What's the stupidest thing you've done on a startup/Commissioning?

Mine's easy. Left my old Fluke leads in the MA plugs and went to check 480VAC on the line side of an 800A MCC. This was the days before ArcFlash protection became prevelant. The fireball that ensued burnt all the hair off my right arm, blinded me (compounded by the fact all the lights went out as It blew the main switchgear breaker), and welded my meter leads to the lugs. I now double and triple check my meter connections before checking any 480VAC. That was 14 years ago.

man, you had to go there....

This is my specialty... the caffeine takes over the brain and stupid **** starts to happen... like ordering AC coils on the motor starters and then wondering why the 24v lamps are dim

Or

120vac into 4-20ma socket... the smoke has left the building


Its all about speed 'let me hurry and screw something up so I have time to fix it'

Now I have had few good ones

Its all about speed 'let me hurry and screw something up so I have time to fix it'

I am going to steal that expresion

try working on a power Jack getting fustrated with the problem and
not thinking place the screw driver on top of the battery leads, Best part was Canadian tire actually honoured the warrenty on that one.

robertmee said:

Mine's easy. Left my old Fluke leads in the MA plugs and went to check 480VAC on the line side of an 800A MCC. This was the days before ArcFlash protection became prevelant. The fireball that ensued burnt all the hair off my right arm, blinded me (compounded by the fact all the lights went out as It blew the main switchgear breaker), and welded my meter leads to the lugs. I now double and triple check my meter connections before checking any 480VAC. That was 14 years ago.

Click to expand...

I've blown the little fuse in my Fluke by connecting the leads to 120VAC when it was set for mA, but I guess I was lucky that's all that happened.

forgot laptop's PSU, nobody had same style so couldn't share, nobody available back in the office to bring the one that was left behind and it was way too far to drive back and get it myself.

solution - run to local electronic store to get few parts and make replacement (as I did on one other ocassion few years ago). for a 15-min job it worked well although it was not perfect match (was a bit undersized and couldn't regulate well).

After spending long day on site and everything was going well I was getting ready to pack and leave. Customer didn't want to wait for program to be emailed from office and asked me for copy on a floppy. I had no empty disc so he went back to office to get one. He returned 5 minutes later and as he was getting closer (just 4-5 steps away) huge power surge killed the power and everything stopped, whole place went dark, some lights actually exploded. My laptop beeped once and that was end of it.

Most recent backup was nearly week old so several things I was working on had to be recreated. Now I have spare power supply in the glove box of my car (never needed it but gives me piece of mind) and have mobile HDD in external USB enclosure. Everything important gets copied over (preferably when laptop is on battery power) and to a small USB thumbdrive.

seen a plumber install an 8 " line went and placed one of the mount rods in the pipe, he forgot to remove the ready rod, finished the plumbing job Company started the $35,000 centrifical pumps results becomes obvious

Get volunteered to be incharge of Metal Free 4+ miles of Stainless Pipe.
Maybe not, Learned the process inside and out.
Work 22 Hour days for two weeks straight. Possibly.
Get my place of employment through start up, fine tuning, break production expectations records, get offered a better paying job and take it, do it all again, get offered a better paying job, take it, ....... DEFINATELY

robertmee said:

Mine's easy. Left my old Fluke leads in the MA plugs and went to check 480VAC on the line side of an 800A MCC. This was the days before ArcFlash protection became prevelant. The fireball that ensued burnt all the hair off my right arm, blinded me (compounded by the fact all the lights went out as It blew the main switchgear breaker), and welded my meter leads to the lugs. I now double and triple check my meter connections before checking any 480VAC. That was 14 years ago.

Click to expand...

This was not me , but a temp we hired on a 'can you throw extra bodies at the install to finish sooner' job.

Poor guy was drilling a hole for a liquidtite conduit fitting in a junction box. Used a portable drill, with a stepped drill bit. This guy kept wondering why the hole was not drilling and why the drill bit kept falling out of the chuck.

