re: Admit Your Dumbest Homeowner Repair Mistakes

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Owned a residential fourplex. Older, built in 1955. Tenant had an electrical oven problem. Went to the basement and flipped off the main breaker. Went back upstairs and started messing around and got knocked across the kitchen by the 220. It was still live. I can do all the trades with average to decent outcomes if I do it myself but I won't screw around with electrical.

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Electrical can eat your lunch. Every time I do electrical stuff, whether I kill the breaker or just a switch, I check with a meter.

I haven't been bitten by electrical in awhile, but you do it once or twice, you learn how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Had to add an additional breaker box to my house due to running out of room in my main. Drilled a hole from the new box to the old with a holesaw and punched through to hit a live wire and arc'd off the breaker board. Fortunately it blew the breaker pretty quick and didn't do any real damage.