Top Shelf Stories
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Top Shelf Stories
Stove Outage To DIY Rewire
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Cold Open And The Breaker Pop
Top Shelf Stories with Jay, Chris, and Tony. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Top Shelf Stories. My name is Chris. I'm here with Jay and Tony, and I'm gonna tell you the story about how I became an electrician. Oh boy. I don't recommend this. I am now an electrician. Certified. It all started Friday night. I was using the stove and the breaker broke. And I'm like, what the f and I went, switched the breaker, and it worked, and that's how I became an electrician. Thanks for tuning in today. Top shelf stories. No, so then I I fixed it the first day, and I, you know, I pulled the stove out and everything. Nothing was working. I plugged the plug back in, like taped it up against the wall real nice. So I'm like, the plug keeps coming out. And everything was working fine. I went to bed. Is is your stove electric? Electric stove. Okay. So you got the big plug. The big plug. Ugh. Don't scare me. Kind of looks like uh England. Or England. What the fuck are you talking about, Jason? The plug in England. Yeah, I guess. Right? Yeah, sure. That weird plug in England. Yeah. That's so some fucking idiot doesn't try jamming it into a regular wall socket. So I'm there and everything's fine. Next morning, wake up. Gonna make the family some breakfast. I got some bacon in the oven, because I like to cook my bacon in the oven. I find it so is my wife. Actually, it does cooks it pretty good. It's so easy. Less slop, not as stinky, not as splashy, not as you gotta do three different rounds of it in the pan, just and it keeps nice straight bacon.
Half-Cooked Bacon And No Heat
I got this shit in the oven. It's going preheated, ding, thing goes off. Here I am. Put the bacon in. Cooks for a little while, and then I notice that the little display that tells you what the temperature is is off. This sounds like an electricity problem. So I'm like, that's weird. Yesterday this happened too. So I go downstairs and I flip the breaker, but it didn't work. That didn't fix it. Weird. Did you try it? I'm like, I'm an electrician. How come this didn't fix it? Did you try taping it on? Well, so I looked at my tape job. I'm like, well, I I oriented because I needed to orient the cord so that it went down so that I could push the stove all against the oven. So I was actually on Friday night, I was like, I fixed two things. The stove was the plug was coming undone because it wasn't pushed against the wall all the way. So now I've got it. Yeah. No. Did you do the thing where you were laying across your countertop and then jamming it with a broomstick? Yeah, I was in there orienting it. Yes, yes, yes. This is how I taped it. Because I was like, fuck that broomstick trick. I'm gonna tape it down. Some electrical tape. The shit stopped cooking, so now I got half cooked bacon. My kid's like, the bacon done, dad! Yeah. Well, do you never do you really need to cook it all the way? I'm like, hold on, it's not quite done. Oh, there's nothing worse than medium rare bacon. No one wants that shit. I mean, is it safe? So now I've flipped switches, I've turned all the power off on the house and back on three times. I pulled it out, plugged it in, pulled it out, plugged it in, did this, that, the other thing. Nothing. So I just nuked the bacon. I fucking torched it after it was half cooked in the oven. So now I got fucking bacon jerky basically sitting on the counter. I tried to feed the kid and she didn't want it. So here I am. I'm lost. I don't know what the fuck to do. I have I'm not an electrician. If all the things of home improvement, the electrician thing is like, I'm not touching that shit. I'm gonna die. Like there's you only get electricity wrong one time, and then you die. Well, I got shocked from outlets all the time, and it's terrible. This is 240 volt. This is two of the wow plugged into one. I don't know. I wasn't gonna find out. What is an outlet? No, but it can. What's an outlet? So I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, what the hell do I do now? It's Saturday. This is not what I wanted to do today. I want to fix my fucking stove. So I'm like, it's gotta be the stove. So I take the stove out and I'm because it's not flipping the breaker. The breaker's not broke. It's gotta be the stove. So I pull the stove out. I'm taking all the fucking parts apart. I'm looking at the back of the stove. I'm looking for like thermocouples and fucking fuses. Anything. And then I notice that when I turn the stove top on and then try to set the time, it works. But the