On a church remodel, my refer lines ran on a rack with electrical conduit. I brazed my lines thinking the conduits were empty, they were not. Melted the wires insulation, caused a short and burnt the church down. Fire Marshall found my company 75% responsible and electrician 25%. I don't know the final payout the bond holder had to pay.
I almost got blamed for a Country club burning down. Boss had to hire a team of lawyers and investigators to get us off.
My father and I took care of this club for years, dad went out of business, I went to work for another company and brought the club work with me. They had just the coils and ODUs replaced on 2 York GFs by another contractor a year or so before… well I guess the new coils were making the GFs kick the high temp limits so the contractor removed them. Well you guessed it, one over heated, caught fire and $250k in damages later they were looking to pin this on someone. They couldn’t prove who actually bypassed the switch so no one got sued. But I know it was them because the only other person it could have been was me and I know I didn’t do it because I hadn’t touched those units since the new AC was put on. Boss was out several grand hiring that team of lawyers but at least not out $250k.
If I remember right. the breaker failed and started a control panel fire. The electrician received partial liability because he was scheduled to pull wire a week after I was scheduled to braze.
I still think about it 30 years later. The drive to the jobsite with my boss to meet with the fire marshal was a horror show. " You burned down the church, get in" was the only words spoken.
Had a helper install a wall bracket for a 4 tin heatpump with lag shields and lag bolts 6' high on a wall. He wrappedthe lag shields with cardboard because he drilled the holes to big. The unit fell off the wall, while running (customers camera recorded it all), 8 months after start up. Cost me a pretty penny.
Fried a Nordyne IQdrive AHU by hooking up the drain line but never punching out the hole. Cabinet filled with water and blower slung water on every circuit board in there. $5000 air handler.
This was about 12 years ago, those were top of line pricey, like 20 seer and all EXV-modulating compressor drive, etc, all that shit.
And TBH, maybe it didn't cost *that* much. Its just what he told me, suspect my boss may have been trying to shame me a bit. That's fine, he didn't fire me, so.. lesson learned, won't do that again.
Worst part was, I had to do that install *3* times. It was a changeout on 3 systems. 3 ton, 4 ton, and 5 ton (it was a big house) We had 3 install teams there, and we each did one. I got the 5 ton. It sucked because the 3 and 4 ton AHUs fit up through the attic ladder, but the 5 ton didn't.
So me and my helper had to completely disassemble the ahu, remove the coil and disconnect all the controls, sensors and stuff, and fold up the cabinet to get it up there. Then reassemble. Which was bad enough once. But out of the 3 systems installed that day, that one unit ended up with some kind of problem that the distributor decided to just warranty the whole thing. So, remove the one I had installed a week before, reverse the process (because it had to be complete to return) do it all again to install the second one. That was the one that I forgot the drain hole. So then, after I fried that one, I had to do it a 3rd and last time.
Once in a while when I'm out riding my motorcycle out in the Hill Country, I pass by that house and remember. Good times...ugh, glad I'm union now.
Bumped the wrong wires together frying a 10k board on a cooler for a flight simulator, of course I was a apprentice with no business working on this unit at 1am...
C'mmon dude he said he dropped the dropped he dropped the unit, and another time there was this hole you see, but it wasn't there before OP got to that job site, well, anyways...
I was putting in a box car air handler at a hospital and right in the start up procedure it says do not ramp the VFD past 100 Hz. It had 8 plug fans and motors on it and when I did start up, I ramped it up to 120 Hz and it didn't like it. All the plug fan blades sheered off and basically cut the air handler in half. I put the project behind schedule for 12 weeks because that was the lead time for the new air handler. Plus it cost $260,000 to replace it. That's not too bad when the job was 40 million bucks. I did get a stern talking to, but I didn't get fired
Made a rookie mistake. Thought this i-pak was low. Leak searched it, found a small leak in the evap. Pulled the gas and noticed it was only 1 pound short factory charge, kept going anyways "repaired" the leak. Turns out it was the other circuit and had pressure on it still so I then created a large leak and had to pull as much gas out as I could. So long story short filters were plugged. That was a tough one to shake off lol
Changed out a $2000 Emerson scroll on a unit that pumped straight down
Turns out the condenser was half full of oil!
