On Feb 15, 10:29*am, "Bill" wrote:
"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
I had the privilege of watching a grey haired, experinced
electrician work. The task of the moment was replacing some
electrical sockets at the church. He had a "doctor bag" of
all kinds of fun items. He walked up to one socket that
needed to be replaced. Out of his bag of tricks, he pulled a
rig that was *a junction box, with a neon bulb and a big
push button. This connected to about a foot of wire, and a
three bladed plug.

He put the plug into the socket, and the neon bulb lit up.
He took hold of the juncion box, and pushed the button. I
heard a circuit breaker go "KLUNK" down the hall, and the
neon bulb went off. I realized at that moment what happened,
he had shorted out the breakerr and now the socket was safe
to work on. Seriously kewl!

You have the option of turning off all the branch circuit breakers if
you don't know which one is for that circuit. Then testing to be sure
power is off. And checking BOTH the top and bottom of the outlet as
some outlets can be on two breakers (called a Multi-Wire Branch
Circuit).

Basically in some situations, you could turn off power to the top
outlet, but the bottom outlet is still hot because it is on another
breaker! Or other wires in the same electrical box may be on other
breakers!

So for that reason, it is good practice to turn off ALL the breakers.

If you can be 100% safe, then there is no reason to do anything other
than that...

Also never assume power is off if you turn off all the breakers. There
could be another breaker panel! So always test to be sure power is
off.

If you are doing work for someone else and they say the other power
must remain on (so they don't have to reset the clocks, can watch TV,
or whatever), then tell them they can find someone else to do the
work!


If you as a technician are unable to determine whether power wires you
will be working on or near in an electrical box are live or dead, and
you
need to shut off power to the entire panel or building to work on one
outlet location you shouldn't be doing this sort of work...

Stick to construction and let someone who knows more and able to
properly determine how to shut off only what needs to be powered
down to safely do the work required... Not many facilities are going
to be willing to allow you to randomly kill the power even if it is
only
for a few minutes to an entire panel or section...

If an electrician came to me and said he needed to power off an
entire panel it had better be to replace the main breaker in that
panel or because something needs to be rewired or a transformer
opened up and looked at... If he or his workmen needed to kill
power to an entire panel just to replace or work on one outlet on
one circuit then I would request different workmen or better trained
technicians...

~~ Evan