Knowing your stuff as a tradesman

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[00:00:00] Ben: Knowing your stuff as a tradesman, not particularly just electrician, but any tradesman. We've all seen that age old meme where that guy comes along with a hammer and hits that boat in a certain position. For 10 grand and it makes you question how is he able to charge that much just for tapping that engine in one , specific place.

Well, it's not always just being qualified for the job, it's about knowing your stuff too, about the experience you've got in that, , chosen profession. And in this podcast, I'm gonna go into some examples where knowing your stuff as an electrician, Well, it can be priceless. Toolbox talks for electricians, helping electricians reduce stress, gain back time, and earn more money.

Welcome back once again for Toolbox Talks. For electricians podcast. I'm your host, Ben Polter, and today in this podcast I wanna talk about the knowledge and experience that you have as an electrician that you've more likely gained over the years of working as an electrician. For example, have you been to a customer's house before where maybe you've been working away, you've pulled that light down and there's just a shed load of wires hanging out.

The customer obviously standing over you, shoulding you, watching you, and they say, how do you know all them wires go? Well, to me it's simple, but to anyone else, I wouldn't have a clue. We all know that there's a loop in loop out with the live and the neutral, and then there's one wire that's a switch wire cuz a lot of people, you see, they've tried to turn the light down, they've put all the reds together or all the browns together, even these days and all the blues together and then they find out it doesn't work.

Keep stripping the fuse and they wonder why. Well, that's a switch wire. We know that we do that all the time. It's something that we've trained to do, this experience that we've got, but a lot of people look at it and think, I wouldn't even attempt it. I wouldn't have a clue. And I think as electricians we may be take these skills for granted, like how we easily just go and change a light and it works straight away.

Cause we know what wires go where and why it doesn't trip the fuse. We don't have to get up, up and down that ladder five or six times. To make sure that the wires are all in the right position, cuz maybe we've tested it and we know exactly , which wires or which, where the earth goes and why.

There's a bit of sling on that one. Blue cable. We know these things cuz we, well, we do them all the time. And if I'm honest though, it's not always about just knowing what you're doing. Cuz any diy Dave can go out there and Google a wire and diagram to say, yep, and figure, figure it out. If they've got the time on their hands, and they can be bothered to maybe make a couple of mistakes to find out that there's actually a switch wire up there.

And that's why maybe that they're lights where they've put all their reds together, all their browns together or whatever, all their cables have just bunched together. They can find out why they're not working. It's also having the knowledge as an electrician to find out why things are wired the way they are.

Like maybe why a lighting cable is 1.5 or one meal cable. Why that cable's so small, or why that cable's so thick. There's a reason why things are wired like that. Like for example, a four kilowatt cooker. There's obviously a reason why you wire in a certain size cable for it to carry the load. Yep, I get it.

, any sort of cable will make that cooker work. It'll make the timer come on and they'll think, yep, that cooker works is fantastic. But what about when it's under load? If it's got an electric hub on top, that's gonna need a decent amount of juice, a decent size cable to be able to feed that oven. And I've seen it before where someone's wired.

It may be in one mill flex, straight out the outlet from behind the cooker. Well, that's gonna melt over time and cause a fire. Electricians don't do that. Electricians put the right size cable in for the right size appliance. DIYs. Dave, do it wrong. And that's where the fires happen. Electricians, they wire things to not catch fire.

They'll wire things to work properly. And this is why so many scenarios when you go into maybe premises where someone's spurred of a spur of a spur of a spur, they maybe got 10 spurs and they think, well, I've used the same size cable as what it's wire in. But you don't understand that it is wrong and it can catch fire, and they wonder, they'd only call you what?

When? When it's not working. They'll call you when there's a fault and when it's stopped working, maybe when it's caught fire, maybe when it's melted, they won't understand the reason of why it happened, and that's what electricians are here for. I think one of my favorites is when. , maybe a homeowner has changed a light, not just any light, because maybe they can get away with changing one in the kitchen or in a bedroom, but it's the landing lights where it's two way switched, where they come up with a problem, they call you up, they say, yeah, it worked.

It worked yesterday. Fine. But you didn't tell me that you tried to change it yourself. They've messed up the switch wire and the two-way switching. It just doesn't work anymore. It either blows a fuse or it doesn't go off, or it doesn't go on, it doesn't switch properly, and they don't understand why. But then that's why you get a call to come round and fix it.

