Guys I just became an apprentice electrician. Any electrician fags out here have any tips?

Guys I just became an apprentice electrician. Any electrician fags out here have any tips?

Cut the red wire

Don't cut the red wire

FFS which one>

Anyone

Do a apprenticeship in Instrumentation and control when you finish your electrical apprenticeship. Instro>Electrician.

Journeyman reporting. I did commercial work for about 15 years and am now doing motor controls and light industrial work.

What tips do you need?

Op here..
Everyone I am in school with is telling me to do estimates after school. The company I work for is paying for me to go to IEC and what ever college course I want to take with it.

Yes, avoid electrocution

how to become electrician?
my beaner uncle by marriage is one and he fixed papers with it and makes bank. Nigga buys new home theatres every other couple years and blows it on shit.
I wanna do that. I don't talk to him though

>Everyone I am in school with is telling me to do estimates after school.

As in become an estimator? You typically need to have worked as a foreman and then project manager for at least a few years each before people will let you be a full time estimator.

>how to become electrician?

Find an apprenticeship program that is willing to take you and stick with it for the 4-5 required years.

Is it worth it? I made this transition from the oilfield. I'm in it for the long haul. But I want to pick a path that will take me places and make a lot of money.

>Is it worth it? I made this transition from the oilfield. I'm in it for the long haul. But I want to pick a path that will take me places and make a lot of money.

I'm the journeyman who is currently doing motor control work. Yep, I'd say it's worth it. I'm from Texas and make 70-110k per year, depending how much overtime I work. I'm a supervisor, so my pay is a bit higher than what run of the mill journeymen make.

I'll probably move on to working an office job doing project management in a few more years.

Do you get paid as a apprentice? If so How much?

Where in Texas? I'm working in garland.

>Do you get paid as a apprentice?

Of course.

>If so How much?

I started at $7.50 an hour, but that was back when minimum wage was like $5.15 an hour. Apprentice pay generally starts at 50% of what a journeyman makes and ends at about 80-90% of what a journeyman makes. You get 100% journeyman pay when you get your license.

Pay levels vary greatly depending on where you live and what type of work you do.

I live in Ft. Worth and work all over the US because our work is highly specialized. My company pays higher than average wages, but also demands a lot out of its workers. I'll put it this way... the pay and benefits are slightly better than what the local union offers.

Is prism a good company to get my journeyman's through?

Haven't heard of Prism, but that doesn't mean anything.

You don't get your journeyman license through a company, but you do get your work experience through the company. Be sure that their master electrician documents your work hours or you'll never be able to take your journeyman exam.

It's a huge company I'm not too worried about that. They do all the contracts for baylor health systems and a lot of work for dfw airport.

>It's a huge company I'm not too worried about that. They do all the contracts for baylor health systems and a lot of work for dfw airport.

OK just be sure that you're getting a wide variety of experience. The larger companies are really bad about having people only do one task, which results in them never becoming well rounded electricians.

For example, you might get put on a wire pulling crew, which will result in you learning how to pull wire, but never learning how to do underground work, run conduit, trim out, terminate switchgear, etc. You want to get a sample of doing everything out of your apprentice time.

alright, for real faggot...

I live in an ollld house. Like built 1950s... When i moved in, it had 2 prong plugs w/no ground... So i added 3 prong plugs. There is ONLY 1 plug in the whole house that has a ground and its an old continuous circuit, like it i unhook 1 wall outlet it makes everything in the house go off. What is the risk of running a continous circuit through mu entire house, with one grounding point, and all the other outlets have no ground hooked up?

Thanks for that tip. Right now I'm just cutting and bending conduit. While my boss measures.

Just add a fucking ground to like 2 more of them. If you ever need that ground for a high discharge you risk catching shit on fire.

They should all be grounded but I don't expect you to go and ground every single one.

>like it i unhook 1 wall outlet it makes everything in the house go off

You need to forget about the ground issue and have a residential service electrician fix this problem instead.

As old as the house is, it probably won't burn down anytime soon, but the entire load of your house shouldn't be run through one branch circuit.

Wait is he saying every single outlet is Daisy chained on one circuit?

>Thanks for that tip. Right now I'm just cutting and bending conduit. While my boss measures.

