Should I Risk Zapping My Apprentice? Also, Is That a Wildebeest? #codyisawesome

As an electrician, safety must be at the top of our list. Without question. In the latest episode of Electrician U, Dustin talks about the way he wires a panel to ensure that the electrician on the other end doesn’t get a nasty surprise!

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So, here is the scenario. Say you have installed a new conduit/wire run for an AC unit. There are two of you working on the project and the work is almost done. The junction box up in the attic needs to be made up and finished and the wire needs to be terminated on the breakers and the panel closed up. A relatively easy task for each person, but what about the safety issue of potentially shocking the person up in the attic making up the box? Is there any way we can mitigate the risk of that electrician getting shocked (and potentially killed) if that breaker is accidentally turned on?
There are a few ways we could go about this. As Dustin discusses in the video, the first way would be to not terminate the wires UNTIL the person on the other end of them is complete with their portion of the work. That way there is no path available for electricity to flow to the equipment they are actually working on. Another way would be to terminate the wires and then immediately put a lockout/tag out on the breaker. However, in doing that, when reinstalling the dead front or putting the lockout portion ON the breaker, you risk accidentally turning the breaker on. This could result in a wicked shock to the person working on the other end of the wire!
Another way would be to have the one of the electricians SAFE OFF the wires in the attic, THEN terminate the wires in the panel, THEN install the Lockout/Tag Out, THEN go back and terminate the wires to the equipment itself. But, by doing it this way, several different steps are added and its honestly too easy to miss a step or get something out of sequence potentially resulting in the action you were hoping to avoid in the first place!
Safety should be our number one goal! And by thinking through the processes we are going to perform BEFORE we perform them, is a great way to identify and mitigate risks. Yes, it takes more time. Yes, sometimes it can be a pain in the butt! But at the end of the day, we are performing these jobs to sustain ourselves AND our families/friends. What good would we be to them or ourselves if we were hurt and couldn’t work? And if we accidentally got someone hurt by doing something we shouldn’t have done, we would have to carry that burden around with us
Another point in the video is the conduit/wiring of the installation itself. It is worth noting that even the NEC tells us, in article 110.12, to install in a neat and workmanlike manner. Dustin and his crew took their time and installed the conduit with the appropriate bends, even adding pull boxes along the way due to the quantity of bends in the run! Just because its in a shop, or high in the air, or some other out of the way place, doesn’t give us license to install shoddy work! So, kudos to Dustin and Company for installing something that is proper!!
We hope this has given you a bit of insight on how to mitigate the risk of shocking someone during an electrical installation. Is there a topic you would like to see discussed? Leave a comment in the comment section and let us know. Please continue to follow Dustin and Electrician U as we are constantly adding new content to assist our viewers be the best electricians they can!