As I also said, I don't do that with T&E. First of all, because it'll wreck my teeth, secondly, because I can't see the entire pathway. I would NEVER do that with a bit of T&E sticking out of a wall.
Would you do anything to it if you hadn't proved it wasn't live and put in place a system to prevent it being energised without your knowledge?
If it's T&E, I'll flick the breakers and then check it with the multimeter.
Do you check that your multimeter works, before and after that test?
Do you check, or guard against, inadvertent energising of the circuit due to flaws elsewhere?
If I installed it, I'll know what it's connected to and whether or not it's entirely isolated. Then I'll use the strippers or, if I can't find them, a razor blade.
You are fond of inappropriate tools, aren't you.
Can you tell me how unplugging something, checking the socket is off and then being able to see the plug is not checking something is isolated?
It is.
Can you tell me why you are not prepared to recognise any other form of verified isolation?
Pieces of paper are mentioned because it's you who's making the assumption.
Pieces of paper have nothing to do with isolating electrical equipment and checking that it is isolated.
Firstly that we're all cowboys for not doing it the way you do it,
I am not the only one who does it that way.
and secondly for having such faith in your method of testing. I have seen journal entries using the same logic and then introducing failures, or people dying in industrial accidents, because they've been told to trust what the indicator says.
Industrial accidents like that are not really relevant to using test lamps and a proving unit in an appropriate way.
I stood in a lab with 60 other students and staff members at one point, and not a single person, bar me, bothered to check their pipettes against a reference prior to working with them.
And the relevance of that to my assertion that test lamps
and a proving unit in an appropriate way is less limiting than not touching something unless you can see that the other end isn't plugged in is what, exactly?
Neither did my tutor, the person with a PhD, who has a paper published with errors in it due to him trusting the standardized protocol for decontaminating a sample, and then applying it to a system he didn't design.
Are you trying to refute my assertion that is is wrong to use inappropriate techniques by quoting an example of someone who made mistakes because he used inappropriate techniques?
A worrying example if respirators. After the twin towers epic a55hole situation, shops where selling out of them. And people turned up dead because they'd put them on, then not realized they needed to remove the covers. One, very, very basic step in making it function. But caused by the assumption it'd protect them, because it looked like it would. They'd suffocated themselves, by mistake.
The mistake was to use them inappropriately, to assume that they would work without needing to bother with the appropriate use of them.
The safest way to work is to assume the safety gear isn't working.
But what if that assumption means that you cannot do the work?
I'm not getting at you or looking to complain, I'm just trying to explain that, I get your point, but it's the internet getting in the way of explaining that I do only do that on very specific things.
Do what?
Use your teeth to strip wires? That's never appropriate.
Only work with cables that are supplied via a plug which you can see isn't plugged in? That's an inappropriate restriction.