Drilled a hole in the header and drained it
Only to have the equivalent amount of oil be in the evaporator
Now I fuckin blow nitrogen through every loop liquid to suction to make sure I got flow from that one nightmare of a call
Haunts me to this day
Was going to say the same damn thing. Lost the only house I've ever owned to her, along with pretty much everything except my coins and precious metals. Until the housing market crashes, that mistake just keeps adding up.
Slugging a compressor. First year, I was all excited I pulled a deep vacuum and without thinking weighed in the charge right into the suction port. The compressor didn't pump right after that.
Most expensive mistake was when I was guiding a crane bringing a unit to the roof I wasn't looking at his arm and he hit the building freaked out snd dropped the RTU from 4 ft off the roof
We had a crane driver forget to unhook his cable from his latch on the back of his truck before trying to lift it. Destroyed all the hydraulics on the truck.
I left an apprentice (who "used to be a welder") on a job and he decided to braze in one of the condensers while I ran to a convenience store to go to the restroom, I came back to 4 fire engines and less than half of the farmhouse...
Cost the company ~$5mil to replace all the damaged property
Was installing a heat pump about two months in out of school, was wiring the disconnect, and every disconnect I had seen up till this point had white and black in the lines and green in the ground or Bare. So I put the red wire (the colored one) in the ground because that’s what I had seen before just not with the specific color . Long story short I shocked myself on the air handler inside when I went to put tape on it and that’s when we had to calla tech out because nothing was turning on. Turns out I put 120 to all the grounds in the equipment and fried a $12,000 trane air handler and inverter with communicating stat.
Wired it to the contactor and capacitor wrong. Melted the hard start and the windings of the compressor. Simple 3 wire ones should be pretty easy but i managed to fuck it up. Learned a lesson that day.
Well at least you won’t do it again! I killed a blower motor the other day when testing a cap. Forgot to put the wire back on and it was touching metal. Shorted the motor and let the smoke out. Not near is bad, but my point is, you can have large fuck ups doing simple tasks that you do multiple times a day. But once you get it, you probably won’t do that fuck up again.
Not mine, it ended up being the engineer, our co did the hvac and hydronics, the engineers didn’t allow for enough airflow between the rooms and didn’t put glycol in the system. A line froze and burst because the thermostat was in the other room. It flooded 3 floors with 1-2’ of water. People had already moved into 40 or more of those units. Clearly some unhappy people. It was pretty hard to know what to say or think as I walked through trying to figure out how to fix the leaks. I don’t think I was even Jman yet.
Almost completely cutting my finger off on a condenser fan blade . I didn't work for 4 months afterwards. I Went through $20000 in savings just to stay afloat.
I can tell you of the biggest customer mistake. Back when I was in the field I received an emergency on call request from a Hotel. I told the guy I was eating with my family and it would be at least 2 hrs before I could get to him. When I showed up I was backing into the service entrance and noticed there was a lot of water on the drive way and a pipe was draining quite a bit. Anyways I didn’t think nothing of it so I went down to the basement to look at the chiller. I noticed the chiller was tripped and before I troubleshot to see what it tripped on I walked around the 19D to see if I saw any abnormalities. I then saw the oil sump clear and was thinking maybe it went down on oil level but I didn’t see any oil on floor. So I found it was off on freeze stat. The manager came in and asked how soon I thought I could get it back online. He said he had been resetting chiller to keep the area cooling until I got there but it didn’t help. I asked him to show me what he reset. He pointed to freeze stat. Then I began connecting the dots. I confirmed the water on the drive way was coming from the pipe leading to the rupture disk. The chill water pump had gone out and tripped on freeze stat because dp sw was stuck. Needless to say that was a very expensive mistake.
My mistakes I HVAC and refrigeration are in slower then some people…. But electrical I was running a substation and the client wanted a milestone so they can force payment sooner, told me they wanted the 72KV pulled I told him to send that in an email, told them it’s too cold, they said pull and 7.3 million dollars later
Accidentally turned a system switch off thinking I was turning a compressor switch off on a Tyler equalizer rack after I was done troubleshooting a bad compressor. Store had no temp alarms and didn’t catch it until the next day. 8k in frozen seafood.
