top of the pole. Had to change the thhn going up the pole because their claws put little hairline slices into the insulation. Those two squirrels got hit with 277/480. They’d eaten through the two phase lines by the time that night came along.

[stevefinley]

For what it's worth, I want you to know that I found your channel BECAUSE of what happened and intend on watching all your content. Keep up the good work, looking forward to you getting even bigger than before.

[andrewt]

Had a similar experience as an apprentice. My journeyman and I were looking all through the house for what could've been causing the breaker to trip, I go into the daughter's bedroom and she had a belt hanging from the sconce light with the belt buckle stuffed in the socket haha

[rayyyyee]

Hope youtube actually helps creators like you, and get everything back! You didnt deserve what happened to you. Im not an electrician or have any experience with it, but you make so educational and informative Im enjoying it myself! Keep going man! :)

[ccadama]

@Sparky Channel. Thanks Bill for your story. Troubleshooting at its finest. This is the type of troubleshooting they likely don't teach in a traditional classroom. You get it either from personal experience or someone who's been around and shares their experience.

Hope you and your family stay safe and well.

[stevenstowik]

Sparky! Thank you for all the awesome informative content you always put out, but please if you could put out some more storytelling videos I would be forever grateful!

[digdoug]

As soon as you mentioned you went into the little boy's room, I was pretty sure the story was going to end with him peeing where he wasn't supposed to! Glad it ended the way it did.

[Natalia-tyqq]

I don't know anything about electric stuff so I'm happy I came across your channel, you make it really easy and entertaining!

[andrewkowalczyk]

That's hilarious, hoping for more!

[TheCrawler]

Great story. My house was built in 1956 and I hear you on the wiring. There is one circuit that they must have run all the way around the outside walls of the house. Every socket and light switch that's on an outside wall in every room of the house is on one breaker! The way I found that out was I had a contractor drill the walls and blow in cellulose insulation and apparently they hit that one wire just after it left the breaker box and like you say, half the house was out. Hire an electrician and he found and fixed the wire and all has been good for 30+ years.

The other issue I found was that aside from the 240V circuits, aside from the lights in the garage, everything else was piled up on one 120V leg. I moved a few breakers around to try and better balance the 120V loads between the two sides of the panel.

Of course, nothing in the panel was labelled at all. It has one 240V breaker that feeds nothing that I can find along with 2 - 240V breakers that feed the range, a 40A and a 30A, in parallel! I wish I had the money when I bought the place to gut the inside walls and rewire everything, but alas that didn't happen.

[almanac]

I think the moral of the story is don't try to solve the problem like everyone else that already failed, figure out how to simplify the problem first.

[illestofdemall]

Awesome story. I know relatively a lot about troubleshooting, and one thing I know is you should start with the simpler solutions first. Then you can start worrying about replacing breakers.

[y-lc]

Really cool story bro! Your channel is great!

[michaelrobertson]

I got called on one where an older lady kept saying her receptacle was hot, it turned out to be a stained glass panel over her door was shining on that receptacle at a certain time of day. Lmao! ⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡👍✌

[MarkytheSparky]

Great story. In my area when half the house doesn’t work it’s usually a blown phase fuse before the panel. Simple fix and mind blowing to the client