On becoming an electrician

BrutulTM said:

Who's installing fluorescent tubes in this day and age? The LED ones barely weigh more than the ceiling panels themselves and they're dimmable.

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Sorry to be clear that is what we are pulling out and replacing with led. It is the old ass insulation that is getting everywhere, the office environment so we have to cover everything before pulling out the old. The stupid fucking tiles that you have to jigsaw into place because installation is bent here and there or screwed in for some reason.
The stupid sprinkler caps that barely fit on.
Then the leds themselves have the smallest flimsiest box in them so fuck you if you have more then 3 wires, and fuck over the next guy because you have to shorten them significantly to fit.

Doesn’t help I hate office environments on the whole and becoming a electrician to avoid them. Give me a dirty machine shop all day.

You can go industrial so when it's 100F and 100% humidity in Houston you can work outside. I see them sometimes when it's raining or threat of rain they have little tents to cover them. Must pay well I know guys that have been doing it for the same employer/same location and plant for 30 years. I guess it cuts down on travel. But guessing most work is like mine and such. Like Exxon maintenance shop is heated and cooled.

Yeah they work turnarounds here and a lot are in winter, but it's not that cold. The biggest of the 3 B's I worked (something Broke down, something Burned up, something Blew up) it was about 2F in Baton Rouge on Christmas eve and a valve stuck/let go coming off a tank. Big boom that leveled a large number of houses and buildings, Exxon bought the land and it now a wildflower planted area lol. But on the gulf coast fall and spring turnarounds are normal times and it's not normally that hot or that cold. But when something breaks in my experience shit never goes wrong on a sunny 75F day at 2 in the afternoon. It does at 2am when it is cold and raining.

But the guys that are electricians that actually work for Exxon and not a contractor they almost always work in the maintenance shop and like I mentioned it's heated and cooled which is nice. When I worked in San Antonio their shop was cooled for large plate fabrication and all those shops have a full time electrician to keep the heavy machinery going and they rarely work overtime other than when something breaks. It's not a regular thing like some industries that work 60 hours a week every week. Of course I have noticed the guys that are working there that are electricians kind of get roped into doing other thit all the time as well. Not hard work, but they might wire up a light for a crawfish table the owner had made.

Borzak said:

You can go industrial so when it's 100F and 100% humidity in Houston you can work outside. I see them sometimes when it's raining or threat of rain they have little tents to cover them. Must pay well I know guys that have been doing it for the same employer/same location and plant for 30 years. I guess it cuts down on travel. But guessing most work is like mine and such. Like Exxon maintenance shop is heated and cooled.

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Yeah all the buildings I currently work in are not temperature controlled, the plan is industrial but we will see come year 3. I am reading the tests and training is different as well for industrial and almost no flexibility for other types.

BrutulTM said:

My cousin was a union pipe fitter at a Conoco refinery and he took a (non-union) job working directly for Conoco. I had no idea how controversial that was and I don't think he really did either. He was immediately blackballed from working for the union again and a lot of his friends from the union won't even speak to him anymore. He doesn't care because he likes the new job and it was for better wages and nicer work conditions as you said, but I was pretty surprised how pissed off people got about it.

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I think most if not all electricinans I run into on site are unionized. At one time Exxon was almost entirely unionized. Until about the early 80s when the state went right to work and Exxon split off a ton of workers to contract companies like Jacobs and such. The only non plublbing and electrician union people I know are the boilermakers which are basically maintenance for steel/structures/tanks and such. I know the head of the boilermaker union pretty well and it's not a super strong or big union. Few members and they really can't call up the union and say "we need X more guys" like big unions can.

Guy I worked with a lot who is 25 ish years older than me was a pipe welder and the local union trained him and he went to Ak to wrok on the pipeline. Then when the petrochemical bust happened in the early 80s they sent him around the country to do "something" for work. He got out of it and became what I did for a living, drawing stuff. He said he liked it though and the union did all the training locally in town to get started, but that was a long time ago.

Anyone who can even fake being a tradesman should consiser coming to LA. After the fires there's an infinite amount of work to be had and they'll be able to charge whatever they want for as much time as they're willing to put in.

Kajiimagi said:

Downside is , you have to be in LA

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Consider it hazard pay. There are lots of worse places people work willingly.

Post hurricanes the shady illegals come in by t he busload that can't even tell which end of a screw driver to use on a screw. They may avoid some of the issues with the mass amount of permits that will be required or they will have something similar to the Chinese drywall post Katrina that destroyed house after house and had to be taken out and start all over.

I'm not sure you can get drywall like you could post Katrina. It was in short supply and Home Depot and Lowes bnought Chinese and it went everywhere.

I'm sure it is in short supply there but there were a number of laws on Chinese Drywall aftewards. Of courses that ddoesn't much.

The drywall caused all kind of health problems and most have know no way of knowing it was or wasn't. But Chinese drywall in a house caused the copper wiring to blacken and literally fall appart over time.

Did my first residential today, installed a generator with interlock kit. It was stupid easy and I imagine decent cash if I was doing it as a business.

Kajiimagi said:

You only make money in residential with volume.

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Send some of those low-margin electricians over here. Last fall I got a quote for $15k to do a panel upgrade.