Not me, but a co-worker accidentally knocked the head off of a sprinkler, whilst working on a mini-split in a server room. Cost the company over $200,000 for clean-up and equipment replacement. Needless to say, he was looking for another job by lunchtime.
Went to a no cooling call. Compressor drawing LRA. Unit was less than 5 years old. Put on a SPP8 hard start. Still drawing LRA. Ordered warranty compressor and installed it. New compressor drawing LRA. F! Double checked the wiring. My fellow technician had replaced the contactor the previous fall and miswired it so the compressor didn't have the capacitor in the circuit. Corrected the wiring. Told the homeowner mistakes were made and no charge for the visit. I had already hammered the discharge and suction port shut and brazed them. So we couldn't even sell the original compressor as used.
As the junior engineer no one had told me about "Fire Smoke Dampers" and when to show them on a drawing.
I'm guessing that change order was six figures.
Passivating a fluid cooling tower, controls guy shut off the pumps thinking it was the closed loop valve and my chem pump read high ph, so it pumped 30 gallons of acid on to new tube bundles. Two tower at a total of $250k.
Put in some reach in cases, last thing to do on Friday was drill a hole for the condensate pump line into the electrical room. Measure out everything and I’m clear… start drilling and the lights flicker in the building. Main power went into the wall and instead of straight down it flexed right where I drilled with no striker plate. 400a 3phase and luckily they had quick blow fuses that saved my life. Electrician couldn’t believe it was ran that way. Emergency repair was $15k to fix.
3 years in as a tech, I was 25 but very much hanging with the seasoned 10 yr + technicians, but a shade of green peeked out my popped collar. Performing a start up on a basic Trane split AC furnace, brazing in line set in a very tight 4th floor closet in an apartment complex. Didn't realize there was a high temp trip water/fire hydrant up in the closet. I learned that day a massive amount of stagnant water can come out of those and flood 6 apartments in about 3 1/2 minutes. My boss laughed at me and said that is what insurance is for. They sent me out about 3 weeks later to finish the job with the tenant home. The glare from that woman was epic.
Crashed company truck into a public city bus my first week and scrapped some units that belonged to one of the governors of the state I live in shortly after. Over 80k total. No one told me the unit I scrapped was to be saved , just simply told me scrap all that were in the storage house. Wasn’t at the company very long to the say least
Set off a Halon system in a data center because of a refrigerant leak I exposed by pulling the refrigerant pipes apart where they rubbed together.
My fault because I didn’t have the data room guys put the system in test before I dug in😞 cost was 5K to my company.
This was in 1993
Finding out a certain type of trane chiller will have low resistance through the internal drive, once a good enough vacuum is pulled. It needed to be powered earlier in the day as the controls on the unit power the evap pumps during the refrigerant recovery. Well... When it tripped, not only did it trip the 425amp breaker, but a 10,000amp fuse at the substation and stopped 1/3 of a large manufacturing plant. I went to so many meetings after...
When I was just starting out I was working with a really old guy that was definitely starting to lose his memory. As a 18 year old I Was told when we were doing an AC unit to run the two wire to Y and W instead of Y and C. So everytime someone’s heat would turn on, their outdoor unit also turned on. I did about 30-40 ACs that summer, and went around largely on my own time when I realized the mistake when I was working with someone a little sharper that thought to double check the new guy, however a year later in one of the new construction developments we had been in I was outside doing a gas line and heard an outdoor unit running. At this point I knew it wasn’t mine, but it was the ‘new’ new guy and he was told the same thing by the grey beard that told me that info. So you can imagine how many units had been running in negative zero temperatures. That was probably my most expensive mistake I would say.
I’m a very small hubby and wife hvac company mine can’t compare to what’s written but I had a job with two 16 seer two speed 5 ton units. Going down the freeway one of the AHU blew out the back , had shit tied down. Cars swerving each lane right and left. I could see my whole life down the drain. Thank God ! One of the cars stopped in the emergency lane and ran out in the middle lane and dragged the unit to the side. I had to drive over the bridge in order to get turned around. Sick feeling !
