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!