Should this grandmother have let her granddaughter squirt herself with a hose?

Meh. My 2.5 year old son will grab and handle anything when we are at a Lowes or Home Depot, this includes hand saws that are on the cart for the cut your own molding… A woman walked by and told him, “Dear, you know that’s sharp?” and obviously loud enough that I could hear it since I was standing right there. I just glanced over my shoulder and said nonchalantly, “He’ll figure it out.” She didn’t look happy about that answer. He put it down a minute later and was more interested in the tape measure anyway.

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Sometimes they don’t. One of my earliest memories is poking myself with barbed wire. I think I did it more than once.

And I fell off a horse. I told my mom I could get down by myself… and I did. Took the most direct route.

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True, and if I thought he was in any real danger I would have stopped him. Circular saw, razor blades, kitchen knives…yeah those are no goes. He was likely to get a few minor scrapes at best, maybe a drop or two of blood - much less damage than he gets when it takes off running as fast as he can and stumbles on the pavement.

I learned about hot things in a hard way. At around his age I thought the steam coming off the muffler on my dad’s push mower was interesting. So I reached out and grabber the muffler. I don’t remember the pain exactly, but I remember screaming and my father’s reaction. I also remember having to be rocked during the night because my hand was in so much pain. I never touched a “hot” thing again.

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Why is this even a question? This is how you learn to take advice from others.

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That isn’t even remotely legal (or safe!) unless you are talking about a dedicated, heavy gauge electric range circuit that has no outlets on it. You can’t safely use a 30 amp fuse with normal NEMA-5-15 outlet, much less a 30 amp breaker! The outlet will fail (quite dramatically and noisily) at some point, probably while your hand’s on the plug.

If you have nominally “normal” wiring and outlets, you should have a 15 amp breaker, because that’s what your wiring and outlets are rated for. However, it is permissible to have a 20 amp breaker if you don’t plug in any devices capable of drawing more than 15 amps and you have 12 gauge wiring.

If you are drawing 25 amps on a typical USA 14 gauge outlet feed circuit, you are progressively melting the insulation off the wires. Depending on how old the wiring is, this will take a highly variable amount of time, but generally it will be years before you completely melt the insulation off, create a spark gap, and burn your house down. So you might not burn the house down while you are actually living in it, and instead incinerate some hapless future owner after you leave.

Seriously. I took up a floor a couple years ago and found bare copper wires with the insulation completely melted away, and three or four spots where fires had started and then (thankfully!) went out of their own accord, probably smoke-choked due to lack of oxygen. The cause was a 25 amp breaker and 15 amp wiring; I guess the previous owners just kept switching it back on whenever the wires arced and the breaker blew.

If the wiring is 12 gauge or better and of recent manufacture, the insulation is probably capable of withstanding the higher current, but the outlets will still fail over time, possibly creating a fire (but it’s a bit less likely, and at least outlets are easily replaceable :slight_smile: ).

Under optimal conditions (that is, temperature and moisture strictly controlled, no more than three live wires in a race, all device connections clean and tight, no motors or HVAC in the circuit) you can legally and safely run 15 amperes current on 14 gauge wiring, or 20 amps on 12 AWG. You can run 30 amps on 10 AWG, but that’s generally only done for single-appliance dedicated circuits like water heating or electric stovetops, and only special high-current twist-lock connectors can be used - most people just hard-wire the appliance instead.

Many old houses have less than 14 gauge wiring, in my experience, and some built in the 60s and 70s have safety ground wires significantly smaller than the current-carrying wires, which can be an issue with el cheapo high-frequency switching power supplies used in computers and printers.

People think because it doesn’t arc and catch fire instantly it’s safe. But that’s not how it works; it will take years to fail, you probably won’t be home when it happens, and you might burn down a whole neighborhood and everyone in it. If you read my posts, you know I’m not at all a safety nancy - but seriously, I would never knowingly run 25 amps through a 15 amp outlet.

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I have the same problem with cider. I loves my Strongbow and Bulmers, but no way I can leave a glass of it sitting around… one of the kids will have at it. It’s enough like apple juice that they WILL drink it. Fortunately beer does not have the same reaction.

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I’d have encouraged her more, if anything.

Kids should play in dirt and do stupid things.

Also: Hilarious!

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Okay, here’s the thing.

Last night I was drunk posting and talking out my ass. I haven’t really done measurements, and I don’t really know what my breakers are rated for. Because I was being a stupid ratchemouth blowhard.

There ya go.

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You’re going to remind them of that for the rest of their lives, aren’t you? That will be “the one incident” that always gets brought up when they bring a new boy/girlfriend home! It seems like we all have one as parents… :wink:

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Indeed, our house from 1830 does not seem to have a gost. Maybe to much older places around.

The electricity although, when removing the attic top floor we found to many wires ‘fused’ together with long gone fabric or tape. And more about that kind of horrible stuff, we thought we where lucky the past years and previous owners before. (Not only that, but combined with little parts of hay, newspapers…) And we ripped all out and made new wiring.
Like with all big ‘do it self’ projects, for nearly two years only the bathroom is connected. The rest comes from tgethe, new, fuse box (how do you name it? The central thing at the point electricity comes into your house, with the fuses, the earth, meter, etc).

(edit) Europe, 220/240.

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Well if I’d never done that, I might chastise you :slight_smile:

WTF IS IT WITH PEOPLE TRYING TO INSULATE WITH CRUMPLED NEWSPAPER!!!

At least I get to read 80-year-old newspaper articles while I’m rewiring, so there’s that…

I recommend rewiring old houses with armored cable. Costs a bit more but rodents can’t chew through it.

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Yes, that’s a nice bit of these things :wink:

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Can you really blame her, though?

Legos can easily double for mini-torture devices.

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Hey, I should have mentioned this in the last post, but watch out for asbestos and worse things in that old wiring. Don’t breathe the dust and don’t burn it off. If you really want the copper, wear a mask while stripping it outdoors, preferably in a grassy area where the bits of asbestos and gutta percha &etc will get pushed back into the soil instead of blowing around in the wind.

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Not at all! It’s our job as parents to do so! I just think it’s funny that every parent seems to have “that one incident” that an even grown kid will never live down!

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Yes, while lying around and lurking for you when staggering without glasses to the toilet downstairs.

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Oh, definitely.

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Thank you, yes we new. We are very bad people, gave away the wiring to an old (not really unimportant thing in this issue) metal person in the neighborhood. He was very wiling to take it, same with the ancient oil tank and its inners, and also the old pipes and radiators attached to in the house.
Although the money was welcome, when kids walking around, better be gone with that stuff fast, than trying to harvest some self.

But still, you know, the ancient dust when doing that stuff, and also thinking about the tiles on the roof. These are not ancient slates, the roof is retiled somewhere in the 50’th. So… for sure not real slate, but the asbestos mixture. What can you do?

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A 1000 ft spool of dental floss was involved for mine. It’s been nearly 30 years and I still haven’t lived it down.

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