But nine times outta 10, the customer won't tell you that they've had the guy himself. And sometimes you can't blame them, cuz maybe it is a little bit embarrassing, but if you're a customer listening to this, please just admit what you've done or how you've attempted it because it makes an electrician's life 10 times easier if you can explain to them saying, yeah, look, I tried to give it a go.

Okay, you've messed it up fine, but let's get it fixed. I have been called to a property before where I went in there and they said yes to a living room light. It doesn't work. Not a problem. Let's have a little look. First put a call, I'll take the light down and test to see if there actually is a live or a neutral up there, cuz , maybe a neutral's broken, maybe a light's broken, something's gone wrong along the line somewhere, tested it.

There was nothing there. And then after I took the screws out and maybe give it a little bit of a pull, the cables come straight out the ceiling. They'd never been connected. They'd never been terminated. The actual cable to the light. Someone, it just looked like someone had come along, stuck a hole in the ceiling and stuck a light up.

Then thought right now we'll call electrician to see why it's not working. I'm an electrician mate. I wire things. I'm not magician. It doesn't work like that. , it's, if it worked before then yeah, it would make it easier to fix. But that customer didn't want to admit that that light never worked. And with customers like that, there was nothing I could do apart from pack up my kit and leave him with no light working still.

Because if you're not gonna tell me the truth and actually. Explain to me why that light didn't work or doesn't work. Then there's not much I can do to help you out by saying light. I need to lift the floorboards up above to maybe wire it because I also got a wire down to the switch that will cause some disruption.

It was a bit of a hard task, so, Yeah, I left that job and said, yeah, I'll , have to leave this one here, mate, I'm afraid. But this is where being a chat box can be a massive advantage as an electrician or a tradesman because firstly, when you get to a problem and you have a little conversation with the customer to say, right, what's happened?

Is anything new happened? Maybe a picture's been put up or, Maybe it's been raining the night before and you've had a flood in a certain area. You can always narrow it down a lot easier. It makes it easier to find the fight fault if you know what circumstances is in what's happened in that area. A lot of the time, maybe they're having some work done yet we, , ripped the bedroom apart.

We ripped the wallpaper off. Well, did you rip the switch off as well? Yeah, we probably pulled a wire out. That's more than likely what happens. It makes it easier to you to find the fault if you have a little conversation with a customer to start with. And I think the electrical safety in the UK it is quite high.

We've got RCDs that protect every circuit, and that's why a lot of the time people don't get a shock when things go off these days they just don't work and the RCD doesn't come back on, which is a good thing. And then now obviously we are leading up to AFDs being installed as well, and with the introduction with AFDs in domestic premises.

I'm not sure whether this is gonna be a fantastic idea. I'm on the fence about this one. You let me know what you think, but the longer anyone works as an electrician, The more knowledge they gain over time and central heating, poor central heating systems s plan Y plans was a massive learning curve for me.

I never used to install any heating systems much when I was working on industrial commercial. So when I started venturing into domestic, yeah, it become a bit of a problem. Whenever I had a chance to install maybe essential heating system from new or maybe fault find. I had to print a diagram out. I had to find out what exactly was go was going on so I could chase the wires out and find out which would work, and sort of look at, look actually at a wiring diagram to find out what, how it's wired.

I didn't have a lot of knowledge on it at all. But the more you do it, the better you get. Knowing that the time clock needs to signal the room stat for the room, stat needs to signal the Freeport valve and the Freeport valve needs to signal the boiler to fire. Yet it seems complicated first, but when you get it all working perfectly and you know that you've cracked it, and now when someone phones me up with a heating problem, I don't dread it thinking, right.

I'm gonna be there all day. It's just process of elimination. It can only be one of them components that's not working for making the heating not work. And so if you just keep a scheduled of how you're gonna do it, where this signal comes from, what's it signaling, how it's working with the Freeport valve working and things like that.

, it's just a lot more simple once you know how things work. But as you may well know, It's common for someone to think, yeah, I'm gonna give this a go myself. Especially if they assume it's gonna save them some money or some time in the long run. But thinking this way can be a big mistake in many cases, cuz there's a reason that there's so many different types of cable for even domestic premises, industrial premises.

