Things Electricians do they know they shouldn't

===

[00:00:00] Electricians may be heroes without capes, but we're not always angels with all the regulations and safety precautions we have to carry out when we're working with electricity sometimes. Ah, yeah. I admit it. We cut a few corners. Electricians, yet we, they shouldn't do it. And yes, it is dangerous, but we all do it.

And I bet you listen to this podcast and you think, huh, yeah, I'd do that, but I, I know why I'm gonna. Toolbox talks for electricians, loading electricians with the tools and the skills they need to reduce stress, gain back time, and earn more money. Welcome back once again. Ben Polter, your host, and do you take shortcuts?

I know you are shaking your head right now and saying, no, no, I never do that. I do everything to the book and everything exactly as I should. As it says in the regs, if you do well, you are one of a kind cuz so many electricians take shortcuts. Might not be putting the customer so much at risk, but putting you at risk instead.

And one of the best ones is being when you can't find that circuit where it's fed from, it's a bleeding nightmare. You looked everywhere and you've tested everything you can. You know that you have to isolate it to be able to work on it. But you can't find where the hell it's fed from, , what fuse it's fed from, where to be able to turn it off.

It's a complete mystery and nine times outta 10, it's probably a light in the garden or a garden supply where someone's done it 10, 20 years ago maybe, and obviously not done it properly or labeled it so you can find the correct labeling to be able to switch it off. I've been to a property before where I've had a.

And it wouldn't go off. I need to isolate that supply cause they were taking the shed down. So I switched the whole consume unit off and it was still live and I stuck my test on it and tried to trip the R C D to make it trip somewhere. Somewhere. Something's gotta trip. It's gotta be fed from somewhere.

It's a logic in your mind. You step back and you think this has gotta be fed somewhere. I've gotta be able to trip that fuse. So to be able to turn that supply off. I had to do something dodgy, which was basically pop the fuse. I had to snap the snip the cable and pop the fuse to make sure it was dead. It did actually trip a fuse somewhere, but ah, it took me a little while to find out where it turned out.

The previous owner that owned the house, maybe 10, 20 years ago, it taken the supply from the bus stop on the other side of the fence, and it did have a BS 88 fuse on. Street lamp that it is fed from, but you'd never imagined that it was fed from there. You don't really look outside the perimeters of the property.

You sort of look somewhere. Maybe someone's buried a consumer unit, someone's buried a joint, but no, it was fed from outside the property, which that guy must have known doing a dodgy job or you never know someone might have done the job for him. I said, here I go, mate, there's free electricity from the bus stop next door.

Bit crazy, but there's nothing you can do. And I think that these are the type of installs that electricians are maybe up against today. Maybe when Part P weren't about back in the day, there was, well, there was every, every man, this dog being a, a builder was being an electrician and everyone was doing sort of all the trades.

A jack of all trades, they call it. They were doing all the trades and just. They knew a little bit about every trade so they could maybe fit a gas boiler, which would Yeah, leak in sort of three or four years and cause a problem. Or maybe they fitted some electric and yeah, it caused a fire. And this is why you don't even know what you're up against sometimes when you go to a property or a new customer.

Well, to be honest with are, I reckon it happens in new bills where they got, this guy comes in, they do it on a price and. Get it done, but it's not done to regulation and end of the day they don't know it's not safe. So yet sometimes you find some weird and wonderful installs and I know that forcing the fuse to blow, it helps you determine where the circuit's fed from, but didn't want to be pulling on that cable to find out where it goes or where it's fed under or where it's isolated when the cable was live.

Cuz if maybe I pulled a cable out and it sprung back and it might have given me a shock. I wanted to protect myself first. It is the tools that electricians use. They're rated to be able to protect you from a thousand volts, and there's a good reason for that, not only to protect you personally from getting a shock, but it's when you are on an electrical panel and them tools, sometimes they do, they slip out your hands.

They might slip out your pocket, but then they're not going to arc across maybe some live buzz. I think the young lads and, uh, modern day electricians, as you call them, they understand this a lot more cuz health and safety has been drummed into them a lot more in deeper detail at college. However, I have worked on site where I've seen electricians who've got their spanners out and their screwdrivers out without an insulated one in sight.

And that's the one of the worst shortcuts you could ever do, especially when you're working on a live supply. It's when you're working on maybe an industrial install with a free face board, and the client says, you know, I don't want you to switch off the whole board. I don't want you to disrupt the whole office, maybe.

but you've gotta gland off that armored cable into that board. And yeah, it can sometimes take you maybe an extra an hour insulating all the area with maybe rubber mats or something like that, just in case, like maybe that banjo might slip off and it'll go in the wrong place, cuz you can be sure that it's not gonna slip off and fall directly into your hand and you're gonna catch it perfectly to be able to slip it back on.