temperature of the stove top doesn't get any hotter, but it turns on. So now I'm like, okay, I'm getting power. It's gotta be this stove. I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense at this point. So then I get the fucking see, so then I go to the internet. Because where do you go? So I'm a guy like, do I call you? I think I did message you guys. You know an electrician? Yep. I said, what do you do? I don't know. It was just two days late. Yeah. I didn't. I did get yours a day late, a dollar short. But I'm so I'm like, this kid Appliance repair man? How do you fix this? Who do you call for this? Anybody. Who? A handy person. I'm lost. I'm lost. I'm sitting there, I got half-cooked bacon, I got nothing, I don't know what to do. My stove's not working. Now it's not eight in the morning anymore, it's not ten in the morning anymore. Now it's fucking noon and I'm
Testing Voltage With Dad
still dicking around with this fucking stove on my Saturday. Did Pat come over? So I call my dad. Of course. And my dad, fucking God bless his soul, he's like, I don't know what the fuck it is, but I'll be right there. I'll bring my electric tester and we'll figure it out. Yep. So fucking dad comes through and we're testing this, we're testing that. We're we don't know what the tester thing is, though, because we're not electricians. So we're like flipping the dials on this thing and plugging it in. Resistance is good. Yeah, everything's looking good. All the resistance, that was the other thing I learned how to check for resistance because I'm an electrician now. I'm checking resistance. Like, there's continuity, continuity, continuity. Everything's working. What the fuck is going on? So then I'm plugging these things into the outlet to check voltage. I'm sticking metal prongs in a fucking outlet to check voltage. Yep. And I'm like, okay, this one works. And my dad's like, then the other one you checked this one, and I'm like, it's not working. He's like, but maybe I'm not getting the prong in the plug. So now we're taking the plug off the wall. Now you're using a butter knife. So we got the plug off the wall. Open wires. I'm flipping my dad's like, to go turn it on again. I'm like, dude, no, dad, you're gonna fucking die. You can't plug your fucking metal prongs in here with it on. He's like, that's how it works. And so we fucking did that. Come to find out, there's only 120 of the 240 volts going to this 30 amp fuse. So I'm like, fuck. What's with that? How do you fix that? So I'm like, whatever. I can't steal everyone's day. Now it's like two in the afternoon. I'm like, dude, I've been doing this all day. I'm done. Dad, go home, enjoy the rest of your day. He went and did his other shit, whatever. So now I'm sitting there, I'm thinking I'm gonna have to hire somebody. I'm gonna have to fucking hire somebody, but I'm like, I can't do it on Saturday. Can't do it on Sunday. I can't figure it out myself, dude. I tried. It's like Tony and his plumbing, man. I'm like, I'm not doing it. I don't know what to do. I can't get it out of my fucking head. I try to move on. I'm like, well, Katie, what are we gonna do for dinner? And like she's like, I don't know, just go out and get something. So we got like McDonald's or something that night. Gross. I'm like, dude, now it's four, four or five in the afternoon, in the evening almost now. And I'm sitting on the couch doing whatever, and I'm like, I can't just sit here and enjoy my day when my fucking stove isn't working. It's bothering the shit out of me. Use your stove every day? Probably. Really? To cook something? What are you not cook things? Well, I mean, I do. Do you like rabbits? Just wait for the lettuce to get set in the corner and eat it? Today I had a salad. You don't need to cook that. Okay. But then I'm thinking, like, okay, if my shit's not working, but the outlet's spitting some power, is there like a fire gonna start in my house when I'm sleeping? So I can't let it go. I pull the fucking stove out again. I pull the fucking outlet apart again. I got the power off. I'm looking at it, I'm like, there's a and I take it pictures, I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna ask my stepdad because I'm blessed enough. I got a fucking stepdad, too. So I asked his ass. What the fuck does he know? He's younger than you. He's as old, he's older than me. How's that? How does that feel, Tony? He's got a dad and a stepdad. So this motherfucker's he's got rentals and shit. And I know he always farts around on shit and he's remodeled houses and shit. And he's like, oh, I know this shit pretty good. So he's on the phone with me. And I got him on the speaker phone, and he's like, take your tester and do this. And he's like, you know, checking this and that, and I'm sending him pictures. I'm sending him pictures. Like, he's like, take a picture of this, take a picture of that. He's having me take the whole fucking circuit breaker cabinet off. So now I got the cabinet with all the power to all of the things in all of my house. Coming in, my kids upstairs on her iPad, the lights are on in the house,