Swa fp, like there's so many different cables and no screw fix does not do them all. Because if you've been working as an elec electrician, at least for a few years, you must have been a time where you've went to a job pos more than likely an extension or a conservatory that someone's done and. God knows who's wire decking conservatory because they've just thrown cables in here and there thinking, right?

I can't be asked to wait for an electrician. I'm gonna do the plastering myself. So I'll do the electrics myself as well. So they've just thrown cables in everywhere. It's a bit like a spider's web. And Eva, they didn't want to wait for that electrician to come and do the work properly, or they've more likely had a quote in for it.

Scrap that. I'm gonna do it myself. Save myself a lot of money. But however, did the first fix who wired it, which in my eyes is the hard part. Didn't want to come back and do the second fix now, second fix. , that's gotta be the easy part, the simple bit. I enjoy doing the second fix. It's making it look good, making everything work.

But yeah, they call you up to do second fix thinking. Putting a couple of sockets on's. Gonna be cheap. And yet putting a couple of sockets on would be cheap. If the wiring room was right, if you could test it and it'll work. If you could test it and it'll be perfect, you get the certain readings. If it was wire in the correct cable, if it was protected by the right size fuse.

If it was wired in , the right angles going down the wall, not across the wall. Yeah, sometimes there's a lot of things that maybe DIY Dave does not do. Personally, I wouldn't touch a job like that with things that happen. I try to give them the best advice I can and walk away and advise you do the same because they'll expect you to put your name against it, obviously your insurance, and you are gonna par pay that, , property.

Well, you'll be covering that property for so many years, so. You'll get called up when things go wrong. You dunno what someone's done. You dunno if that cable wasn't long enough when they pulled it in. So did they stick a JB in the middle of the wall or the middle of the ceiling? You don't actually know what's happened there.

So I'd walk away from it or give them a price to basically rewire it from scratch to do it properly. To be confident that you can give them a part piece certificate to confident that , you've actually done the work, not someone else who you've come along and you get paid maybe a day's wage, just a second fix.

It doesn't work like that. It's not worth it knowing what you're doing as an electrician. Can be a huge benefit at times when you're running your own business, especially along with knowing how to use a test kit that you've got the socket testers. They can be a miracle work sometimes when you can firstly get to a house and say, yep, I've got a fault on my sockets.

You can plug that socket in and it'll give you a bit of a an I idea of what goes wrong if you've got loose, neutral, , Alive and neutral, the way wrong way around. You might have an earth in neutral the wrong way around and it keeps on tripping. The R C D, it can give you an inkling to what's gone on, what's happening to start with, and having this test kit can make your life a lot easier, can make a lot a fault, a lot easier to diagnose.

And personally, these days, I like a bit of fault. Find him like a dog with a bone if someone's got a fault. I wanna find out how that's false happened and why that's false happened. And then obviously fixing it is the good part as well to say, right, this is 10 times better than it was before. I always try and start at the beginning through a process of elimination.

Sounds complicated when I say it sounds technical and stuff, but it's easy once you know how you say, right, this isn't working, isn't getting the feed. He hasn't got a neutral. Now find back where that neutral comes from. Why is ITT got a neutral? And then you can maybe test in between, especially a ring circuit.

You can eliminate on that circuit, what sockets are on there, and then find out what's not working and then find out maybe one of the legs is damaged. There we go. They've put a nail through a. To put a picture up. They might have put a nail through the wall, which is fantastic. You can find that. I say, yeah, I can fix it Nice and easy.

, it's just processed elimination. You've got the right desk kit. You can start find the OS readings as well. It's just a bit of an enjoyable and you get a bit more satisfaction out of it once you do find a fault sometimes. Because this has happened to me before with, , an outside light in someone's house.

I went there and they said, oh, the sockets, so keep tripping off. It keeps tripping. The rcd, we can't turn it on. Well, I was looking around the sockets and they were fine, but they had a look. There's an outside light, just out the back doors, and I wanted to test to see that was also fed off , the ringman as a spur possibly, and it was basically, it was my inklings as my knowledge thinking, right?

