Geez...residential electrical is ROUGH...

I guess they have never heard of box fill!!!

You know they probably ment to use a box extender on top of a box extender.

Isn't faulty wiring the number 1 cause of house fires?

Well, why do they put all those knockouts in the boxes if you're not supposed to use them? And if you're not supposed to run two cables through the connector, why do they make 'em big enough so you can. Installing the cover is optional, right?

Actually i think the number one cause is do-it-yourself electrical work like this. I can't imagine a licensed electrician would have done this. In fact, I'd question whether some of them would even touch it to try and fix it.

I can.

I wonder what the breaker panel looks like?

At the risk of a hijack, being that I too work as an industrial electrician, what are some of the most disgusting, gross, non code compliant, electricaly related things you have seen in an industrial facility? I will have to look for some pics.

Replaced this monster...

First off, the beginning of the NEC book exempts certain things including air planes. On a plane, FAA rules are that ALL wires are white. They have to be stamped (and this is often not very easy) once every meter with a 5 digit wire number code. And wire fill rules don't apply. So usually some place along the spine of a plane, you'll have this massive wad perhaps 6-8 inches thick of hundreds of all white wires. It's the most disgusting, non code compliant thing I can think of.

Okay...but you said industrial...

Plant decided to use TFE instead of THHN because of the higher temperature specs. Apparently they didn't ever try to buy any color but RED. It's like working on an FAA project except you don't even have the labels on the wires every meter. Tracing was almost impossible, and prints were almost nonexistent.

Same plant, an electrician "spliced" a coaxial line with wire nuts.

Same plant, chief electrician had to replace the end of an Ethernet cable. So first he got out the box of RJ-45's and declared them all junk because they wouldn't fit in the socket (mind you, they had not been crimped yet). Then crimped on an RJ-11. Well, the old RJ-11 wouldn't stay in place so he simply jammed a small screw driver into the socket to keep that pesky RJ-11 in place and declared the Ethernet port on the industrial PC to be some cheap nonstandard "junk". Busted all the pins in the socket out in the process, and since the Ethernet port was integrated into the motherboard (mind you, a very expensive panel PC with a 19" touch screen), we ended up having to replace the whole motherboard on it at considerable cost. Needless to say, the electricians were laughing about this one for days, and photos and E-mails also made the rounds amongst the IT folks as well.

Same plant, chief electrician decided that they needed to tap another distribution cable into a fairly large 2.4kV splice. So he double-tapped it! It had three 500 MCM's on each phase. He took out a drill and drilled a hole and then inserted a one-hole lug with a bolt through it onto the termination to make up a "tap", running roughly 4/0 off to another area of the plant off the triple 500 MCM feeder.

Same plant, chief electrician decided to protect a fan cooled dry-type transformer from dust by sealing all the vent holes with lexan. Of course they knew they didn't want the transformer to overheat or anything and it couldn't "breathe" so they simply disconnected the cooling fans at the base of the coils.

Same plant, first day I started there, the chief electrician was "fixing" a PLC program by deleting whichever rungs he deemed weren't "working".

It was at least great water cooler material amongst other engineers and managers. We just never, ever knew what to expect next from this guy.

Now that's funny... and you say this guy made it all the way to Chief Electrician? Wow. I would think bathroom cleaning might have been more appropriate. Or lawn maintenance... Something without alot of electricity.

OK- I might get over the outlet in the shower. But I will not accept the toilet paper holder IN the shower.

If you can't bend metal conduit, just use a few extra junction boxes!

I told you they would use a box extender on a box extender.

Well, this is an older house, you can tell by the tongue and groove sub floor, means it has to be 60+ years old.
A lot of bad things can happen in that amount of time. A lot of DIY projects, and zero permits applied for.

Is this a house where you know the new owner?

Surprised they did not use flex or romex or just individual conductors hanging out there in free air.

Dan Bentler

They have all those knockouts so you can bring 2-3 conduits in from one side, then exit out the other side. It's for an abundance of options, not an abundance of connections.

Connector... Not sure what you mean here... I'll assume it's the thing over the knockouts. The NEC specifies a percent fill. That has to do probably with each opening (it's the case with conduit at least) as well as the entire box. It's like your car. Just because there's room over your head doesn't mean you velcro another passenger to the ceiling.

You must not remember your High School lunch hours very well.

I had a Ford Galaxy 500 back then. Seated 16. Room for four more in the trunk.

Sounds like the VW Bug we took 18 to the movies in one friday night. For some reason the sherriff did not like two guys roped to the hood. LOL

No wonder. You tie deer to the hood not the guys

Dan Bentler

That's no way to respect the ladies ;)

I may have edited your quote...

Ladies, 60's era automobiles, and huge bench seats was a mix that had very little to do with respect... jus' sayin'

You edited it.
I chose to spell it deer - thought about "dear" but gotta be PC

Dan Bentler

The same guy that wired that basement has a day job also, I came across his "handy-work".

very good

Ramen noodles?

Not all that bad, but definitely gives another explanation of why a PLC is often referred to as a "black box"....

Is that dust and dirt all over that PLC from the door mounted fan or has something burned and blackened everything?

Looks Like how one of my projects came out, when I first came here. It started off with we want to do A,B and C.
Ordered the equipment and suitable panel, ended up with D,to Z and no time to rewire a bigger panel.
Got burn't good on that and now make sure I talk to everyone involved and allow for 25% expansion.

This panel used to sit in a ships engineroom across the generator... and then there was a problem with the exhaust After it was moved to the lazarette...

Keep 'em coming - these are fantastic!