light switches..

When I was an apprentice, I was on one of my first jobs in a customers house - dead easy job in truth, Philips TV that had a faulty IF strip. The TV was one of those that was on a metal stand, not unlike the one below (albeit that the TV was somewhat newer):



The chap (Jack) who was training me was one of the best in the game, and a great believer that "young 'uns" learnt best by doing, not seeing - so, he watched over whilst I was set to work.

The first thing I did was to get down on my knees, and roll out my tool roll whilst chatting to the customer, and then I went to pull the TV round to get to the back. As I reached for the metal leg of the stand, Jack shouted "Don't!", but it was too late.

As I later learned, it was common for that type of stand to become electrified due to the mains cable becoming trapped under a castor and then getting sawed through as the Mrs of the house moved the TV back and forth to dust. The customer rarely knew of the problem, as they were moving the TV by the wooden box surround; it was only when an engineer placed a hand on the metal leg that the knackered mains cable became apparent...........

Sadly, that was not my last foray with electricity, as I have had a good few more over the years. I scorched the cuffs on a really nice shirt when removing the HT cap from the tube on a 24" TV (that taught me to never take anyone else's word that they had discharged the flyback TX and to do it myself!), and then more when we rewired various parts of our shop 'hot'. In fact, very recently I was speaking to an electrical contractor at work, and he was horrified when I told him that we used to quite regularly swap single sockets for double gang sockets without switching the mains off.

The worst thing I ever saw however, was not an electrical shock, but was partly related - - - again, whilst as an apprentice, we were sent to the local hospital to install a TV aerial and distribution system; there were six large aerials each feeding a distribution system, and it was when we were renewing the six aerial heads on the flat roof of the hospital (four storeys); one of the boys was unrolling coax and walking backwards whilst doing so, and literally walked straight back off the edge of the roof. Quick as lightning, one of the other lads (thankfully built like a brick outhouse) grabbed him by the hair, and hauled him back up onto the roof; the whole time, he was screaming in pain and shouting to let go as it hurt - - this was met with a somewhat gruff "If 'a let ye go ye'll it'll hurt a hell of a lot mair ya silly wee B******" - - suffice to say, he was hospitalised immediately after and had a huge blood-blister type thing under his scalp for a good while after.

 

Lesson learned then? Glad you're ok pal, but do isolate in future!

 

I've done it a couple of times myself in the past, even the fully qualified sparky who came to sign off my DIY electrics shocked himself on an RCD protected circuit. You won't get a fatal shock from a modern consumer unit but it's still enough to make you yelp (as he did )