From the “good guy” dept…
Came home to a short – electrical not theatrical, suxx0rz – I poked around a very small amount, unplugging everything and retrying the breaker to no avail. I gave my neighbor Chris a call, as he had worked his way through college as an electrician, and his wife said he would call back after the kids were in bed, but he showed up at the door a minute later. He pulled the cover off the breaker box, swapped wires around to isolate the problem from the box, went inside and started checking outlet wiring, ran down to the crawlspace under the house and followed all the wires there to check for pinches or staples, under there he determined where the home run was upstairs, back upstairs he opened up the home run, which was the main light switch panel, determined which of the connections was to blame, connected all the good connections, turned on everything to see what wasn’t working, found the one light that wasn’t working (the light over the kitchen table), completely disassembled and inspected that, reassembled it when he didn’t find anything, went back to the main panel and concluded it was either in the wall or between the two adjacent wall panels, took off the adjacent panel, and located the place where a live wire was shorting against ground. And all that while I told him I didn’t want to take up his time and he was on a ten minute timer. That was the most productive ten minutes I’ve ever witnessed! Thanks Chris, I gotta think up a way to pay ya back for that one!
Play find-the-short…