Stepdad Detects A Hidden Junction
and I'm down there sticking fucking metal prongs inside of this box, testing, is this connecting? Is this working? He's teaching me how to do this thing. It's working out. I'm I'm understanding a little bit, right? Did he ask you, did you want to call it pack and throw the ball around too? He's like, I don't understand, maybe. He's like, I don't understand this, dude. You got the power coming out of the box, but you don't have the power at the outlet. You only have half the power at the outlet. So somewhere along the line, these lines aren't working. But then I sent him this picture and he notices that coming out of the outlet, one of the wires is red, and one of the wires is black of the two like line, and then there's the neutral line or like the cotton constant line that's black as well. But he's like, in your box, there's two black lines going out, but out of the outlet, there's one red, one black. There's gotta be a junction somewhere. Yep. So now I'm in the basement and I'm eyeing where it comes through, where it comes down out of the outlet, and I'm trying to figure out where is this like junction box, right? It's because there's gotta be wires from the outlet to where come out of the power box, out of the fucking big circuit box is two wires coming out somewhere. They're meeting. Yeah, it probably uh I found it. There's a junction box. Yep. So he walks me through, he's like, I'm like, dude, I'm not taking apart this junction box. I'm just gonna call somebody. He's like, dude, I'm on the phone with you. I know you're gonna be fine. My mom's in the background. You better not kill my kid. You have a foo and shit. He doesn't know what he's doing. And so, like, yeah, I I look, I find this junction box, I open the fucker up, there's wires all burnt up in there. And there's these, and I noticed too, like, they're little wires from the junction box to the stove was just little tiny wires. So the good thing is your stove didn't work because you checked it out, it could have started a fire, right? Maybe, yeah, yeah. In fact, the whole box on the inside was all burnt up, and the wires were all fused and burnt together. So, yeah, there was like nearly a fire in my house. I nearly burnt my house down. Is that what is that? What is that from? Is that from uh wrong uh someone who was on the wrong gauge? The wrong gauge. It was feeding in 120 volts at 30 amps, coming in there, and then there's these little wires going not little, but little comparatively running up from this junction box to the stove's outlet.
Burnt Wires And Near Fire
So the next day, Monday in this junction box, did it just go from breaker to junction to stove, or did it go breaker to junction and then split off stove and then something else? So I wonder why uh what ended up happening where they decided to put this junction box in. Here's what my thoughts were. There used to be a gas stove and a gas line going through there, and so they only needed before 120. So they had from the out from the outlet, there was just regular wire for a regular plug for a regular gas stove that just ran the dials, basically, and the thermometer and whatever. And so someone ran from the box good wire for new 240 volt 30 amp service to this junction box, and then the homeowner was like, That's enough, Mr. Electrician. I'll take it from here. And he just left the old wires in there and ran 240 through it, and it fucking fried. So I had to go to Home Depot or Menard's, uh Home Depot I went, and buy three feet of wire of this fucking six-gauge heavy-duty fucking wire. You didn't run it all the way back to the panel to eliminate the junction boxes. No, because the panel shit, that was all done to code and shit by an electrician. And I didn't want to go into the box, and that wire's coming out, they were solid. 100% good. And I thought about, you know, maybe I should have someone come in
Six-Gauge Fix And Pizza Victory