It doesn't happen like that. That's like a bit of a dream. It's gonna fall between two phases and go with a pop and go with a massive bang and possibly hurt yourself as well. So I think the older we get, the more safety conscious we get. It's seeing these things go wrong as well, and not just for the electricians that get hurt from the silly little shortcuts that will probably save them 20 minutes in the long run.

But the, it's the amount of paperwork you have to fill out on site. If you've ever been on site and had a small little accident, there is a massive, the site get, the site gets shut down and everyone gets sort of asked what happened if someone got hurt? Maybe someone didn't you? Because I, I blame it on 'em cuz there's blame ass a claim and more likely they lads if they hurt themselves at work, they're think sweet, I'm gonna sit at home now for six weeks and getting paid for it.

So they will jump on that. Everyone does. I know back in the day probably didn't happen. You just shoved them in into canteen with a cup of tea till they got over it and they got back on with a job. But these days, health and safety has gone mad. And the thing is, if something does go wrong and then someone's gotta get the blame.

And if you are doing the job as the electrician, you are gonna get the blame for sure. I've refused to work on live installations before in the past when I was employed and I was told to get on with it or pack my kit up and get offsite, well, I packed my kit up and got off side. But the funny thing is they probably got someone else in that company to go back there the next day to do the same thing.

What I was requesting to do, like maybe turn the board off or have the right insulation gear. Sometimes you need the proper in insulated kit to be able to work on an install that's live like you need thousand volt screwdrivers, , thousand volt spanners and stuff like that. But as I say, I will never know what happened there cuz I packed my kit up and left.

I dunno who would've gone back though, because any electrician would know that'd be dangerous. And especially with four 15 volts or doing it properly is probably. Gonna save your life sometimes, but there'll always be someone that will think, well, if you're gonna pay me 500 quid to do that job, ask 500 quid in my back pocket.

Not thinking about , how dangerous it is. Maybe not even being an electrician, but being on site as an electrician. That leads me onto the next one that some electricians do, which I've heard of is a lot more common than. Then I actually thirst fought cuz with everything in the whole wild world being faked right now, there's fake electricians out there.

You wouldn't believe it. Inside the toolbox talks for electricians group, there was a post from a guy. He looked like electrician. He had pictures of a hard hat and all the tools and things like that all over his profile. So I thought, yep, let him inside the group. But then he posted this bizarre thing inside the group.

It was a picture of a J R B card, an e c s card and sitting gill's, qualifications. With the right in saying that if you want all the qualifications without taking years or costing, you are fortune to get them. You can just do this for free. You can contact him on a WhatsApp number, which I thought hang about.

This is a complete con, but they were basically fake. He was gonna give you a fake certificates and fake J R B cards and fake ECS cards, just. I don't get it why someone could or would even buy fake qualifications. The only reason I could think of is cuz I know back in the day when I worked on big industrial commercial sites, there was lads.

Well we got paid just to sit around cuz there weren't any materials or we just had to be that person on site. The company had to show that there were sending us. So you can understand why some may page and be there and do, and sometimes. So guys, with the fake qualified, they may be seeing gap in the market there and think, yeah, I'm gonna jump on that. They make a quick couple of grand and they can do that cuz electricians get paid. Well then they can make a grand a week. So if they get the fake qualifications work, I don't know how much they cost. I didn't even ask. But say they cost 500 quid and then you get a job for two weeks as an electrician and then until you get found out, I suppose, cuz they're only gonna be sacked like Romberg when they get found out that they're actually useless or.

Not even useless that they haven't really got a clue what they're doing or even if they hurt themselves, anything could happen. , it's a crazy situation to think about what happens in the world. I know it's not the only one in the world that happens, but there is for electricians, I think it's a bit.

It's a bit mad. Someone say, yeah, I'm a spark it. I'm gonna turn up, I'm gonna work on that free face board. I can do that for you. And then he gets his spanners and screwdrivers out. Bang, he's lost his hand. Well that was a wasted for like 500 pound for your fat qualifications and you ain't gonna get paid.

Well, dunno, I suppose they would get paid for the work they're done sort of thing. Cause they'd be able to claim off the company's insurance. I don't know what their plan is, but fake qualifications, they're just not worth it. Leading back onto actual electricians, what they do. This is common. I know it is.