That seems like a good place to start. Are you the guy going to IEC? If so, say hi to Dan, Brad, and Joe at the Irving branch for me. I know em all personally.

So ill add that i rent this shit hole... IDGAF about the house,and i have renter insurance on my shit, so outside of irregular circumstances, whats my chane of pissing off my comp matches...

Who should I tell them is saying hi?

>Wait is he saying every single outlet is Daisy chained on one circuit?

That's what I picked up on. If it's done really poorly an open neutral could result in all of his receptacles having 240 lel. Good bye magic smoke in all of your electronics.

Haha it was a joke - I want to remain anonymous here.

Honestly, all i want to know is that i wont burn my house down with my dogs inside any time soon............

Fair enough...

Mate, your gonna die...

>pissing off my comp matche

What are comp matches?

There is a good chance that this wiring situation could 1) burn the house down and 2) result in all of the receptacles in hour house having 240 volts instead of 120, which would kill all of your electronics.

Quick question. I got bitched at for running individual ground wire for like 6 different outlets in one room. Straight to earth. I never understood what was wrong with that. Grandpa has high voltage ham radio equipment in man cave. Something was wrong with wiring. Everything metal in his room would shock you if it was plugged in.

nice, what a treat... So let me get this straight as im drunk...

I have outlets in my house that were originally 2 prong w/ no ground,... I replace them w/ all 3 prongs but only 1 ACTUALLY has the ground hooked up, and its a giant continuous curcuit, like it i unhook 1 outlook half the house power goes out out....... This is something i should tell my landlords to do something about?

>I got bitched at for running individual ground wire for like 6 different outlets in one room. Straight to earth. I never understood what was wrong with that.

You should be running home runs which then feed several branch circuits, so it sounds like you're wasting wire. I don't do residential work so I don't know exactly how many outlets you can have on one homerun, but 6 should be ok.

>Grandpa has high voltage ham radio equipment in man cave. Something was wrong with wiring. Everything metal in his room would shock you if it was plugged in.

There is a problem with either the grounding or the insulation in his radio equipment.

Okay, that makes sense. Another question. Could I just run my hot wire into an outlet and instead of common just run straight to earth? It's more of a theory question really. Like wouldn't the electrons still want to flow into earth.

Always clean your tools with the electrical sockets

>I have outlets in my house that were originally 2 prong w/ no ground,... I replace them w/ all 3 prongs but only 1 ACTUALLY has the ground hooked up

Forget about this part. None of it is important.

>i unhook 1 outlook half the house power goes out out

This is the problem. Half of the electric supply in your house seems to be carried through wires that should only energize one receptacle. Wires are rated for how much load they can carry because overloading wires causes them to become hot, which can then result in the insulation around the wires or the wood in the walls catching on fire.

>This is something i should tell my landlords to do something about?

Your landlords most likely won't give a shit because it's an old house. It sounds like poor wiring which should have never passed inspection. It would be very expensive to fix this now and I doubt your landlords would want to pay for it.

>Okay, that makes sense. Another question. Could I just run my hot wire into an outlet and instead of common just run straight to earth? It's more of a theory question really. Like wouldn't the electrons still want to flow into earth.

You need to run 3 wires from your sub-panel to the receptacle: black/red (hot), white (neutral), and green/bare copper (ground).

The black or red wire goes to a breaker in your panel, the white wire goes to the neutral bus bar, and the green/bare copper wire goes to the ground bar.

There is no other way you should be wiring receptacles.

Right, but hypothetically speaking I could run off just hot and earth?

>Right, but hypothetically speaking I could run off just hot and earth?

If you want to be responsible for killing or seriously injuring someone, yes you could hypothetically do it.

i only ask because someone told me once that they used to do that for people way out in the country. The logic seemed sound but I want sure.

>i only ask because someone told me once that they used to do that for people way out in the country.

They probably said that because work that is done on unincorporated county land isn't always inspected. Doing work like that would get me thrown in jail and my license revoked.

The separate earth wire is there for a reason, i.e. people died.

If you don't plan on joining them, leave it alone.

>The separate earth wire is there for a reason, i.e. people died.
>If you don't plan on joining them, leave it alone.

Right-o. The neutral (white wire, in this case) returns the current back to the transformer. In some cases, the neutral wire will be carrying the return current from multiple hot wires.