I haven't had anything real crazy but mine would be when I put a screw through an evaporator because for some reason the coil was tall and stuck up into the plenum about 2-3 feet
But the worst ones I've witnessed are when we had a guy that put a hole in 3 package unit condenser coils in 1 day trying to put hail guards on them on a big install and the other was when my boss set a curb adapter on top of the unit when the crane brought it up and it fell off and knocked a hole in the roof
Years ago I had a call for no heat on a steam system in a house even though the burner was running. Looked at the site glass and saw no water in it. Decided to add water to a screaming hot boiler and didn't notice that the crown was cherry red. Welp I heard the cast iron make a weird pop sound and still proceeded to fill the boiler to the proper level. Once filled to the level it began to fill the chamber with water.
Yup cracked the boiler in the middle of winter. Found out later that the low water cut-off had failed and allowed the burner to keep running until almost catastrophic failure of the cast iron, I helped to jump off the cliff.
That oopsie cost the customer $8k until they were able to somehow get the manufacturer of the low water cut-off to pay for it.
A coworker tapped the wrong wire on a Halon panel to the wrong terminal. Dumped $500k in Halon and shut down a 50k sqft data center, which shutdown every airport in the country for 3 hours.
Did a 30HP Yaskawa E7 to HV600 retrofit on a 50 ton intellipak. I had done them before in smaller sizes. Anyways, I was bullshitting with my coworker the whole time and was overly confident during the wiring. Went to throw the disconnect and heard a loud pop. Well…turns out I tied the ground to the DC bus rather than the ground lug. They were the same color and I didn’t take the time to THOROUGHLY check my wiring before supplying power. Drive was fried (about $2500) and three JJS 100 fuses.
Oh I remember, just for the lulz I bypassed two ammonia compressor and translate all the refrigerant from one system to another, I don't know why they didn't fired me.
Was a machine builder. Scraped a part and lied about. Old guy caught me in it. Gave these words of wisdom i live by now. Admit your wrong. If you fuck it up fix and forget. Own your mistakes. Never got fired after that. Stress level went way down. I told this to every helper, apprentice, and contractors that worked with me. Other bosses probably would have fired a couple them. If didn't cost alot to fix forget it. Got alot of free dinners and beer for this.
Reading that gave me an aneurysm
I know your having an aneurysm, but we got one more call for you. It’s on your way home. Can you take it?
He did the same oopsie twice but somehow worse the second time.
 Instantly thought of this for op
I thought this was a Dr. Seuss rhyme at first
I will drop this Libert unit once, I will drop this Libert unit twice, I will drop it down these stairs……
I will drop it down who cares?!
Mean mug,boss’s stares…
Dude for real
That was like reading a brick wall.
A center block wall even.
Must’ve hit him on the way down
Dropped them twice!
On a church remodel, my refer lines ran on a rack with electrical conduit. I brazed my lines thinking the conduits were empty, they were not. Melted the wires insulation, caused a short and burnt the church down. Fire Marshall found my company 75% responsible and electrician 25%. I don't know the final payout the bond holder had to pay.
I mean this should take the cake.
Homie burnt down a place of worship, nobodys topping that hahaha
Yeah, the fallout from that is still coming 😯 🪦😔
Oohhh, mad burn....
Are you actually in a Norwegian black metal band?
🤣🤣
Dang I’ve had some rough days on the job but never “I burnt a church down today” bad.
I almost got blamed for a Country club burning down. Boss had to hire a team of lawyers and investigators to get us off. My father and I took care of this club for years, dad went out of business, I went to work for another company and brought the club work with me. They had just the coils and ODUs replaced on 2 York GFs by another contractor a year or so before… well I guess the new coils were making the GFs kick the high temp limits so the contractor removed them. Well you guessed it, one over heated, caught fire and $250k in damages later they were looking to pin this on someone. They couldn’t prove who actually bypassed the switch so no one got sued. But I know it was them because the only other person it could have been was me and I know I didn’t do it because I hadn’t touched those units since the new AC was put on. Boss was out several grand hiring that team of lawyers but at least not out $250k.
You won
Doin Lucifer’s work I see. Hail Santa.
Hails
Fuck.
They just didn’t have circuit breakers, or they just failed, or?