I had to go over and help him switch the drill direction setting from Reverse to Forward

A gas burner would not fire-up
I tested the HT output with my fluke

Waited while it got round to the pilot spark time
Every LCD segment on the fluke display came on and then a wisp of smoke came out from within.

I loved that meter, I sent it to a better place

Mine was to foolishly believe that the company I was contracted to would appreciate me fixing a software problem.

Two that come to mind:

1. Connected my cheapo DMM to test voltage when the leads were actually in the 10A unfused slots. The DMM is still fine. I had to buy new leads.

2. On a previous job, I left a | out of a GPS code library. All the tenths digits of longitude were 0. This lead to a huge recall of tracking collars, which included tranquilizing some tigers.

I was doing the controls for a machine that had a 400HP vertical turbine water pump. The mechanical guy was in a panic to start it up so they could set the impeller, why he was in a panic I have no idea because there was still 2 days of plumbing to do.

I was assured that it was valved in such a way that the water would simply circulate back in the pit, wrong!

You can not believe how much water a pump of that size can pump through an open 6" line or how fast it can fill up a brand new control panel that has the doors open.

Needless to say the plumbing was done before I was done replacing smoked components and the project delay was of course my fault because the electrical was "behind".

Moral of the story, when starting up a water pump for the first time close all electrical panels and keep your finger close to the E-stop.

OK not me but..

I remember many centuries ago, when I was a working as a maintenance electrician for Ford, a foreman went into the central coolant pit and thought that the tank was low. He filled up the tank and wemt on his way happy that he avoided a disaster.

On Friday at 10pm, the plant stopped for the weekend and all systems were shut off and all the coolant out in the system returned back to the tank in the pit. The pit filled upto 4 foot, both pumps were submerged and the electrical panel was half submerged.

I had been out of school for a couple of years doing one of my first "big" jobs in the windy city. It was a holiday shut down for the plant and it was full of contractors like myself but the area I was working in was only my guys. We were about 7 days into a 10 day job long hours etc.. I had been putting the connectors on servo motor cables all day. I had a nice little vise to hold the connectors. When I put my tools up I forgot the vise. So I got lazy and thought I'll be back in 6-7 hours its already 10pm so I put the little vise in the bottom of box under all the scrap cut off wire. Came in the next morning wire was there but no vise.

The only thing that made me feel better was the next day someone got on the plant intercom and asked several times for their meter back. The last time they did it they said some real nice words to who took it. So I had a good laugh at someone else and thought I was lucky that all I lost was my vise.

Its never to late at night to pick up your tools.

mordred said:

seen a plumber install an 8 " line went and placed one of the mount rods in the pipe, he forgot to remove the ready rod, finished the plumbing job Company started the $35,000 centrifical pumps results becomes obvious

Click to expand...

Yikes...

While putting myself through college I worked for a commercial HVAC company. We were installing ductwork in a shopping mall. My tin snips were dull so I bought a new pair one morning. We were hanging a 120' duct run when I reached into my tool bag for my brand new never been used snips and they were nowhere to be found. I looked all over for them. Finally, shining my light down the duct, I could see them, 120' away back at the beginning. No way was I going to dismantle that to retrieve them. But there was no danger of them going anywhere in an air duct. I imagine those snips are still there after 27 years.


Multimeter story: One day a co-worker came to me and asked to borrow an amp meter. I handed him a clamp on meter. He looked puzzled and said he had gone to a maintenance tech first and he gave him one like it, but he didn't know how to use it. I explained that you just clamp it around the wire and it tells you how many amps are flowing. He said he wanted to find out how much current was available at an outlet. So I drew a 15 amp outlet and a 20 amp outlet and explained the difference. That was obviously not good enough - he wanted to borrow my multimeter and stick the leads in the outlet. I told him absolutely not and explained why - he apparently didn't believe me. About two hours later I walked through the area where this guy worked and found the carcas of a pocket multimeters sitting on a desk blown to smitherenes. So I looked around and spotted an outlet with burn marks all around it. I guess he also got a little burned.