Ok, where was my brain..???

[Bob Eager]

I still have a pair of sidecutters like that...happened about 35 years ago, at school. Was working on stage lighting, and building a circuit up on the gantry. Climbed gantry, chopped wire at right length, and found some idiiot had (a) thrown the main breaker (back on), plugged in the circuit, replaced the fuse, and turned it on. He said he didn't realise...I nearly fell off, handing onto an earthed gantry....!

Talking of round pin plugs, I pulled one of those out of asocket when I was about seven..fascinated with electricity. DC mains...big arc...armchair on fire from ignited newspapers near socket. All I remember is sitting on my gran's lap, getting excited about seeing a fire engine close up....

[chris French]

In message , BigWallop writes

Luckily I only just caught one conductor, so no excitement - I would imagine it would have still worked fine as long as you didn't stick you finger in the hole.

I have drilled a cable before though buried deep in a wall, no evidence that a cable should be ruining anyway near it.

Biggest electrical fright I had was when I was about 15, I was helping out at my cousins house they were doing up. There was a very old and defunct fuse box to be removed. They said it was all disconnected, I didn't check of course. I forget exactly what happened, but the mains supply was obviously still live as at one point there was a great big BANG, FLASH etc. and I fell off the step ladder.

[Peter Scott]

There's even a word for doing this on a big scale in the States. When a digger unearths and breaks a mains or digital cable its called 'backhoe fade'. Backhoe is a digger bucket. I've always liked that.

[mike ring]

"Peter Scott" wrote in news:0ICdnXpUgadi5jeiRVn- [e-mail]:

My mate Eric did that in the Beeb.

It was Bangor he blacked out; funny thing is he could never see the funny side of it

mike r

[Abdullah Eyles]

I got two old reel-to-reel tape recorders, to make "one from two"... They had three big 240V motors, one for each reel and one for the capstan.

I took the motors out, wired up three pairs of wires to a 13A plug and connected two of the motors... Nice! they worked a treat... Now to find the wires to connect the third one...

Held one wire in my right hand, then found the other one with my left... then found myself up in the air and down onto my bed..... OUCH!!! (no RCD in those days, either)

Just to prove that my brain is still in the same condition as it was then: last spring, I put a 200 litre tank in our loft to guard against water shortages, always wondered why it was empty so quickly when the mains was off...

Just relised that I didn't put a check-valve on the incoming main! :( Thats this week-ends work!

[BigWallop]

Just take the drop spout off the ball valve and stop it from syphoning back out the tank. :-))

[Abdullah Eyles]

I didn't use a ball valve - electric solenoid valve from a washing machine and water level sensor... When the mains pressure drops there is a switch that prevents the valve from opening... Overkill but enjoyable!

Because the house has only one circuit, the incoming main also feeds the taps etc., hence the quick emptying...

I guess that the UK has regs to prevent this type of installation but here... well, who knows...

[BigWallop]

So if you have a power cut, how does the tank get filled up ? I also hope you used a floating mercury contact as the water level sensor, because any other type when faulty might not switch the valve off properly. The mercury float has two pins inside a float ball that contains a small amount of mercury metal and when the float is tilted up on an arm the mercury flows against the pins and makes the circuit to switch things on. Very simple and doesn't need any electronic circuitry to make it work, it only relies on the electricity flowing through metal conductors.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

The value of isolated bench power supplies (in that I didn't have one) was brought home to me when I moved a metal desk lamp too close to the live chassis of the TV set I was repairing at the time.

Ouch.