and just run one line, just one. But I'm not I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. So I I'm an electrician now. Right now I know how it works, so I'm an electrician now. So I went and got the fucking wire, and I fucking ran the wire and I redid the outlet and rewired the outlet, rewired the fucking junction box, just noodled all that shit together, stuffed it all in the fucking box, turned that bitch on, and made a fucking pizza, man. I am a fucking electrician now. Yeah. Dude, electric, electric is kind of fucking crazy. Dude, I could I like how how how it functions, and a lot of times if it's fucked up, it'll function right for a while, and then just something will happen, it'll come on done. They call it like bleeding, or or or it's something else where the power will go from line to line it, and then it'll just fuse up and burn up. Dude, I've had so many like weird electrical things happen over the years, especially in this house I'm now. See, I've experienced this shit with this stove a lot
Vacuum Trips And Overloaded Circuits
and not even realize that it was actually because the fucking wires were about to burn my house down. Yeah. So you're an electrician now, and I have a question. Yeah. I have an area in my house, I have an area in my house where if I run the vacuum Before you go any further, I'm gonna need you to pay me $300 an hour for this consultation. But go on. The area of my house, if I have two the TV on the living room and the TV on the kids' room and run a vacuum, the power kicks off. Yeah, you got not too many things going on in one circuit. Too many amps, too many amp draw. Too much draw. You could test for that with this tester. I can come over and do it. But like it's gonna be three, four hundred dollars an hour for a service. Just to test, yeah. What if what if I give you uh rendering that you never forget? Yeah, but he'll if you if you hire him to do the work, he'll take that diagnostic money off the bill. Yeah. How I'll charge him more for the other stuff I do. All right. To make up for it. Yeah, man. I just had some wild shit at
Ring Doorbell Power Mystery
my house. Uh which wing? Uh the the primary entry. So I have uh the entrance to your house? I have a ring doorbell along with everybody else in the world. Yeah. I do that, but go on. And mine's do you have tape over the the camera? No, because it faces out of my house. That's key. Um score to everyone else, just not me. I put a camera up, but I covered the camera. So the doorbell, the doorbell is a wired doorbell. And if you've ever looked at doorbell wires, they're low voltage, they're you know, smallest wire you can possibly fucking get, right? And it runs this little speaker wire. Yeah, it's smaller than speaker wire. Um and that runs this electronic device that powers a fucking camera and runs connects to my Wi-Fi and all this shit. So it all runs off of this little tiny wire. Well, that that doesn't connect your Wi-Fi, but okay. The the ring doorbells. The ring doorbell is connected to your Wi-Fi. Not the wires, I'm saying. No, but I'm saying that it has enough power to constantly draw off of my Wi-Fi and stay connected. Yeah, I know, I get I get it, I get work the light and there's a fucking speaker in it so I can talk to people through it. And like there's a lot going on on this little low voltage fucking thing. And uh along the side of my staircase is the original doorbell chime, and that's where all the power comes from that gets routed to it. Does it buzz? No. Um I hooked it up, everything was fucking fine on it for a year and a half. No fucking issue. And then it goes out. Just no power to it. So I pull the thing off and I checked the wires with my meter, and they're dead. And I'm like, how the fuck can they just go from alive to dead? So I figured somebody was trying to break into my house. They took the camera off for days ago. Yeah, disassembled my fucking camera, they snuck up, erased the footage. You've watched too many times. Yeah, dude. I've seen this on the movies. So I knew I knew what happened. They erased the footage from the camera. But then I found out setting up little cardboard versions of what they see out the camera so you don't see them working behind it. They showed up in Amazon delivery driver outfits, yeah. Spray painted the lens, crazy fucking suspenseful music playing in the background. So now I'm like, well, did this wire get a little nick in it because it's going through the aluminum trim that goes around the door? Like, how why is this not getting power? So I go over to the chime where the power comes in and I'm testing that, and that's not getting power. And I'm like, what the fuck? So you go down, like I'm sitting here trying to rationally think about when they built my house in 1999. Like, where the fuck do you get power for a low volt? Like, it doesn't have its own breaker from a light switch somewhere. I'm assuming a light switch. An outlet, there's something that this is tapped into. And if it was done by a real electrician, it would have to that's the split