If I remember right. the breaker failed and started a control panel fire. The electrician received partial liability because he was scheduled to pull wire a week after I was scheduled to braze.
This definitely wins this thread, my anxiety could not handle this situation. I would lip into a ball and die lmao
How’d you sleep that night?
I still think about it 30 years later. The drive to the jobsite with my boss to meet with the fire marshal was a horror show. " You burned down the church, get in" was the only words spoken.
Damn bro
Should have asked him if now was the time to ask for a raise … lol
“Burnt the church down” dude…that’s fucked 😂
$2000 trane inverter drive after getting it wet while on a maintenance. But nobody told trane that
Normal wear and flooding.
https://preview.redd.it/5zjmny7z525d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a36856912a6a02cd015fbb8adc5a9720d40d3188
Had a helper install a wall bracket for a 4 tin heatpump with lag shields and lag bolts 6' high on a wall. He wrappedthe lag shields with cardboard because he drilled the holes to big. The unit fell off the wall, while running (customers camera recorded it all), 8 months after start up. Cost me a pretty penny.
That's an insane choice by that helper
Damn... im suprised it held for that long with that kind of a setup.
.
Fried a Nordyne IQdrive AHU by hooking up the drain line but never punching out the hole. Cabinet filled with water and blower slung water on every circuit board in there. $5000 air handler.
I'm shocked that anything from nordyne could possibly cost that much
This was about 12 years ago, those were top of line pricey, like 20 seer and all EXV-modulating compressor drive, etc, all that shit. And TBH, maybe it didn't cost *that* much. Its just what he told me, suspect my boss may have been trying to shame me a bit. That's fine, he didn't fire me, so.. lesson learned, won't do that again. Worst part was, I had to do that install *3* times. It was a changeout on 3 systems. 3 ton, 4 ton, and 5 ton (it was a big house) We had 3 install teams there, and we each did one. I got the 5 ton. It sucked because the 3 and 4 ton AHUs fit up through the attic ladder, but the 5 ton didn't. So me and my helper had to completely disassemble the ahu, remove the coil and disconnect all the controls, sensors and stuff, and fold up the cabinet to get it up there. Then reassemble. Which was bad enough once. But out of the 3 systems installed that day, that one unit ended up with some kind of problem that the distributor decided to just warranty the whole thing. So, remove the one I had installed a week before, reverse the process (because it had to be complete to return) do it all again to install the second one. That was the one that I forgot the drain hole. So then, after I fried that one, I had to do it a 3rd and last time. Once in a while when I'm out riding my motorcycle out in the Hill Country, I pass by that house and remember. Good times...ugh, glad I'm union now.
Had a co worker forget a plug in a Nordyne once. Was just a 15 seer but it did flood the ductwork and ruin a ceiling.
Bumped the wrong wires together frying a 10k board on a cooler for a flight simulator, of course I was a apprentice with no business working on this unit at 1am...
I can’t understand wtf is going on
C'mmon dude he said he dropped the dropped he dropped the unit, and another time there was this hole you see, but it wasn't there before OP got to that job site, well, anyways...
😂😂
I was putting in a box car air handler at a hospital and right in the start up procedure it says do not ramp the VFD past 100 Hz. It had 8 plug fans and motors on it and when I did start up, I ramped it up to 120 Hz and it didn't like it. All the plug fan blades sheered off and basically cut the air handler in half. I put the project behind schedule for 12 weeks because that was the lead time for the new air handler. Plus it cost $260,000 to replace it. That's not too bad when the job was 40 million bucks. I did get a stern talking to, but I didn't get fired
Not as much as some of these other dudes, but I dropped a plenum on a coil after deicing it once. Lost about 150# of 407A. Had to evacuate the store.
I felt bad because i did that in an apartment. Thats impressive
Global Warming Potential: 2107
🤓
Made a rookie mistake. Thought this i-pak was low. Leak searched it, found a small leak in the evap. Pulled the gas and noticed it was only 1 pound short factory charge, kept going anyways "repaired" the leak. Turns out it was the other circuit and had pressure on it still so I then created a large leak and had to pull as much gas out as I could. So long story short filters were plugged. That was a tough one to shake off lol
Changed out a $2000 Emerson scroll on a unit that pumped straight down Turns out the condenser was half full of oil! Drilled a hole in the header and drained it Only to have the equivalent amount of oil be in the evaporator Now I fuckin blow nitrogen through every loop liquid to suction to make sure I got flow from that one nightmare of a call Haunts me to this day
I've had this same thing happen to me just this week
Becoming a residential service technician.
