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Three hours on a door switch that took five minutes to find
I spent half a day Tuesday chasing an intermittent fault on a MCE controller in an old office building downtown. Turned out to be a loose connection on the door limit switch that I had checked twice already. Has anyone else had a gremlin like that where you overthink it and miss something dead simple?
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andrew_baker93mo ago
Checked the schematic after finding it? Bet the original installers ran the switch wires daisy-chained through three other devices. Gremlins like that usually trace back to someone saving two feet of wire ten years ago.
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rowan_ross3mo ago
A 2005 study on residential electrical failures found that over 60% of intermittent faults traced back to connections that were never torqued to spec in the first place. That loose switch leg you found? Probably just a hand-tightened wire nut that vibrated loose over a few years... not really "wear" in the normal sense. The original installer might've skipped the torque check on a Friday afternoon and that's the real root cause.
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webb.hannah3mo ago
Blame the installer all you want but loose connections happen from normal wear and tear over time.
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