Pop goes the mains

I bought a new double dimmer but it was a nightmare to wire as there wasn't much wire all the wires seemed secure and I screwed it worked fine for a few seconds then I heared a pop.

The neatrual must have come out and was touching the live and it blew one of the dimmers up as well as the fuse. I have just put the old switch back in now and replaced the fuse but I feel so embarassed about it.

Has anybody else had any emberassing accidents with mains?

 

I drilled thru a 3 phase armoured feed in a factory once.

 

Ouch did it blow the fuse before it fried you or did you get a shock from it?

 

Fuse blew, in the substation outside.
No shock, just bits of hot metal everywhere.

 

When I was a kid we'd moved into a new flat (in Tehran, Iran as it happens ) where the previous owner's dog had chewed through the insulation to the power cable for a stand lamp in several places. I of course, as any inquisitive child does, wondered what what happen if you touched two separate bare sections... Blew out the whole fuse box and the wall socket was charred

Another time I was wiring up a mains extension cable (this time in my parents flat in Paris) having forgotten that the other end was plugged into the mains. Inevitably I eventually put my fingers across L & N terminals and got a pretty bad shock, particularly as the damn thing just stuck to my thumb - took about 2-3s to shake it off. I was shaking for the rest of the day, not nice.

Michael.

 

Not really an embarrasing incident, more annoying for me as I had to fork more moeny to replace the brand new piece of equipment that I'd just spent £30 on. I managed to blow up an eletronic central heating room thermostat control by incorrectly wiring it up.

The wires in the wall were coloured black, red and yellow... OK, so as everyone has probably already assumed neutral, live and earth respectively. The wiring diagram on the back of the thermostat control was labelled NO, COM and NC with COM being live and NO being Neutral - NC wasn't labelled nor was it connected in the example diagram shown. Wire it up and power up the mains switch at the wall for the central heating system - pop. Killed the thermostat. A few days later when I forked out for a replacement I switched the black and yellow wires around and this time success i.e. this time yellow went to Neutral and black to the other terminal marked NC!

 

That sounds like the person who installed your central heating system was working of his own instandard colour code system. What annoys me about what happened today is wiring a dimmer switch should be so simple it was a good one as well £15 worth. My dad kept rushing me which didn't help though.

I think my pride is hurt more than anything else.

 

Like Penance I drilled 2 in-wall twin+earths at the same time [there was 6 cables in the same run]. I chiselled the hole bigger cleaned up the ends [which are 2 far apart to rejoin, or to meet at a surface mains socket]. I then made some links out of T+E and SOLDERED these to bridge the broken wires [fuses out - the soldering iron ran off a long extension from the upstairs ring main]. With 6 bare wires all together, it was kinda dangerous, so I made a pocket over the hole in the wall and filled it with Maplin potting compound! Much safer than some daft BS7671 wiring code..

 

were do i start?
touched the end of all 3 busbars on a large 3 phase distro whilst pulling in some new circuits,to make it more intresting my other arm was leaning on the earthed case,i woke up on the other side of the switch room sevral minutes later.
wondering why sevral circuits wern't working properly olny to find i forgot to reconect the main neutral after testing. But my all time best was load testing a ups we'd just installed to feed the main computer suite of a well knowen high street catolouge store ,got up to around 200kva and it tripped out ,must be a problem i thought and went for a for a coffee break,during which a rather upset manger aproached me and asked if i knew why the the computer suite no lost power,oops i forgot the ups was of the same feed as the already operational computer suite

 

Shocking!
Shocking!
Shocking!

 

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My lab-bench mate soldered the power rails on an op-amp back-to-front once. I told him he was wrong, but 'cos I'm partially sighted he assumed I was thick (probably!). BANG! One op-amp blown in half.

We wired up another one back-to-front on purpose just to see that happen again, but the second one merely smoked

I got a 240 volt shock off of an RM Nimbus computer monitor once - was feeling around the back because the IEC lead was loose - somehow it arced full power and it bloody hurt!

I touched an electric fence once while on a field trip (no warning signs anywhere!). Weird wobbly feeling. But I DID know a bit about electricity...
"Oi, Burger, come over here and shake my hand"
(tight grip, touch)
zzzzaaaappp!!

He he he - made everyone else laugh too - we'd never seen him dance