Learning-curve

I tell you what: if you do anything long enough, for hours a day, you're going to get it down.  Anything at all.  There's always a learning curve at the start, where you're not quite sure how best to do the job, but you always end up fine-tuning your movements and finally fall upon the best approach to the task; after that, any job that seemed difficult at first becomes easier.  And you feel more capable.  That feeling has kept me moving for the last four years!

Well, once again I had a special mission this week.  I was asked to work for a day with a new mechanic to bang out a quick job.  Forty-eight receptacles had been piped-in and mounted in an outdoor parking lot.  Scott and I were called in to pull the wire and tie in the two panels which served twenty-four each.  I should point out that the panels we were using were installed years ago, and we were simply pulling out the old branch circuits and bringing in our new ones.

Together we pulled our wire.  Easy enough.  A basic, enjoyable, typical experience for electricians of all skill-levels.

Scott then took over tying-in one panel and asked me to take care of the other.  I was excited at the opportunity--it was probably only the third or fourth panel I've had all to myself to fully prepare.  In my opinion, tying-in panels is another typical task for an electrician, but it's one where I've noticed a great deal of variety in execution and where I've heard a lot of opinions expressed over methods.  And everybody sees a panel.  It's right there mounted on the wall at eye-level.  What's more, any future electricians coming in months or years later for maintenance or to diagnose problems are almost certainly going to open the panel.  My point is, you want it to look good.

So I wanted my panel to look good.  A nicely tied-in panel has a lot of identifiable characteristics: the wires are always neatly routed, bent at nice angles, and are often smoothed out to look their finest.  They're also usually tie-wrapped into bunches and stuck in place at the back or sides of the panel.  I knew all this going in.

When I opened the panel to pull out all the old wiring and bring in the new stuff, I paused for a moment to look at the work that the previous electrician, several years ago, had done.  I had to admit: it looked good.  I took a mental picture of it to use as a template for my own installation.  I noticed, however, that the guy had not used any sticky-backs to keep everything in place, and yet the panel still looked good.  I was surprised.  I didn't really ever consider not using them: I didn't think it was possible to do it right without them.  

It was around this time that I noticed that I didn't have any sticky-backs of my own to use.  Neither did Scott.  And we were low on tie-wraps.  My project had quickly increased in complexity for me.

Starting off, therefore, I was a little nervous at how it was all going to look at the end.  I got about an hour's head-start on Scott, and I had a little dilemma: I wanted to finish as quickly as possible (I wanted to finish before Scott, for sure) but I had to figure out how to do it neatly and without all the material I wished I had at my disposal.

To make a long story shorter, Scott finished way before me.  I struggled along the way to keep everything in place and looking neat as I moved along.  In the end I spent too much time worrying during the process when instead I could have just made a few adjustments here and there at the end and had everything looking satisfactory.  It looked all right, but I had wasted a lot of time.  I stumbled all over myself explaining that I felt it would have been better and easier with sticky-backs, more tie-wraps, etc. etc.  Scott slapped me on the back and said, "Hey man, anybody can do it with all the right material.  You just learned to do it when the conditions aren't perfect."

So, big learning curve for me on panels this week, but I'm eager to take on the next one.  And to tell you the truth, I hope we don't have all the material we need.  As it turns out, it takes getting out of your comfort-zone in order to get more comfortable.  What a thought!

Special Mission

My foreman called my mechanic and I off of our pipe-run today to quickly pipe-in, pull, and terminate a sump pump disconnect and contactor.  The suddenness of the change in task caught me off-guard and I spent the first few minutes spinning in circles trying to locate all the material we needed and the specific tools I wanted on me to do the job.  I'd forgotten about this feeling: it was a special mission, and it needed to be done fast.

My mechanic made a bold move.  He gave our foreman a completion time before we had our first stick of pipe in the air: "Done by break, man, 11:00."  That gave us three hours.  And anybody who happened to pass by us in the first hour or so would've been impressed--we were a ball of fire.  The pipe practically ran itself.  Our wall-penetrations--just guesses--always poked through right where we hoped they would and never even grazed a stud along the way.  The wire pulled easily, looked great when we shaped it into the panel, and we were flying.  It was only 10:00.  And then... the contactor.