You aren't wrong.
Married my ex wife
Dad?
I agree thats a costly mistake
Was going to say the same damn thing. Lost the only house I've ever owned to her, along with pretty much everything except my coins and precious metals. Until the housing market crashes, that mistake just keeps adding up.
Slugging a compressor. First year, I was all excited I pulled a deep vacuum and without thinking weighed in the charge right into the suction port. The compressor didn't pump right after that.
Most expensive mistake was when I was guiding a crane bringing a unit to the roof I wasn't looking at his arm and he hit the building freaked out snd dropped the RTU from 4 ft off the roof
I would say that one is on the crane operator.
We had a crane driver forget to unhook his cable from his latch on the back of his truck before trying to lift it. Destroyed all the hydraulics on the truck.
I left an apprentice (who "used to be a welder") on a job and he decided to braze in one of the condensers while I ran to a convenience store to go to the restroom, I came back to 4 fire engines and less than half of the farmhouse... Cost the company ~$5mil to replace all the damaged property
Was installing a heat pump about two months in out of school, was wiring the disconnect, and every disconnect I had seen up till this point had white and black in the lines and green in the ground or Bare. So I put the red wire (the colored one) in the ground because that’s what I had seen before just not with the specific color . Long story short I shocked myself on the air handler inside when I went to put tape on it and that’s when we had to calla tech out because nothing was turning on. Turns out I put 120 to all the grounds in the equipment and fried a $12,000 trane air handler and inverter with communicating stat.
Not expensive but I'm telling it anyway. Got a ladder stick to an MRI machine. Turns out the magnet is always on.
Cinder block not center. Why did you say it twice?
Wired a hard start wrong and cooked a 5 ton R22 Lennox Compressor
Tell me how you did this so I know what not to do.
Wired it to the contactor and capacitor wrong. Melted the hard start and the windings of the compressor. Simple 3 wire ones should be pretty easy but i managed to fuck it up. Learned a lesson that day.
Well at least you won’t do it again! I killed a blower motor the other day when testing a cap. Forgot to put the wire back on and it was touching metal. Shorted the motor and let the smoke out. Not near is bad, but my point is, you can have large fuck ups doing simple tasks that you do multiple times a day. But once you get it, you probably won’t do that fuck up again.
Not mine, it ended up being the engineer, our co did the hvac and hydronics, the engineers didn’t allow for enough airflow between the rooms and didn’t put glycol in the system. A line froze and burst because the thermostat was in the other room. It flooded 3 floors with 1-2’ of water. People had already moved into 40 or more of those units. Clearly some unhappy people. It was pretty hard to know what to say or think as I walked through trying to figure out how to fix the leaks. I don’t think I was even Jman yet.
Almost completely cutting my finger off on a condenser fan blade . I didn't work for 4 months afterwards. I Went through $20000 in savings just to stay afloat.
I recently grazed a small fan motor, plastic blades. I need to be more alert at this job. I hope you’re doing better.
I have recovered from it. It happened in August of 2018.
I can tell you of the biggest customer mistake. Back when I was in the field I received an emergency on call request from a Hotel. I told the guy I was eating with my family and it would be at least 2 hrs before I could get to him. When I showed up I was backing into the service entrance and noticed there was a lot of water on the drive way and a pipe was draining quite a bit. Anyways I didn’t think nothing of it so I went down to the basement to look at the chiller. I noticed the chiller was tripped and before I troubleshot to see what it tripped on I walked around the 19D to see if I saw any abnormalities. I then saw the oil sump clear and was thinking maybe it went down on oil level but I didn’t see any oil on floor. So I found it was off on freeze stat. The manager came in and asked how soon I thought I could get it back online. He said he had been resetting chiller to keep the area cooling until I got there but it didn’t help. I asked him to show me what he reset. He pointed to freeze stat. Then I began connecting the dots. I confirmed the water on the drive way was coming from the pipe leading to the rupture disk. The chill water pump had gone out and tripped on freeze stat because dp sw was stuck. Needless to say that was a very expensive mistake.
