Electrician Joe

06/02/2026

When do I actually stop bending?
I’ve asked a few journeymen, even asked my teacher, and somehow every answer is different — or they explain it in a way that makes even less sense.
Every time I do offsets, it feels like a full guessing game. Bend a little, check it, bend the other side, check it again, walk back and forth, question my life choices, repeat.
How am I supposed to properly use the degree markings on the bender? Am I watching the pipe, the mark, the handle, the star, my hopes and dreams?
Apprentice brain is buffering. Somebody explain offsets before I turn more EMT into modern art.

06/02/2026

How do I make this look like it wasn’t bent by emotional damage?
First-year here looking for some advice on how to tackle this run. It’s 1” EMT, and the first pipe coming out of the box is supposed to be a 45-degree bend.
Ignore the second pipe — that one already lost the fight and is headed to the scrap pile.
What’s the clean way to get these lined up and make the bends match without turning it into conduit spaghetti? Any tips, measurements, or “stop doing that before your journeyman sees it” advice is welcome.

06/02/2026

Need an outdoor outlet sanity check before I start losing my mind
I’ve got two exterior receptacles that randomly stopped working — one on each side of the house. Checked the panel and nothing is tripped. Tested all the GFCI breakers. Walked around the house looking for any hidden/tripped GFCI outlets and didn’t find anything obvious.
The fun part? I have a finished basement, so I can’t even see where the wires come into the house or where they’re fed from.
Anything else I should be checking before I start blaming ghosts, squirrels, or whoever wired this place?

06/02/2026

Working around service conductors — how sketchy is this part of the job?
This isn’t my panel, just a random pic I found to ask the question. But say the main breaker is turned off in a setup like this — those two hot service wires above the main are still live.
So what’s the actual best practice for working safely around them, assuming there’s no upstream service disconnect?
And maybe the more realistic question: what do most electricians actually do in the field?
I realize “best practice” and “what everyone does” might be two very different answers lol.

06/02/2026

If this was in your garage… would you leave it like this or protect the Romex?
The cable going up feeds the attic lighting, the cable going down feeds an outlet, and the one running right goes over to the subpanel.
It works, but the exposed yellow Romex just hanging out on the wall has me wondering if it needs some kind of protection — conduit, wiremold, guard strip, something — or if this is one of those “technically fine but visually stressful” situations.
Garage electricians, would you send it as-is or cover it before a ladder, bike, or random storage bin decides to become part of the circuit?

06/02/2026

06/02/2026

How do I get this broken prong out without accidentally becoming part of the circuit?
I live in an apartment, so I can’t just go flip the breaker off myself. The prong snapped off inside the GFCI outlet, and now I’m trying to figure out the safest way to remove it.
Can I shut the outlet off with the test button and pull it out with rubber-handled pliers, or is that a terrible idea and I should just call maintenance before I turn this into an incident report?
Electrical people, talk me out of doing something dumb.

05/31/2026

Is this normal/acceptable practice?
I’m in new construction residential plumbing, and while doing a trim the other day I noticed the electrician had the outlets prepped like this — basically using the receptacle as the junction point instead of pigtailing everything in the box.
Is this actually fine, or is this one of those “yeah it works, but we don’t love it” situations?
Only asking because my own house was built in 1999 and pretty much every outlet is wired/junctioned this exact same way. Central Florida, USA.
Electricians, roast it or reassure me.

05/31/2026

What in the 1940s special is this top outlet for?
House is from the 1940s here in the US, and I pulled this old receptacle out to replace it. The bottom outlet looks normal enough, but the top one has that weird angled slot setup and now I’m curious.
Was this for some old appliance, radio, lamp, clock, or some kind of “back when everything was made of asbestos and confidence” situation?
Anyone know what this style was actually used for? Because my house is out here giving me electrical archaeology lessons.

05/31/2026

Phase Monitor Relay