Is this a forum member?

[catlad]

I've drilled through electric cable in random spot! Mates a plumber and he told me he went to a customers house to find he had just installed a new oak floor using his nail gun, forgetting he had under floor heating!

 

[Chainsawcharlie]

You do it only once

 

[haringey_sash_w]

did this in a professional capacity but not in something I usually do -"a small job" for an existing client

Install some rails for their elderly relative in the shower... so I chose a spot far far from the mixer.

Long story short I went through the hot water pipe but unfortunately I hadn't realised they had a huge hot water tank still in place in the attic

Very very luckily for me the water was bursting out and hitting the shower screen otherwise it would have flooded the bathroom and because it was red hot there was nothing I could have done

So the client very kindly calls the plumber who amazingly was in the area

He comes in, and is like 18 years old, a late apprentice nearly done - shows me photos of his fancy pipe work which I guess he was using for his assessments and for showing off his work - absolutely over the top spaghetti of pipes to show off his soldering skills stretching over to the far side of the mixer - cockily asked me if id decided to "play Russian roulette" by not checking for pipes

Anyway from there on I don't drill anywhere near pipes or wires - I don't need to and am not doing any favours for people - I lost years of my life panicking that day

 

[Deleted member 174758]

It could be one post wonder or a forum expert, hasn't everyone done it

One of my ex-colleagues did something similar. We'd cut out a run in the floorboards to allow the sparks and data guys to run two armoured cables and a shed load of CAT6 data cables (on opposite sides of the "trench" - listed building). It was left with the cut-out short pieces just lightly pinned back in place for several months. Come time for the new plywood sub floor to be fitted and the new guy was told to go and fix down the old boards properly. He did so, using 4 x 70mm screws. Every screw missed the cables - except the one which neatly pierced the uppermost armoured cable. I believe the testing and repair cost for that was somewhere in the region of £3k...

My own personal best was sawing through a live 6mm feed with a recip saw. The sparkie had isolated the power, but the bathroom was on a separate switch - so isolating the CU made no difference to the shower power feed, which was still live (,that was the 6mm cable). The bang and blue flash when I hit the copper was spectacular - the recip blade looked like someone had bitten a chunk out of it. Thank goodness for double insulated tools

 

[Justin Passing]

I've been to where a plumber drilled a wall which was half brick, caught a pipe and carried on through to next door. They were out at the time.
Right mess in the posh dining room next door. Everybody who heard about it found a reason to visit and peer in from the garden.. Plumber got a bit p'd off.
Never met the owner. It was a posh Georgian house.

 

[Diver Fred]

You do it only once

No you don't!

Plumber having put in a 'Saniflow' screwed the flooring back in the Bathroom damaging the outflow pipe, replaced that length. Went in the next room where the pipe ran through - and did exactly the same thing...!