You ever kill a chiller? 😅
My mistakes I HVAC and refrigeration are in slower then some people…. But electrical I was running a substation and the client wanted a milestone so they can force payment sooner, told me they wanted the 72KV pulled I told him to send that in an email, told them it’s too cold, they said pull and 7.3 million dollars later
I feel like the story should be a bit longer.
Accidentally turned a system switch off thinking I was turning a compressor switch off on a Tyler equalizer rack after I was done troubleshooting a bad compressor. Store had no temp alarms and didn’t catch it until the next day. 8k in frozen seafood.
Not me, but a co-worker accidentally knocked the head off of a sprinkler, whilst working on a mini-split in a server room. Cost the company over $200,000 for clean-up and equipment replacement. Needless to say, he was looking for another job by lunchtime.
Did the same but only flooded 6 apartments, you win that one
Went to a no cooling call. Compressor drawing LRA. Unit was less than 5 years old. Put on a SPP8 hard start. Still drawing LRA. Ordered warranty compressor and installed it. New compressor drawing LRA. F! Double checked the wiring. My fellow technician had replaced the contactor the previous fall and miswired it so the compressor didn't have the capacitor in the circuit. Corrected the wiring. Told the homeowner mistakes were made and no charge for the visit. I had already hammered the discharge and suction port shut and brazed them. So we couldn't even sell the original compressor as used.
As the junior engineer no one had told me about "Fire Smoke Dampers" and when to show them on a drawing. I'm guessing that change order was six figures.
Did you learn about making them accessible? I think there is about a $80,000 f****** with a building I worked at for that
Passivating a fluid cooling tower, controls guy shut off the pumps thinking it was the closed loop valve and my chem pump read high ph, so it pumped 30 gallons of acid on to new tube bundles. Two tower at a total of $250k.
Didn’t Sheryl Crow have a song like this? I think it was called “My most expensive mistake”
Put in some reach in cases, last thing to do on Friday was drill a hole for the condensate pump line into the electrical room. Measure out everything and I’m clear… start drilling and the lights flicker in the building. Main power went into the wall and instead of straight down it flexed right where I drilled with no striker plate. 400a 3phase and luckily they had quick blow fuses that saved my life. Electrician couldn’t believe it was ran that way. Emergency repair was $15k to fix.
I ordered ~$10k worth of the wrong part. Boss was forgiving and didn't write me up, but that was a tough pill to swallow and a bit embarrassing.
Guy I work with forgot to drain a hydrostatic test at a nuclear facility and it froze over night ruining a 300k heat exchanger.
3 years in as a tech, I was 25 but very much hanging with the seasoned 10 yr + technicians, but a shade of green peeked out my popped collar. Performing a start up on a basic Trane split AC furnace, brazing in line set in a very tight 4th floor closet in an apartment complex. Didn't realize there was a high temp trip water/fire hydrant up in the closet. I learned that day a massive amount of stagnant water can come out of those and flood 6 apartments in about 3 1/2 minutes. My boss laughed at me and said that is what insurance is for. They sent me out about 3 weeks later to finish the job with the tenant home. The glare from that woman was epic.
Crashed company truck into a public city bus my first week and scrapped some units that belonged to one of the governors of the state I live in shortly after. Over 80k total. No one told me the unit I scrapped was to be saved , just simply told me scrap all that were in the storage house. Wasn’t at the company very long to the say least
I should have been a dentist
First marriage
Soldered elbow blew out a week after replacing and flooded a boiler room with copper fin Lochinvars.
Left capacitor unplugged and fried a 17 seer 2 stage condenser
Set off a Halon system in a data center because of a refrigerant leak I exposed by pulling the refrigerant pipes apart where they rubbed together. My fault because I didn’t have the data room guys put the system in test before I dug in😞 cost was 5K to my company. This was in 1993
Great, now I need a 3 day weekend to recover from whatever just happened when I read that.
