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I'm curious what sort of cautionary tales everyone has come across (or experienced themselves).
For instance, my dad used to work on live wires all the time — until he was putting a stove in (220V if you don't know) and touched two wires together. The spark flew off and hit his glasses and melted about halfway through the lens. He still works on live 110V, but he always turns off the 220 circuit now.
What about you? Any (hopefully just-as-happy) shocking experiences you folks have had?
I once had a tenant who lived next door in our duplex and thought she could hook up her own gas drier. Smelled gas one day and couldn't find where it was coming from, so I knocked on her door. Walked in and the whole place reeked of gas.
Checked the drier, and sure enough, the supply line was barely even screwed on. Asked her about it and got one of those "Yeah, it's been like that for a while now, was going to ask you about that" kind of responses. Lucky it didn't take out the whole neighborhood.
Treat your router like a loaded gun, it has a ton of power and can shoot things with a lot of force if you aren't using it correctly.
Consider that a router runs at around 24,000 rpm
compare that to...
A table saw: ~4,000 RPM
A drill: ~800 RPM
The feed direction and double checking that the bit is securely locked into the chuck is critical if you value your life and/or limbs. If it is making a funny noise, stop immediately and check it, even if it is a pain in the butt.
Just once, I shot a loose bit across my workshop at terrifying speeds. I always check thrice since that day.
Well, I had one that more so lead to a DIY project then happened during.
Commercial building built in the 1930s, had lamps hanging from ceiling by chains.
One day I'm changing a light bulb and someone walks in and flips the light switch.
It threw my arm back, almost knocked me off the ladder, and my hand was spotted black for a little while.
The wiring running through the chain to the lamp was cloth insulated and had broken down over the years. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day rewiring all of the lamps in the building.
So, be mindful of working in old buildings, even on the simplest of tasks.
If you're doing a job that creates a lot of dust, it's really worth tarping off the doorways to limit exposure. After doing a floor sanding project, for the next few months my laser printer smelt like a fireplace every time I printed something.
Be careful when walking/working in your unfinished attic... it is very easy to miss a beam and put your foot through the ceiling. Best thing to do is use a piece of plywood if you need to work up there for any extended period of time.
Never leave wire ends unprotected, even for a moment. It's too easy to get distracted and forget to replace a wire cap or crimp a connector. And once the junction box (or wall!) is closed up, it's too late, and some day later you cause an electrical fire.
Always, always, always, always, always make sure the power is off before snipping 240V power cables. And when you do snip them, even if the power is off, make sure your hands are insulated.
We had an electrician swear to us that he had disabled all the power to one part of the building, but even so I felt a tingle so I went and confirmed with him that the power was off. He rolled his eyes and said yes. So I got my snips and cut through the wires. BANG! Lots of sparks and some very loud swear words. Thankfully I just happened by pure chance to have my hands insulated.
Most of my DIY experience and interest is in electrical matters, so the stories I have are from that.
The people who built a house I have improved did alot of things themselves to save money - which I don't look down on! What I DO is the way they did certain things. Probably the most annoying thing was to route a line through a switchbox that did not feed anything. Turning off all the power to the lights the switches fed was not enough to prevent a strange tingling feeling.
I will admit this was many years ago and I was less experienced and felt more invulnerable. I also admit that I should have questioned all the cables entering the box, since I then would have noted the odd one.
Another one that still gets me is people using a white (NEMA color code) coated wire as a hot line and not marking it. I've fixed that many times.