would have to be made in a junction box. So I'm sitting here thinking about where is there a junction box in this fucking house? Because technically, if a licensed electrician did it, it can't be buried behind drywall, it has to be able to be gotten to at all times. And I'm sitting here and I'm going, well, if I was a fucking idiot electrician, where would I hook this low voltage into? And I thought about it and I'm like, the only thing that makes sense is you run it into the smoke detector lines. Because they'll they'll tie it on the hardwired detectors too. Yeah, they'll they'll tie it right into a smoke detector. So I go into smoke. Better have battery backup for them, by the way, but go on. Yeah, so I go to the one in the you know, right by the kitchen, which is four feet away from this chime. And I'm like, it has to be into this one. And I pop the thing down, and sure enough, there's no fucking low voltage line running into it. And I'm like, you know, there's one there's one kind of back in the corner in a spare bed. I'm gonna go check that one. And I go and now the east wing. Yeah. So I go down the stairs, I go, I go through the center into the east,
The Missing Smoke Detector Connection
and uh I look at the smoke detector and it's fucking missing. It's gone. They you know you untwist them and and you can unplug 'em. Sure. And it's fucking gone. I don't know where it is. And and I can't wait. There's a fucking one little low voltage fucking line sitting outside of the wire nut. I fucking plug it in, doorbell kicks right back on. I still haven't replaced that smoke detector. I was gonna say, I thought maybe the wife took the smoke detector off because it was beeping, because it was warning, because it wasn't getting the correct continuity of power. So she just took it off and then never said anything. Why would it go that far? Why wouldn't it just go why wouldn't it just go the closest one? I don't know. None of this shit in my house makes sense. None of it. So I fucking twist it back up, doorbell turns on, life's good, right? Now I just I go up and I ask my wife, I go, Do you know what the fuck happened to the smoke detector in the guest room? She's like, I have no idea. She's like, the last one to stay in there was my brother. She's like, I haven't been there for like four years. So my wife's brother is an electrician. That's actually what he does for a living. Okay. And I've asked him for help on many fucking little electrical things helping me problem solve something. And uh is that the guy you sent me? No. Oh fuck. I know what kind of level of D I'm at. Uh well, her brother lives in DC, so he's not flying back to fucking deal with your stove. Irrelevant. Um, you know, I find out that they took the fucking smoke detector down, and now I can't find it. Like why did he take it down? I don't know. Because it was blinking, it probably blinks because I think what he's smoking in your house. No, I think what happened is his kid fucking knocked it with the ball and they went and threw it away. He hit it. He hit it because he's like, fuck that. And uh yeah, so he disconnected what he thought was the power to it so that you wouldn't know it was out. See you later. But yeah, there's always some fucking weird electrical thing, but I'm looking at it going, okay, it makes sense to to patch this thing into a smoke detector line. Sure. But there's one fucking four feet from it that it's not in, but it's in the one where they had to route it the line back down to the basement and 25
Switched Outlets That Kill Freezers
feet into another room. Yeah, I got one a weird one like that. My outside, which kind of makes sense, but I'm not sure. The outside outlet is wired into the outlet in the house, spliced into the outlet right on that side of the wall in the house that runs like the living room lights. But it's wired into the side of the outlet that's operated by the switch. So if I I don't do this, but if I operated my living room lights with the switch, I would constantly be turning off the outlet outside, too. So like Christmas lights, any pumps or lights or anything plugged into it would be turned off if I turn off the living room lights. Which is kind of stupid, but not not as dramatic as this sounds. So I had another one. I have a little storage room where one of my mini freezers are. Well, I'll real quick, now you can call me because I'm an electrician. No, well, I'm not paying you rates. Well, I'll help you over the phone. Um, not Jay, I'll charge him though. But I have uh in one of my storage areas in the basement, I have a chest freezer. One of my storage areas. Yeah. Um so this freezer, we get home from vacation, everything's thawed. I'm like, what in the actual fuck? So I'm like, this freezer's bad. So we go buy a new freezer, right? And uh that thing's that thing's working, it's working great. The new one's working great, everything's good. We fucking go out of town for like three days, we come back, I go grab something, there were some popsicles in there, I pull out a fucking bag of water. Oh no. Dude, I'm like, the brand new freezer. And I'm looking at it, the lights are on, it's blowing cold air. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And I just had gotten it. So I take everything out of it, throw it away, fucking take that freezer back and get a new one. That thing's running good. Uh that thing's running great. Um, a couple weeks later, I notice everything's getting soft again in there. How do you keep filling up a freezer in three weeks? It's easy. I just go shoot something. Golly, you shouldn't something every week? If I need to, he's got to go. It depends on the depth of my freezer. He just said he fills it up with popsicles. But uh Costco. But but this fucking freezer, it's like everything's soft in it, and I'm trying to figure it out. And I call an electrician to come over, and we're looking at it, he's like, dude, everything's working. He's like, your freezer's brand new. This is your third one. He's like, your outlet's getting power. Like, it's on its running. He's like, I don't I I don't know. He's like, I think you need to get an alarm uh for for this outlet that when this outlet goes off, it buzzes. You can pick up those alarms. I already know what's happening. I already know what's happening. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? He's like, yeah, man, the only thing I can think of is for some reason this this outlet is tapped off of a switched switched outlet. Yep. And I go, well, that's crazy. How the fuck would it be on a switched outlet? And uh I go, every time I come down here, it's running. You turn the light on. Turn the light on. It's hooked up to the switch for my stairwell going to the basement. You fucking idiot. You fucking idiot. You can't see in the dark, bro. I never went down and checked the freezer without the light on. You fucking idiot. You gotta mark those outlets with a green dot. And and the fucked up thing is is that every electrician knows that. Is the way the way this outlet is ran because it's on an exterior wall, it was actually it was done by an electrician. It's a steel box, it has fucking metal conduit, and then it goes up into the ceiling, goes over, and then it's got an like a curve in it, and it goes into the wall. And I'm like, it does it doesn't even run in the direction of that light or that switch. How the fuck did it end up there? And it's all buried in drywall. Everything in that area is in drywall. So now what? Do you have it on the same outlet? No, man. They he uh opened it up, uh, abandoned those wires, he pulled those fucking wires and pulled new wires to uh fucking to the panel. Crazy. But you I don't do that. I look at this fucking electrical shit and I'm like, how
Finding A Meat And Potatoes Electrician
the fuck does this even happen? It's kind of funny though. They're licensed, man. They're licensed and yeah, but man, now I got a great electrician. I ain't even worried about electric anymore. Alright, I'm gonna have to well, yeah, because of me. That's start charging you. Who's that? Who is it? Yeah. Guy's name's Eric. He's fucking great. He's a problem solver. The one used to date the stripper? No. He's uh he's what I like to call a meat and potatoes electrician. I had him uh I had him do the new showroom. That's where I met him. He's uh one of my brother's friends. And uh I I had him come over and I had him help me try to lay out the lights. Like what's gonna make the most sense in this space. And he goes, bro, I hooked the shit up. I don't give a fuck what you do, what you want. He goes, You tell me what you want, and that's what I make fucking work. There you go. And I'm like, meat and potatoes, man. This is the guy who can fucking fix anything, he can hook up anything. He passed the fucking City of Brookfield electrical inspection, so that's great. Gotta be. And uh, yeah. That dude's problem solved a bunch of shit for my family now. He's fucking amazing. Nice. And he was one third the price of the other two quotes I got. So I'll double check his work for him. Yeah. Now that I'm an
Sign-Off And Weekly Drop
electrician. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. Top shelf stories again every Tuesday in your ears. We're here to tell you tales of the things we do each day. Show you how to do them. Jay, you forgot the eleven second rule. See you next week. Thanks for tuning in.
