The DARK side of being an Electrician - Not told

If being an Electrician was the best job in the world, would we all be sparks?

But there's not, there are better jobs out there of course.

Like a food taster - I always wondered how much they get paid……

I have always talked about the good times as an electrician. The success.

Today I'm flipping it upside down.

The bad bits, if you're training to be an electrician - this is what you have to look forward to.

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Welcome back once again to tool box talk for electricians podcast, its always been about the good bits of being a spark.

But as we all know electricians like to have a moan sometimes - today is about the things we all moan about.

Starting off with the cold weather!

Trying to terminate a outside light fitting with gloves on can be a challenges, but if we don't where them your fingers go numb from the cold!

This is the thing with electricians, we need to pick small things up.

We need to be outside sometimes in the cold, wet and rain to get the job done!

I hate it!

It's not like it's the cold that we hate, send me off on a snowboarding holiday anyday.

It's having to terminate cables that are rock solid because of the cold, or pulling in a SWA cable that just won't form straight!

It's a little thing - but electricians do not get on with the cold weather.

I would rather be in a boiling hot loft sweating my nuts off, at least then I'm losing some weight.

How many times have you left the house for a call out and said “I will be home in a hour, this sounds a simple fix”

Only to roll back in 5 hours later!

A small problem in an electrical installation can be a number of things.

A customer can call up and say the cooker has stopped working.

You imagine that its a loose connection or a faulty RCD.

Never imagine its been wired as a spur from the sockets, the cable has melted and also ruined the sockets circuit.

Not a 10 min job after all!

This happens a lot! Nothing is ever what it seems, and the whole reason people call an electrician. Sometimes because they did it themselves.

Electricians are there to do the easy stuff, cable is pretty light most of the time, and easy to clip.

Sockets and switches aren't that heavy, the heaviest thing is possibly a storage unit - but at least they're warm.

It's when you're running a supply to an out building, running a 10mm SWA underground!!

You go find a labour or hope you have an apprentice!

We are not built for digging holes or trenches.

Yes, sometimes it's got to be done. 500mm trench minimum all the way up the garden.

We do it, and get it done - But i will moan about it every second im doing it.

Fat sparks sit behind a deck in an office, there is a reason for this.

If there's a small loft space, an understairs cupboard wheres many fuse boards are located - A large person isn't getting in there.

I'm 6ft and struggle to climb across the joists in loft spaces, if i was overweight, there would be no chance.

I know that electricians materials are not that heavy, but being able to get your hands, or even your head in to tight spaces can be a nightmare.

I was told about an electrician once who had lost his little finger. This made his hand smaller and perfect to fit inside a downlight hole and fish cables.

It's an electrician's job to change light fittings, so that's what a customer will do, call an electrician.

They will however forget to tell you that the light fitting there putting up costs £3000.

A £3000 fitting isn't the same as any other light!

There's so many more precautions you need to take to 100% make sure you never dropped it.

It's like that Only fools and horses video of Delboy and Rodney dropping a crystal chandelier.

You can imagine that happening to you.

I am telling this story from experience, I turned up to change the light and it was huge!

Crystal pieces and heavy as hell.

I had to reinforce the ceiling from the loft and secure the fitting with wire as well as the screws.

I also had to get a tower in because it was in the stairwell.

Lucky the customer understood the extra costs, but that job took half a day, when it should have been an hour max.

So again, this is when a 5 minute job can take all day.

As an Electrician, we have been to college.

Taken a number of exams, more than likely made a few mistakes along the way and learnt from them.

I know I have over the last 20 years or more of being an electrician.

So when you turn up to a customer's house and the customer starts to tell you how to do your job.

They start by saying “this is an easy one for you”

I hate that! If it's that easy mate - What am I doing here, why don't you do it yourself?

In my experience, the only reason they do this is because they want the job to be dirt cheap.

Then when you give customers like this a quote, they assume its a starting price.

They're going to exchange 20 emails or texts with you and try to get the price down.

Then when it comes to paying the invoice, magicly their eyes didn't see the BIG +VAT right next to the quote figure.

Customers like this are rare, it doesn't happen all the time - but once a year they give you a call, more than likely because the last electrician saved their number and doesn't answer the phone call.

While I'm on the subject of customers!

Have you ever worked on a property when the customer is constantly looking over your shoulder?

I'm not sure if they think your going to do something wrong or make things worse.

Maybe they want to learn how to fix ti themselves!

I don't even know.

If a socket doesn't work, it's not always just at that socket.

The wiring goes all over the house, when a customer says “you can't go in that room” there's always a reason.

I have been to properties before that have been growing plants in a bedroom, no surprise what overloaded the circuit there.

I was asked not to go in another room in one property, I explained I needed to - It was full of cats, and cat poo!

So sometimes there is a reason the customer will follow you around, they have something to hide.

It may been an allotment in their spare room or embarrassed of the room full of cat poo!

The thing that makes it all worthwhile is getting paid and that's just it.

We get paid to do all these jobs regardless of the struggles.

So from wiring out a new build with no budget to rewiring a property that's lived in - Electricians are there to get the job done.

This is why the quote electricians give to customers is the price.

What is that price for a job, we check out the podcast

How Much Should Electricians Earn?

And figure out how much you should be charging as an electrician.

I will leave a link to that podcast down below

Until next time.