What If I Put These Two Wires Together?

When were kids, we did all kinds of crazy stuff; especially when it comes to electricity. I think it's in our DNA. I mean consider for a minute: Uncle Matt's an electrician, we've all heard the story about using electricity to get the cuffs off Uncle Johnny, Uncle Robert works with A/C's (a huge electric motor, really), we've all heard the story about Tobi, the tweezers, and the outlet, and you might not know it, but Jeffrey and I learned all kinds of neat stuff with a slot car race track and the wiring of a boom box. It's no small wonder that we're tough and smart: what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, right?

Considering all of that, perhaps I have been a little unfair in my judgement of a recent situation. We all, obviously, learned at a very young age what would happen if you put two electrical leads together and supplied power. If you didn't use too much, you get a cool blue spark; if you used a little more, you'd get that funny tingly feeling all over; and if you really went overboard, well, you'll probably only do that once.

Imagine now my surprise when the events of last week unfolded. I received a call from a tenant stating that there was no electricity in the house. This is not the first such call from a tenant just the first from this tenant. On previous occasions what they really meant was there was no electricity in the master bathroom, and I had to explain what a GFCI plug is all about. In this case, the tenant was not at the house, though, so I agreed to drive up and take a look.

It was quickly apparent that they were correct about there being no power, so what's the deal? The kids (teenagers) were home, and we went to the breaker box. I tried them all and got nothing. The main switch was in the "on" position, but I went ahead and tried to flip it off and back on. Still nothing. So I asked that fateful question: "What happened just before the power went out?"

Now, in telling this story to Uncle Matt, his guess was as good as any and would've made perfect sense. He guessed that it was a really hot day, so the A/C was running like crazy, clothes needed cleaning, so the dryer was on, and mom had to fix her hair so she fired up the hair dryer and boom everything goes down. Good guess, and an understable situation. Not the story that I got, though.

As I recount this to you, please keep in mind that these teens were only too happy to share what they did (I don't know who specifically was involved; I just know what happened). They were proud of their approach to the original problem. They were clueless as to how it translated into the catastrophe we were now dealing with.

They had just moved in, and they realized that the dryer had the wrong plug on it for the house. Knowing that it would be easy to correct, they went to the nearby hardware store and picked up a new dryer plug. They were pretty sure it was the right one, so they bought with confidence. When the got home, though, they didn't want to go through all of the trouble of hooking the plug up to the dryer just to find out that they still didn't have what they needed.

Picture this, a tightly wrapped dryer cord with two exposed ends (for attaching to the dryer) that are resting in contact with one another. Now imagine yourself plugging that into the highest power draw plug in your house. You just felt a little shock, and you weren't even there! This guy felt a little more than a shock and basically created a lightning bolt in the laundry closet before the main breaker blew.

Although I couldn't get the breaker reset, the electrician that I called was able to get the switch flipped and they are back in business now. The question that keeps rolling around in my head, though, is exactly how much life experience do you need before you know better than to plug exposed wiring into the wall with the leads touching one another? Just imagine if the leads hadn't been in contact; there may have been no spark, and he's liable to have left it plugged in while attaching it to the dryer.

I'm just glad that no one was hurt and that my house didn't get burned down.