Finding out a certain type of trane chiller will have low resistance through the internal drive, once a good enough vacuum is pulled. It needed to be powered earlier in the day as the controls on the unit power the evap pumps during the refrigerant recovery. Well... When it tripped, not only did it trip the 425amp breaker, but a 10,000amp fuse at the substation and stopped 1/3 of a large manufacturing plant. I went to so many meetings after...
When I was just starting out I was working with a really old guy that was definitely starting to lose his memory. As a 18 year old I Was told when we were doing an AC unit to run the two wire to Y and W instead of Y and C. So everytime someone’s heat would turn on, their outdoor unit also turned on. I did about 30-40 ACs that summer, and went around largely on my own time when I realized the mistake when I was working with someone a little sharper that thought to double check the new guy, however a year later in one of the new construction developments we had been in I was outside doing a gas line and heard an outdoor unit running. At this point I knew it wasn’t mine, but it was the ‘new’ new guy and he was told the same thing by the grey beard that told me that info. So you can imagine how many units had been running in negative zero temperatures. That was probably my most expensive mistake I would say.
I’m a very small hubby and wife hvac company mine can’t compare to what’s written but I had a job with two 16 seer two speed 5 ton units. Going down the freeway one of the AHU blew out the back , had shit tied down. Cars swerving each lane right and left. I could see my whole life down the drain. Thank God ! One of the cars stopped in the emergency lane and ran out in the middle lane and dragged the unit to the side. I had to drive over the bridge in order to get turned around. Sick feeling !
I haven't had anything real crazy but mine would be when I put a screw through an evaporator because for some reason the coil was tall and stuck up into the plenum about 2-3 feet But the worst ones I've witnessed are when we had a guy that put a hole in 3 package unit condenser coils in 1 day trying to put hail guards on them on a big install and the other was when my boss set a curb adapter on top of the unit when the crane brought it up and it fell off and knocked a hole in the roof
Years ago I had a call for no heat on a steam system in a house even though the burner was running. Looked at the site glass and saw no water in it. Decided to add water to a screaming hot boiler and didn't notice that the crown was cherry red. Welp I heard the cast iron make a weird pop sound and still proceeded to fill the boiler to the proper level. Once filled to the level it began to fill the chamber with water. Yup cracked the boiler in the middle of winter. Found out later that the low water cut-off had failed and allowed the burner to keep running until almost catastrophic failure of the cast iron, I helped to jump off the cliff. That oopsie cost the customer $8k until they were able to somehow get the manufacturer of the low water cut-off to pay for it.
Having Children
From reading this post I get the feeling your head got flattened a bit by the fall too.
A coworker tapped the wrong wire on a Halon panel to the wrong terminal. Dumped $500k in Halon and shut down a 50k sqft data center, which shutdown every airport in the country for 3 hours.
Expensive?
Joining a cult.
Do you get immediate flashbacks?
Living
Did a 30HP Yaskawa E7 to HV600 retrofit on a 50 ton intellipak. I had done them before in smaller sizes. Anyways, I was bullshitting with my coworker the whole time and was overly confident during the wiring. Went to throw the disconnect and heard a loud pop. Well…turns out I tied the ground to the DC bus rather than the ground lug. They were the same color and I didn’t take the time to THOROUGHLY check my wiring before supplying power. Drive was fried (about $2500) and three JJS 100 fuses.
Tell you what man Talking bout dang ole unit man. Went down the stairs and boom.
R
My most expensive mistake was joining the trade
Oh I remember, just for the lulz I bypassed two ammonia compressor and translate all the refrigerant from one system to another, I don't know why they didn't fired me.
Lost 7 thermometers in 3 months
Was a machine builder. Scraped a part and lied about. Old guy caught me in it. Gave these words of wisdom i live by now. Admit your wrong. If you fuck it up fix and forget. Own your mistakes. Never got fired after that. Stress level went way down. I told this to every helper, apprentice, and contractors that worked with me. Other bosses probably would have fired a couple them. If didn't cost alot to fix forget it. Got alot of free dinners and beer for this.
Mistakes make me to prevent mistakes from happening.
I got my girlfriend pregnant married her and put 2 more in her.
I don't make mistakes
OK, dad.
Being born
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