Someone's maybe done this an earlier date, and that's exactly what they've done, but that outside light, the customer said it hasn't worked for years. Well, it doesn't necessarily matter. If it hasn't worked for years, if it's outside and it's got a cable that's connected to that circuit, that's sending a fault back down that line to making that R C D trip and that light had got wet.

So not only did that customer get his sockets fixed, but it got an outside light. He didn't even know that he could have cause he thought it was disconnected and didn't work. Well, it wasn't disconnected, it just didn't work. So he got an outside light and his socket's fixed. And then when things like this happen, you do, you come across as a bit of a hero and you come across as a pro, who knows, basically knows their stuff as an electrician.

And do you know why that is? Because you do, you're an electrician, you're good at stuff, you're trained in this. You've got the knowledge in this, and you can help people diagnose these problems. This is the whole reason we have a job as an electrician. It's like any profession. Because if I was asked to build a wall, yeah, I could probably give it a go, but I wouldn't be confident that wall would still be standing in six months and it'd probably look like crap and wouldn't be straight.

A builder on the other hand. They'd know exactly what foundations need to go inside that wall or below that wall even. And then they put them little metal ties. When I worked on site, I see them little ties, right. , rolling around everywhere. I always wonder what they use 'em for. Obviously they use 'em inside the walls to hold the walls together and they know exactly.

The distance to put 'em in and basically to make that wool last for years rather than the six months, and they can walk away confident. And it, it looks pretty is what? It looks Nice. They've done a nice, neat job. Well, a, a good builder. Mind you, there's some builders that I've seen that Yeah, you, , probably get blown over by the wind.

A lot of their, what they have done, And this is why it's so important for all customers to hire a professional. Cuz you may get customers that say, yeah, that's far too expensive. Well like, okay, cool, then fine. I, I won't do it. I don't need to do it. The reason it's expensive is because the way that I do it, the materials that I use and I do a job to make it last, I can always say to customers, I work, I do the work in your house.

Exactly how I do it in my own. Because I don't want someone to install maybe a socket or a light that'll work for maybe six months and then I've gotta get someone else to come around and fix it cuz maybe it's gone faulty or loose. I want it to work forever. Well that's obviously the worry in mind you, cuz you can't always guarantee all these fixtures and fittings.

Sometimes you do get a faulty, one of these things happen. But you want that wiring to be able to trip the fuse. If that light fit in or that component, whatever you put in does go faulty. Maybe in oven sometimes might. Someone might connect a cheap oven or a secondhand oven, and it trips a fuse. Well, as long as it trips a fuse.

I'm happy with that because it means the wiring's good. It is the knowledge of what size wires to use the IP rated fixtures and fittings to be suitable for the environment that you are putting them in to be installed in maybe the bathroom or outside. Some people would like to put. Like kitchen lights and the walls outside.

I don't know why. And then wonder why it rains and they don't work. Well, that's cause you've got kitchen light on the outside, mate. It's not IP rated. What's IP rated? Well, there you go. That's another conversation. It's waterproof. So a lot of people don't understand that. Like d y days, maybe just get any old light and then wonder why it doesn't work.

But these are the sort of things that electricians know off the top of their head. Cause if you are an electrician, think about it. Could your best mate who's a plumber go to a consumer unit and walk away knowing that all them cables are the right sizes and all them cables are fitted correctly? I bet if you showed a picture of refused board to anyone other than electrician, they wouldn't have a clue.

They wouldn't have a clue what they're looking at or where the cables go. And , I've done it before where friends have seen it and they've said, yeah, how the hell, you've got a clue where all them cables go. That's cuz I'm trained in that. I've got the knowledge in that. , I've done it over the years.

You just get better and better over time. And one of the things that a lot of people don't see is the testing and the results you get and why you get them, because, Not a lot of people understand a lot about testing and why we test as electricians, so I'll talk about this in another podcast. Why do electricians test everything as a skilled tradesman?

And of course, there's a reason for the tests that we do all the time. So check out this podcast. I'll leave a link to that podcast in the description below so you can easily find it. And remember, knowledge is your superpower as an electrician. So until next time. I'll see you again. So if you've enjoyed the topics that we talk about on the Toolbox Talks for Electrician podcast, we'll carry on the conversation over in the Facebook group.

I'll leave a link in the description below. So , click on the link. Come and join the group, and join the conversation. See you soon.