I got him beat. When I was like 3 or 4 I stuck a bobby pin into an outlet. I ended up getting that u-shaped end of the bobby pin burned into my fingertips. It scared the crap out of me (and hurt) and I didn't tell my parents assuming that spanking would be worse than the burn. My mom found out when she saw the burn in my fingers and found the bobby pin in the outlet in my room.

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Scott D. Hansen
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WOOSH NAR Section #558

Check the fuse/circuit breaker that's in the box attached to your outside wall that feeds the unit.

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Scott D. Hansen
Ye Olde Rocket Shoppe - Your One Stop BAR Shoppe!
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WOOSH NAR Section #558

There's a double breaker in the main breaker panel that is labeled "AC", but I haven't found anything else specific to the outside unit.

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John Thro, NAR #84553 SR
I was too old when I started! Now I'll *never* become a BAR!

Most (if not all) units have a high-pressure cut-off switch that trips out if the freon pressure gets too high in the compressor, such as when the line voltage drops out and comes back up quickly. It is usually located on the panel where the coolant lines and the power cable enter the box. Sometimes it's down near the bottom edge of the unit, almost on the concrete pad. Yours might be hidden behind some grass, a dirt mound, or other view blocker; but I'm almost certain your will have something like it.

Be sure to flip that double breaker off, then on, before counting it out as "good". Been there, done that, too many times now. If the breaker is more than five or six years old, it might be getting weak enough to trip for less than the rated max current. Had to replace mine earlier this summer...

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Craig McGraw

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SAM 0044
AMA 352635

Thanks, Craig. I'll be sure to go and take a closer look around outside.

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John Thro, NAR #84553 SR
I was too old when I started! Now I'll *never* become a BAR!

Bah. Household electricity is not as dangerous as television makes it out to be. Starting in fourth grade I electrocuted myself plenty of times and look how healthy and mentally fit I turned out.... :-)

When I was in elementary school, the school library had books with projects that were actually fun and interesting and involved things like salvaging the wall cord from an old clothes iron to power the contraption. One of these involved extracting the whole carbon rods from 'D' cells (do 'D' cells even have carbon rods inside any more?) suspending the carbon rods over/in a jar of salt water and wrapping one of the aforementioned wires from an clothes iron cord around one of the carbon rods. The contraption then connects to the other iron cord wire and a second carbon rod in the jar.

The jar is a crude rheostat and the resistance is controlled by the salt content of the water.

Woohoo! Look at all those exposed wires plugged into the wall. Every so often I would get confused and touch the wrong two and zzzzzzaaatttt. Full wall current through the hands is an interesting sensation and not a pleasant one, but it never did me any harm. If you're unlucky, it might stop your heart. If you're really really unlucky. You'd have to be super unlucky to have that bad a heart and under the age of 12.

Sticking a screw driver into the outlet is relatively safe by comparison and should not result in any shock. The bigger risk there is flying molten metal, but a screwdriver is (usually) heavy enough not to melt. A paperclip might flash melt and spray hot metal into young eyes. Generally, larger objects in the socket are better. For example, ruin scissors by sticking the blade across a partially plugged in electrical plug.... Another young experiment of mine. Fortunately, I got to the circuit breaker box before my parents noticed the lack of electricity in that part of the house...

Nope, there should be fewer restrictions. The idea that college aged people should not be allowed to drink is ridiculous. Enforce the laws regarding reckless driving (don't need a DWI law) and Disturbing the Peace, and ditch all these over broad laws. If you can drive without weaving, then a few drinks is irrelevant--unless you are also going to start mass arrests of folks who drive while sleepy, drive while over-worked, drive while over-wrought, drive while stupid, etc. In all those cases a person's reactions are impaired, but for some reaosn, only having a few drinks is *evil*. Why?

Heartily agreed! I had my first drink (a small cup of Vodka with lime juice) at age 4 or 5, at a firemen's ball that my fire chief father and my mother attended. They also let me drink a little wine with special holiday meals (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.). Because of this, alcoholic beverages were never a "fobidden fruit" to me, and I was never attracted to "sneaking beers" as a teenager, as many of the other kids in the neighborhood were. Two German exchange students in my school also had the same attitude--since they often drank wine with meals at home, they just couldn't understand why so many of the American kids were excited about drinking beers or wine coolers behind their parents' backs.

I was introduced to firearms in a similar way (with a heavy emphasis on safety, as my father also did in our model rocketry activities). As a result I was, even at age 8, a calm shooter who gently squeezed the trigger instead of getting excited and missing the target altogether as many of the other children whom I knew did.

If parents would go back to actually introducing children to responsible behavior while engaging in potentially hazardous activities as children used to do while growing up (instead of sheathing them in virtual bubble wrap as parents so often do today), they would be amazed at what their children could accomplish safely and at how much faster their children would mature emotionally and intellectually.

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NAR #54895 SR

ya know.....when i was younger and wanted to go fishing, i needed bait. Worms. Couldn't afford to buy them (ok....i just didn't want to pay for something i could get free from the ground). it's amazing how many worms come scrambling out of the ground when you attach the stripped ends of a power cord to a pair of screw drivers, insert said screwdrivers into the ground about 10 feet apart, and then plug said power cord into an electrical outlet.....

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Don
NAR 53455
"Carpe Diem"

But Don, if you had that kind of setup, then why would you even need the worms....?

MarkII

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SAM # 0011