Cause I've spoke to a load, temporary fixes and it's most common in the electrician's own house. And you know it's safe because they're protected by the right size fuse and it. Ends up being there for a little bit longer than you thirst anticipated sort of thing. It's crazy that most of us electricians, they go out and do a beautiful job and with a proper containment and all the lovely, neat cables that they clip to make sure it's nice and neat and Even the fuse board, it's covered up, but we make sure it's swos in beautifully and it's all numbered correctly.

But when we do something in our own house, we sort of , throw it in, get it done, get it on, because I need that to work now. Maybe when it comes to maybe a TV on the wall, you wanna mount that TV up, you miss, as I said, I wanna put that TV on the wall. So she's gone out, got a bracket. You've fixed it all on the wall, lovely and neat, all nice and safe. But you need a plug up there and it's not dot and dab so you can't fish behind it. Nice and neat and tied to get that stock up. So you just , plug it onto an extension lead. It's a temporary fix. You're gonna sort it out one day.

It's when you have a, maybe a spare afternoon, you're gonna chase it in and do it lovely and neat and repaint or re-plaster, whatever you need to do. Cause it's gonna turn that job into a bigger one. But when you get. A free afternoon since to become an electrician. When are you not busy? If you're not out doing work, or you'll be at home doing sort of paperwork or sorting the van out for the next job.

So those temporary fixes that you thought, that would just be temporary. They'll be there for a couple of days. May I have your week max yet? They turn out to stick around for a little bit longer than you first thought. But this next one, who's gonna relate to this one? , I could , probably say 90% of electricians will relate to this.

When you're using the wrong tools for the job, and I'm not talking about your hand tools here where you're not using insulator because you've, oh, if you're an electrician, you're half decent. All your kit is basically insulated. And I think we all use our expensive screwdriver sometimes maybe is a chisel, or use it as a hammer or hammer that screwdriver where we maybe shouldn't have, cuz it's a bloody expensive and you're ruining it.

But picture this scenario, you've got a light to change at high level. You've got the light, you've got all the fixins, you've got the ladders all set up and ready to install. Bang about that ladder , doesn't go up, just , doesn't go up all the way. It's comfortable working hard. You can't access it.

It doesn't get up to that certain position. So that's it. You have to rearrange the job and you have to go back, come back the next day to get some longer ladders or some higher ladders. So you have to do a two hour round trip just to put maybe one light up. Or do ya, I bet you could pack the van up against that wall and then that van could like foot the ladder on the roof rack.

And I can tell you for a fact that a hundred percent or electricians have done this in the past. Don't ask me exactly how I know. Because you shouldn't do it. And , it is dangerous. You could fall and I don't know what the arm break slipped off the van. There's more things that could happen and you could dent your van.

That's, I never thought of that. That's probably a bad thing as well, but it's just the thought. That's saving time that persuades you to go ahead and do it. Because if it's a two hour round trip to get that, maybe that light or that extra ladder, it's a lot of hassle and it's, what's it gonna take you to put a light up if you use your van to foot it, it's gonna take you 20 minutes if that.

So yeah, maybe a little bit of a shortcut sometimes that we shouldn't really do. Another thing that springs to mind is being an electrician. You should be used to check in things, double checking, and then check in again. And sometimes you just wanna be cracking on and get full. Go full steam ahead. Do you wanna get going?

You don't want us to keep checking. Is it live? Is it dead? Is my test are broken? Is there a lot of things you gotta do? Lot, lots for safe illation. And I would say that nine times outta 10 going full steam ahead. Yeah, it works out a lot of the time. You go in there, you fix your cables, drill your holes, get that job done super quick, and you're out and you've made a PR decent profit on that job, but it's just that one time where it goes wrong.

You didn't check to see what was behind that plaster ball wall. You didn't look around first. You didn't have a little survey of that installation to see, right. How am I going to do it? Everything works better when you make a plan. And cables yet they're not the problem. You're an electrician. You can fix that.

Some bloody water pipes that are in the way out the time, it's not until it's too late and the water's pouring out the wall. Or even worse if you smell gas, cuz this ass happened to me before. I was working away in a kitchen, drilling a hole. It was a four inch hole for the extractor. For the extractor found in the kitchen, what we refitting a new kitchen or something.

It was a little while ago now, but to be fair to me, That gas pipe become down the center, the center of the wall. There was no sort of warning. There was no tape. When I was drilling through to say that that gas pipe was there and I just nicked it just a little bit, I could, I felt it, Nick it. I don't know why.

