Friday, July 30, 2021
Tips and Tricks
Ted "Smitty" Smith
Be organized and be the best
A really good foreman and superintendent will preplan your work and have ALL your material staged for you, in your work area, so that you can be efficient and really shine as the best electrician. You will not always work for a really good foreman or superintendent. Sometimes you will work for average ones that will not do that level of preplanning and will not pre-stage your material. In those cases, figure out everything you need so you can complete your job efficiently, gather your material once, and then rock and roll. You might want to point out to your supervisor what you did and suggest that maybe he can help make you more efficient if he or she would preplan and stage your material so you can build the project.
Looping and Closing Perfect Unistrut Spacing
Making our conduit runs beautiful is important. Conduit is our art form. One way to get perfectly straight and even spacing for conduits on the Unistrut rack is to use your lineman's pliers on edge between the straps before you tighten them. This way all your conduits will be evenly spaced all the way down the run.
Loop The Wire and Close It
When looping wire on a device termination screw, you don't need to use your needle nose to close the loop. Devices are made so that the termination screw is slightly indented and there is a plastic lip on either side of the screw. Loop your wire using your strippers, place it over the screw so that it is looping clockwise. Then simply grab the wire on the insulation side with your finger and thumb and rest the loop against the shelf on the other side. Then snap the wire with your thumb and the loop will close. Now tighten your screw.
Tool Pouches
Electricians wear tool pouches so that we can be more efficient, but it is also a safety thing. Many electricians develop a bad habit of laying their tools on surfaces while they work. This leads to tools being lost in ceilings and such. This can also lead to tools be left in equipment and then causing accidents when the equipment is energized. Electricians learned many years ago how to avoid this. Simply, wear your tool pouch and develop a habit of returning your tools to your pouch after each use. You will find that you are much more efficient, you will lose fewer tools and you will be safer. Also, you should have a tool pouch on your strong hand side and a utility pouch on your weak hand side. When doing work, determine how many wire nuts, screws, coupling, connectors, etc. you will need and put those in your utility pouch. This way you have it when you need it. Also, I used to put small trash in my utility pouch and then throw it away when close to a trash can.
Preventing for Insulation Itch
While it would be great if all electrical work happened on the habitable side of the walls, more electricians more than almost any other tradesmen end up right up close with the sawdust and insulation. Besides wanting to wear a face mask and eye protection, that stuff is incredibly itchy and can cause major skin irritation. even wearing long sleeves, it still gets up around your collar and onto your face and hands. The solution to this is a bottle of baby powder or a small box of cornstarch. Coat your exposed skin a little way under collars and sleeve ends. Make sure to get your face and ears while keeping it out of your eyes. This protective layer will keep the insulation from settling directly on your skin, preventing irritation and itching.
Carry a Strong Magnet
The entire house wiring premise requires you to work behind the walls and ceilings. You are constantly tracing old wires, running new wires, working from small holes in the drywall, and trying to line everything up perfectly from both sides. There are dozens of tricks for drawing lines and punching small holes to mark your way, but there’s one very useful trick that doesn’t require any permanent changes at all. Magnets can detect ferrous metal components and are easily detected through lightweight building materials like wood, tile, drywall, etc. With a magnet, you can:
Look for Studs
Stud finders are notoriously hard on batteries, which means they are always running out at inopportune moments and needing to be recharged. Rather than letting this slow down your project, simply carry a strong magnet in your kit. Tie a lightweight piece of string to your magnet and dangle it along the wall you’re inspecting. when the magnet responds, there’s something ferrous behind the wall. This also works in circumstances where the surface, coating, or material of the wall is challenging even for a fully charged stud finder.
As a Fishing Guide
The next time you’re fishing down the backside of a wall, there’s no need to worry about it going astray. You may already be using the heavy nut trick to keep the string pulled directly downward. You can double the effectiveness of this method by using a magnet in your box opening to guide the line down.
As a Retrieval Method
Because you are constantly working in the in-between spaces, it’s unfortunately easy to lose small objects into unreachable places. Once again the magnet can help, as long as the lost items were ferrous. Depending on the space you’re working with you can attach the magnet to a string or a slender stick to pull your lost items back to you.
Jack Chain Instead of String
The problem with string is that it’s usually made of soft fibers that can catch on rough things like insulation and unfinished wood. Fishing with string can be incredibly helpful but sometimes another method is more appropriate. Especially in cases where you want to exert a little force on your fishing string, a jack chain can work in its stead. The weight helps it fall straight down and slid over obstacles without hanging and the sturdiness means you can give it a pull without risking your connection.
Velcro Tester Holster
Many electricians enjoy working alone, and a vast majority of work orders aren’t big enough to need to electricians on the task. However, there are always a few times when you wish you had a third or fourth hand to hold your tester or a spare wire. Many solutions for this common conundrum have been proposed involving tape, mounting nails, and so on. One clever solution is to sew a patch of Velcro onto your jacket sleeves and become your own extra pair of hands. Glue Velcro of the opposite texture onto the backs of your testers and you can hold your device in view like a wristwatch while you work.
Tidy Multiple Switch Wiring
When dealing with multiple switches, any form of streamlining you can manage will help to reduce the clutter of extra wires hitting the cluster of connections. An interesting thing to consider in this circumstance is that wires don’t have to be cut to make contact, especially for connections shared between the switches. Rather than carefully pig-tailing the hot wire to each switch, simply cut your hot wire extra-long. Along with the continuous grounding wire, strip a 3/4-inch section of the sheathing where you want to connect each switch. and hook the exposed area onto the screw terminal, then connect the next switch in the same way. At the final switch, loop tie wire clockwise around the screw as usual.
Replacing a Broken Light Bulb Cleanly
Broken light bulbs are no fun under any circumstances, but it’s especially problematic when they break in the socket. It’s nearly impossible to unscrew the little nubbin because now all there is to grasp is brittle broken glass. Interestingly enough, most of what you need to fix this is the replacement light bulb. Start by cleaning out as many of the broken pieces and particles as you can with a metal tool. Take the new bulb and insert it into the socket while twisting in reverse. This should catch the old piece and unscrew it, finally releasing it from the socket. The process will also clean out all the damaged parts, leaving the socket functional and ready for the new light bulb.
Using String to Cut PVC in Tight Spaces
When you need to cut PVC and don’t have a lot of space, either because it’s in a tight wall or half-buried in a ditch, there’s often not much room for a hand saw. Fortunately, because PVC is plastic and friction is an interesting tool, you can cleanly cut the pipe with the length of the string. Simply loop the string around the back of the pipe and ‘saw’ it back and forth by pulling the ends alternatingly. Doing this fast enough, the combination of pressure, friction, and heat caused by friction will cause the pipe to give way in a surprisingly short amount of time. This must be done with cloth string. Nylon string will melt faster than the PVC.
If you have tips and tricks, please share them by adding comments.
Thank you
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