110 volts

My Grandfather(on my father's side) was an Electrical Contractor. My father first trained with his father during his teens(when school was out) and after high school graduation worked first as an electrician's helper and then as a journeyman electrician and in Los Angeles County from the time I was 12 years old on, an Electrical Contractor like his Dad before him.

Because I was bored during the summers Dad took me on as an apprentice starting at age 12. So I was a full fledged Electrician's helper by age 15 to 17 summers and weekends, and when I burnt out on being a computer programmer-operator at age 21 from working 12 hours a day 7 days a week midnight to noon I worked for another year as an electrician's helper in Los Angeles County, California before I went back to college while trying to figure out what next to do with my life.

My wife is very impressed just because I disabled a bathroom fan. I said, "The bathroom fan in the ceiling not only stopped working but starting to smell like it was going to catch fire. So I disabled the switch." She looked at me and said, "Does that mean the light switch in the bathroom doesn't work too?" I said, "The light is fine. All I did was to take the switch plate off and cut off one of the wires in the back of the switch right at the switch and tape both over so the fan switch is disabled. The light switch isn't affected at all."

At this point she was impressed. I wasn't trying to impress her. I simply wanted to avoid someone walking into our bathroom and while sitting on the john trying to turn the fan on an burning down our house. At some point we will either hire someone to replace the (ceiling fan and flourescent back up light combo) or I'll just do it myself. I haven't decided yet.

I decided to write this piece because becoming an electrian's helper is a great way to survive a severe recession like the one we are in. Hotels, manufacturing plants etc. all need a standby maintanence electrician to repair any electrical problem that comes down. And usually this type of job is much easier than building a home electrically from scratch or remodel work. Though most of the work I did would be considered remodeling work electrical work is very basic and mechanical. However, there are certain things one needs to know in order to stay alive doing it with both sight and hands still working.

As a cautionary note, as a boy I once blew the PBS TV station off the air in Los Angeles for about 5 or 10 minutes and was blind for about the same amount of time because I had to work on a main panel hot. Hot means with the electricity on. My father said, "I need you to work on this hot because the station needs to stay on the air. Electricity coming in to a commercial building is 110,220,440 and sometimes but rarely higher than that. So I was working on a 440 volt panel with just my screwdriver. Unfortunately, one large wire was being very difficult because being large it wouldn't bend right into its panel socket. So my screwdriver slipped when the wire popped out and my screwdriver arc welded itself to the panel and blew little balls of molten metal at my face. Luckily, I only went temporarily blind for about 5 or 10 minutes and my face hurt. My father just led me to the neares staircase and had me sit down while he put the pbs tv station back on the air. He then came over and asked me if I could see which I was beginning to again. The pain of little pieces of molten metal on my face actually bothered me more than not seeing and of course I was embarrassed to blow the tv station off the air. end cautionary note.

If you are working on your own home in a residential or country area the voltage coming into the main Electrical panel from the street is 220 volts if you live in the United States. Coming in from the street telephone and power pole or underground if that is what is in your area comes three wires about the thickness of one of your smaller fingers. Two of these are the Hot wires and one of these is the neutral or white wire. White wires always denote the non hot wire. Most commonly the hot wire is black but sometimes it can be other colors too. However, the neutral wire is always white. So coming in from the street to the main panel is two black wires and one white one. This 220 volts is then used for things like electrical stoves, electrical washers and electrical dryers and the like. These are usually the main items that use 220 volts.

You may ask where does the 110 volts come from? Well. That is a trick. If you take only one of the two black wires and a neutral white then you get 110 volts. You only get 220 volts if you use both black wires and a white one altogether at once. So 110 volts is often called "a half leg" by electricians because you are only using half the electricity coming into the house.

In your home using appliances and lights you don't have to worry about all this because it has been all plotted out by Electrical Contractors and journeyman electricians. Most of the work is not actually installing everything physically. No. The hardest job is figuring out line loads and how big of a main panel and how many sub panels will be installed and what the wiring on a building plan looks like and such.

For example, I am capable of building a whole house from a building plan including electrical etc and carpentry. However, don't ask me to draw up an electrical or framing plan. That I can't do. Also, plumbing is my weakest suit so if I was building a house I would have to hire a plumber for most of that. Otherwise, I could if I had to (and I have many times already) build a house from a plan designed by an architect, builder and Electrical Contractor.

So, when my father and I came to a job he would have already given a bid for a job and drawn up a plan and had his bid accepted before we would even start. Once his bid was accepted he would then order all the wire(and in Los Angeles County)during the 1960s when I mostly did this, pick up all the materials we needed from an electrical supply wholesale house nearby. Some of the materials likely would be large spools of wire of various diameters, emt pipe to pull wire through and flexible metal cable to pull wire through as well as nail like devices to hold the pipe and flex in place in walls attics and under houses.

If we were coming to a room addition for example, we first would establish either a main panel or sub panel and begin stringing pipe or flex through the walls to lights, plugs, light switches etc. We used a one horsepower drill with a 1 foot to 3 foot auger drill bit in place. The problem with this is if you accidentally hit a nail the drill might break your arm. I've been wound up on a 1 horsepower drill more than once but so far have avoided breaking my arm even though I have hit many unseen nails while drilling through 2 by 4 studs stringing flex cable through a house or room addition. (In Los Angeles County) at that time flex cable was used in walls, ceilings and under houses to protect the wires from various kinds of harm and to prevent fires. EMT pipe was used mostly in commercial applications on the surface of cement walls where there was no way to do anyting else but put wires on surfaces of walls. Then we used a type of gun to shoot bolts into the cement which could get very dangerous and I knew of many people who were injured because the cement broke off and the bolt bounced a little like a bullet around the cement room and people were injured or died as a result. So if you use one of these guns just remember if anything goes wrong they are at least as lethal as a .45 caliber bullet inside a cement room bouncing around. Another tool that is very dangerous is a nail gun. A friend of mine accidentally nailed his testicle to the roof and had to be taken to the hospital. Luckily the important part was pushed out of the way by the impact and the nail only got skin instead. However, any injury in that area is very problematic for a man.