I'm so stupid... Was: Head Cleaners

From: Joe R. <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Thu Jul 1 20:24:46 2004

At 11:49 PM 7/1/04 +0100, you wrote:
>At 16:38 01/07/2004, you wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 07:04:45 -0400
>>"Joe R." <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>>
>> > He merely said "let that be a lesson, allways check the breakers
>> > yourself". I've never frogotten that!
>>.... and after checking the breaker, get out a volt meter to check if it
>>was the right breaker...
>>
>>An other story: A colleague was screwing in a new "DIAZED" fuse into a
>>breaker panel. BANG! Parts of the fuse flew acros the workshop, a cloud
>>of smoke came out of the panel and all lights where out. We had to
>>replace two big 63 A "NH" fuses that where in front of that breaker
>>panel. "NH" fuses need a _lot_ overcurrent to blow that fast. At close
>>inspection of the breaker panel we saw traces of a wire that had
>>shortend two of the three phases (400 V) and ground. The wire was
>>vaporized.
>>--
>
>
>Talking of fuse boxes, at my last place of employment, we had a strange
>happening... somebody turned on an electric fan heater at the same time
>the kettle was on, and a seemingly random selection of sockets scattered
>over half the building all suddenly powered down.

  I had a similar experience when I worked in the hospital. One of the
things that I was responsible for was repairs to the TVs in all the
patients rooms. We once had a call about a dead TV in one room. We went
there and checked it and it worked fine but the patient and nurses swore
that it hadn't been working before. We couldn't find anything wrong so we
left. A hour or so later we got a similar call from the room next door to
the first caller. We went and checked and sure enough it was completely
dead. Then just on a hunch we went next door and checked the first TV
again. It was turned off so we turned it on. When we did, the one of the
second room also came on! Both TVs were back to back on a common wall.
After playing with them a bit we found that if either set was off it turned
of both TVs. Hmmm. We finally found an open line in the wall but it still
connected the two sets together however they were now in series so when you
turned either one off they both went off! The surprising thing was that
both sets were operating off of half their normal voltage but both worked
perfectly.

   Joe
Received on Thu Jul 01 2004 - 20:24:46 BST