First Day of the Work

Monday June 6th

On my first day of work with Jay Waters electric I worked with Jason Roberts and Not Dave.  Craig is probably going to be the journey man that I am going to be spending more time with.  He just started a new job at Camex?  I need to start to take better notes at work in the pre work meetings.  They run from 7:30 to 8am and are less than mandatory.  But I am here to learn, why would I miss them?

I am already learning.  I purchased a bunch of Klein tools.  At Camosun a few students had Klein strippers, I was not impressed by them.  Hopefully these will serve me well, they feel pretty sturdy.

The first on the job chore was pulling wires from one building to the others.  You set up the spools on a 3/4” pipe suspended on a pair of specific holders, called racketeers.  This allows them to spin pretty easily. The wire, in this case Coaxial, Power and Gel lined Cat6 cable.  Cat6 is being used so that they can use the same port for voice and data, and this is an office building so it probably costs less for parts and installation.

The next job I helped with was running power and switches to five gas roof-mounted furnaces.  Jay Waters prefers to hide the cables behind the drywall, but this work has been done interestingly by the General.  We used lengths and lengths of armoured  12 and 14 gauge 120V wire.  It might have been better to run single wires up and through pipes.  Better means cheaper and cleaner looking.  As it was we used a box of drywall, wood, and metal self-threading screws to mount hangers with.

We also began to wire the fans up, in pretty much the same fashion.  A solid state five amp speed controller is used for the fans.  They are not very big, and there are only three, so on a gorgeous day like today I imagine that they are going to be spinning full tilt all day.

Technical stuff: Insulated wire needs to go through an insulated hole for a box, armoured stuff goes through a much bigger fitting.  A red sleeve called an anti-short protects wire from its armour.  And the things that connect two or more wires together are called -blue caps-.  Ground wires need to go clock wise around the screw, that way they do not loosen as the screw is tightening.

Well, that’s that.  Tomorrows another early start, for me, so I am going to sleep.  Silly internet.