Something in my head said, you've hit something wrong here. And so I stopped. Yep. Smelt gas. So I went outside and I turned it off. And then when I was outside I quickly like called up a few plumbers that I knew and then went in and told the customer, cuz then I could tell them. Give it 40 minutes, is a guy gonna come here and he's gonna sort it all out?

So that was a bonus to me. The customer was fine luckily, but it was just the nightmare of hitting it cuz it, if anything worse could have happened, I suppose, if it was red hot and it was drilling through brick. But no, it was fine. It was, it was one of them things that bloody pipe was in the way. But these things happen and in that scenario, There's nothing I could have done to stop it.

I would never have known that gas pipe was aired. Not until I smashed the plow off the walk, to be honest. But you do find in some houses where other tradesmen have been, where they've maybe run cables or they've run pipe work, they've just run it anywhere and it's like when you maybe doing a rewire. And you need to drill out them joist for a nice tidy run for your cables to come in.

So you can pull, put all these cables in at the same time to get to a certain location, maybe downstairs where you're drilling through the joists. But if you don't check both sides of that joist before you start drilling, I could put money on that. There'll be something in the way, a pipe, an old cable.

There'll be something in there that you would, nick, if you don't, just go ahead and check that you are gonna drill a nice straight. And these sort of things, when the accidents happen, you've got to hold your hands up to it. You've gotta just say, look, I've made a mistake. It's the best way to get out of it because if you get busted sort of thing saying, yeah, I've got a plumber to come in here and fix it, you've gotta fix there or something.

Hold your hands up to it and say, look man, this has happened. This is bound to happen. I've made a mistake. But there's also some of the small little things that we do that maybe is a temporary fix in other people's houses. That you may have run out of something like IRVs leaving, but you don't want to have to stop it.

Stop you from finishing the job. So you root around in your van because the last thing you wanna do is leave that earth wire better with bear copper. That's just a complete cowboy thing to do. Leave it with bear copper. At least try so you find your electrical tape could be the solution, but it just looks rubbish.

It could, it can come off the electrical tape. It looks pants, and, I dunno, I've seen it before. They just wrap it around like this wire, and it just looks like it's been pulled out. The skip, it looks horrible. So you try and pull a piece of earth wire from maybe a flex that's laying around in the van and you sort of sleeve it that way.

So at least it's, I identified as a earth cable. But I find it's always in the back of my mind that whoever's gonna follow you the next time, cuz maybe the customer doesn't ring you up for the next, uh, electrical job they do. Or they do a bit of d r y themself, or it just looks like a bodge job. And you have to sort of say, yeah, I've done this differently and.

There is honesty is your best policy. If you just explain to the customer, say, look, this is earth leaving. I've identified it with a bit of, she sheath off of a bit of flex cable. Just explain to say no so you don't get caught out because they'll assume that you're a Billy Budger. If you explain to him, say, look, I've run out of Earth sleeve and I can pop back another time and change it over, but this is what I've done for now.

This is a temporary fix. Don't try and hide it because when you try and hide things, it makes you, makes you look guilty, basically. Because over here in the UK we've got this rogue traders on TV and it is quite popular. I watch it myself. So you tried to do the best job you can and you can explain everything you've done and why.

Cause you don't wanna be on that program. . Honestly, , they are some bad people in that program. They must have took a, a long time to build up their reputation to be able to rip people off like that. But I guarantee you, once been seen on that program, it, they're not gonna do it again.

Are they? They ain't gonna get called. , they, no one's ever gonna call them. It takes years to build up a good reputation, but it can take 10 seconds to ruin it. You wanna start off by building a solid reputation with your customers by keeping your electrical business in the forefront of their mind, and have some free downloads inside the toolbox, talks for electricians group on Facebook that you can send to your customers, that you can just remind them of electrical safety or energy saving tips.

That is a fantastic one at the moment because of the electric price has all gone up, so you. Just educate them in the fact of maybe boiling the KET or less water in. Just little things like that, tips, and then not shoving it, Hey, do you need electrical work doing in their face? You can just subtly say, I'm still here, and if you have any problems with electrical needs, I can come and fix them.

So jump into that group, check it out. And have a look at the post. It'll also have about emailing your customers and keeping your customers at the forefront of your mind. So I'll leave a link in the description below so you can , find that group. , easily. So until next time, I'll see you again.

[00:20:29] Ben: Get inside the toolbox, talks for electricians group, and post your experience of what we've talked about today. I'll leave a link to the group in the show notes below. Until next time, we'll see you again.