The Helping Electricians

I was in my electrical class and we had been assigned a wiring exercise that was pretty challenging. I had a pretty good understanding of it because I have had more practice wiring because I was able to get a job with an electrical contractor over the summer. So sometimes if was teacher was busy some of the other kids in the class would come to me or one of the other kids that had jobs with electricians over the summer. When we were assigned this wiring exercise I realized that I might be asked more questions than I normally get asked on some of our easier exercises. This exercise was practice for are skills USA competition to see who would be going to the state Skills USA competition. This competition we had to wire two circuits going into a panel one was a 15 amp circuit for our lighting and switches and one was a 20 amp circuit for our receptacles. On the 20 amp circuit we had it going into a peice of 1/2 inch electrical metallic tubing (EMT) going down to a metal box with a GFCI receptacle in it. Out of that box we ran MC into a cut in-box in drywall that had a GFCI-protected receptacle in it. The 15 amp circuit ran out of the panel with romex into a plastic box that had a three way switch and a single pole switch in it. One cable came out of it and went up to a light. The other wire then ran into another plastic nail on a box with a four-way switch in it. It then ran into the final box with the final three-way switch and then up to the light. This is where I had to help my friend because we had only done panels one other time and that was the year before. I also had to help him when bending the EMT because the bend that we were doing was slightly more complicated than the ones that we had done in the past.

The bend that we had to make was a 9-inch stub up. A stub is a 90-degree bend that is shorter than 12 inches. The other part of the stub had to be 29 inches. We had to make box offsets to go into the panel and into the box. The box offset going to the box was not that hard because we had 29 inches so are bender had plenty of room. The box offset going into the panel was a harder one because you only had 9 inches to work with to bend the offset. The reason that it is hard to bend the offset is because when you bend a offset you have to make two 10 degree bends at 2 1/2 inches and at 5 inches. This is hard because the bender head is so big that it can be hard to bend short bends. The other way that I helped my friend during this project is I helped him make sure that his neutral and ground bar were made into two separate bus bars. Another time that I helped a friend in my electrical class was when we are doing a project in the carpentry garage where we had to hang light emitting diode (LED) lights. In the hallways we were able to just have to hang small four foot lights so a single person could hold one up and secure it to the ceiling. In the lumber room though we ended up using eight foot LED lights. My teacher wanted one person to wire each light. The problem with this is that you can not hang the light without help from somebody else. I had no light to wire because other kids had already started to wire them so I decided instead of just standing around and watching I would help the people that have needed another person to hang lights. I ended up helping four of my friends hang the LED lights.

There has been a couple of times in my electrical class that I have needed help from a friend. One of those times was during the Skills USA competition. I needed help bending the offset on one side of my 90 degree bend. For some reason I could not bend this. It was easier than the one that I had done for the practice because we had 12 inches to make the offset instead of nine inches where I was able to help a friend make his in practice. The reason that I think that I ended up struggling so much was because I was under a time constraint which added pressure. I ended up having to have a friend help me with the offset because for some reason I could not for the life of me bend the offset the right way. Another time that I have needed help from a friend in my electrical class is when we were running cat 5 cable. I had never run this because the electrical company that I had worked for over the summer had not done any low voltage work. The thing that I needed help with was not the running of the cable because that was the same as if you were running any electrical conductors but the terminations that we had to make. The reason that I struggled so much with the terminations is because It was with a new crimping tool that I had never used before. Luckily for me another person that was in the group that I was in had done some low voltage work over the summer so I was able to ask him how it works. Instead of just taking it from me and doing it himself because I did not know how to do it, he walked me through how to do it. Which was actually a lot easier than I thought that It would be. All I had to do was strip the wire so the conductors were exposed and stick them in the connector and crimp it till I heard a click.

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