4
My journeyman told me to always check the panel schedule before touching anything, and it saved my bacon yesterday.
He said that about five years ago, and I admit I got lazy with it on simple jobs. Yesterday, I was replacing a light fixture in a 1970s house. The schedule said 'Kitchen Lights' on breaker 14, but when I killed it, the fixture was still hot. I traced it back and found it was actually on breaker 22, labeled 'Garage Outlet', with a junction buried in the wall. If I hadn't checked the schedule first, I would have assumed the right breaker was off and gotten a nasty surprise. That extra five minutes of verification kept me safe. Has anyone else found a panel schedule that was just completely wrong?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
alicecraig5d ago
Man, you ever hear about the time my buddy's helper almost got lit up? He was doing a service change and the old schedule said the dryer was on a 40. He pulls it, and the whole panel side goes dead quiet except for this one hum. Turns out some genius had the furnace and half the kitchen lights tied into that same leg downstream. The schedule was a total work of fiction. Makes you wonder how many houses are just wired by guesswork, right?
4