The 2007 Darwin Awards are out, and can be found here. [hat tip Afarensis!]
I have no comment, except that I'm glad I'm not on them this year. And believe me, it was a close call.... Especially after what happened last night.
Remember the kitchen? Well, this weekend, it was electrical wire rewiring time.
I keep asking myself the following questions.
1) How often can you check that a circuit is dead, and have it not be dead?
2) How is it that a human can survive a shock from household current (several times in one afternoon) but the same exact current melts metal tools (in the same exact afternoon)?
3) OK, so grounding is important, but how is it that mere failure to ground your temporary circuit causes the furnace to "work" only while the clothes dryer is operating?????
4) Speaking of the furnace, what are those yellow and orange sparks coming out of the furnace whenever I turn on the dryer?
5) And what is that SMELL????
6) Why do professional, trained electricians get paid so much? Oh, never mind, I guess I know the answer to that one....
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1) until either it is dead, or you are. Note that each failed attempt probably also reduces your ability to remember if you safed the circuit or not.
2) Ohm's Law and derivatives.
V = I*R, W = (I^2)*r (approximately). R for metal is thousands times smaller than bodies, so I is thousands larger, which means the wattage is millions larger (I squared). Unless you route the discharge through your heart of course ... welcome to the melted screwdriver club!
3) you really should have this one checked. Somewhere one of those devices has a power wire connected to ground. The furnace circuit is completed only when the impedance through the dryer is low, i.e. when it is on.
The other type of ground problem is for example the porch light blowing whenever the fridge motor starts up. That one turned out to be that a fried squirrel on the power pole had chewed away the house ground wire, then acted as ground itself for s short while.
4) yes. see above.
5) your house burning down.
6) like the man said
When you turn on the hot water at the kitchen sink, does the water spray out of the kitchen ceiling light fixture?
Mark:
How did you know?
Nyuk nyuk nyuk nyuk....
Do you have old knob-and-tube wiring? If so you do not have a ground connection (even if someone has put in the new type receptacles to accept 3-pin plugs).
If you have old knob-and-tube wiring, it's not uncommon to discover someone created a branch circuit by grafting a wire onto one that happened to be handy, running it across the attic or basement to the new switch or receptacle, and continuing with another wire to attach the other side to the next handy old wire over there. This can get you a hot-white reverse (white is NOT 'ground' until you get out to the circuit breaker box).
If you have fuses, are both the hot and neutral sides fused? If so you can blow the neutral fuse, the lights all go out, but you can still kill yourself if you touch the hot wire and the plumbing. Been there, almost did that.
If you have one of those cattywampus wiring goofups you can also end up with a circuit that behaves like that, where electricity is only going to something "backwards" -- sounds like it.
If you don't have ground fault interrupters, you can get them to replace your circuit breakers (check the code, they're almost always allowed).
Even better, get an ARC fault interrupter instead, these are new and safer than the old ground fault interrupters.
If you don't have circuit breakers, get THAT (a "service") installed first. Most cities will let you replace the service box without upgrading all the circuit wiring at the same time -- but NOT vice versa.
The union electrician I hired to teach me and work with me when I rewired our old knob-and-tube house did a great job, the city inspector was very impressed (I overbuilt everything, rather than barely meeting code). It was her last work as an electrician, before she started medical school.
Good advice isn't cheap. Bad advice is.
This isn't even advice, it's just blogging.
Get help.
An appropriate quote from Xeger at Making Light: "It is not while being cautious and aware that one becomes the path to ground, but in that brief moment of brainless inattention."