It was 3:15 when I finally closed the little door on the disconnect.  Five electricians and one control guy later, we were done.

It was a learning experience, to be sure.  There were a lot of reasonable explanations for why everyone had such a hard time wiring it up, but it got me to thinking more about what it will be like being a journeyman electrician.  There are going to be times where I'm baffled--that much became clear today!

I never tried so hard to decipher a schematic.  I found myself calling up a bunch of basic truths that I knew were right that I'd learned in school: "When the water reaches this level, we want the switch to close and the pull the contactor in.  That brings power to the pump."  I knew that much was true.  But here in this situation we had several float switches and an array of possible termination points for various functions.  Schematics and real-life situations don't always match up!

The good thing about electrical work is that, for the most part, you know when you're right: the pump runs and empties the sump pit.  Perfect.  It's getting to the point where you hear that motor kick in that may be difficult.  But if it's difficult, you're probably learning along the way.  Today I learned three things: 1. how to wire up this particular contactor for this particular pump; 2. don't be embarrassed to ask others on the job for help; and 3. maybe it's prudent not to give your boss a completion time before you begin a project (!).

The Craftsman

The job I'm currently working on is huge: a ten-story building with three levels of parking garage below ground and a full penthouse above it all.  I've been at this site since October and I've been in the penthouse the whole time.  There's a lot of work up there!

Back in October, as my transfer approached, there was just one thing I wanted to do: learn how to run big pipe.  Running pipe is one of the most common tasks that is required of electricians (you've got to pull wire through something), but it was something that I had only had a few chances to do.  There are all kinds of different pipe sizes, from 1/2 in. up to 5 in. or higher, and most of my experience at that point was with the smaller sizes.  I wanted the big stuff.

So when I came to this job I was preparing to ask the superintendent if there was any chance I could be put on some pipe-work.  On these big jobs there are tons of different crews doing different things--there are pipe-running crews, wire-pulling crews, rough-in crews, fire alarm crews and a whole lot more--and I knew that Day 1 was my best opportunity to get placed with the men and women running pipe.  It turns out I didn't have to say a word: as I affixed my name to my shiny, new hard-hat, my new foreman walked in and introduced himself.  "C'mon with me up to the penthouse and we'll get you started," he said.  "Hope you like running pipe."  Sweet.

And that's what I've been doing for the last 9 months.  The penthouse is where all of the big equipment is on this job: the cooling towers, chillers, switchgear, generators, transfer switches, pumps, elevator machine rooms, etc.  There are gigantic air-ducts and steam and water pipes crisscrossing the whole area.  And all of our pipe has to fit in there as well.

Back in October, the ceiling area was still pretty empty.  My mechanic (journeyman) and I were running big racks of twenty or thirty pipes and having a ball.  We'd have long, straight runs from one piece of gear to another, with only a few corners and minor elevation changes here or there.  Now, in June, it's another story.  This is where you really become a craftsman.  Over the course of these past nine months, ductmen and steamfitters have been working as hard as we have and so there really is no such thing as a "straight-shot" from point A to point B anymore.  You have to sneak your pipe through all sorts of tight spaces.  And you've got to do this while obeying code and keeping the people coming behind you to pull wire happy: no more than 360 degrees of bending between pull-boxes, no more than 200 ft. of pipe between boxes, pull-boxes mounted in accessible areas, etc.  I thought I knew how to run pipe when I could run it straight and level.  Now I know I can run pipe because of all the tricky offsets, kicks, and saddles I've had to bend.  You keep learning, even when you think you've got it all down pat.

In my experience, the electricians have always been the "can-do" workers on the job.  Our general rule-of-thumb has always been to keep our pipes "high & tight:" as high up and tight to the deck as possible.  You think about this when you're planning your run and choosing your ideal path.  Every now and then, however, another trade needs to put something in the same spot and it's almost always the electrician who chooses to re-route their pipe to make way for the other trades.  A lot of people find this to be a frustrating task, but if you think about it, it simply showcases the talent and craftsmanship of the electrician: she or he is flexible and skilled enough to do the job however it needs to be done.