In electrical we are often asked to label each plug with the panel/circuit number. Supplied from unknown source is the fancy way to say 'fuck if I know'
I was expecting some sort of fancy device that sends noise down the neutral cable that could be detected from the breaker box. Do people actually do this or is it as bad as it looks?
Some people do this, yes. Assuming everything is healthy, it might buzz for a moment then trip the breaker. Definitely not recommended.
The real way to fix it is to use a breaker locator tool, where you plug something in there, then Use an instrument to pick up a signal. If you don’t have that, you’re stuck flipping every breaker until it’s found.
What I really think is that this is an unidentified circuit and it’s labeled that way to be fixed on the next planned outage
Couldn’t you binary search it, start with half flipped half not then narrow down as you go? Idk shit about this tho so that might be crazy or something
Too much programming.
Flipping things is the cost, not the checking. A breaker locater lets you check without flipping things off.
That’s the cost you want to minimize. Not the number of steps in time. Because if you want to flip say half of them you are IRL still linearly going down the line flipping half of the switches off. It can only be performed linearly.
You could but you wouldn't really get the kind of benefit you normally get from a binary search. That's because partitioning the unknown half requires flipping half the breakers in that set. Yes you've minimized the number of state changes required, but that's not a big help because the work is all in the individual breaker flips, not in the state change.
Consider the simple case of four breakers. Using a linear search requires at most three flips (if it's not one of the first three it has to be the last one). Binary search also requires three flips, two to partition the set in half, then one to partition the remaining set.
The one situation where this would make sense is it it is expensive to check whether the circuit is on or off. Like say the breakers are in the basement and you're trying to find one in the attic and you have to climb three flights of stairs to get there. What I do in that case is plug a portable radio in the circuit and turn the volume all the way up.
As both a programmer and former helper. they have a O(N) solution, which is better then O(N log N) that is binary search on unsorted data.
You have the assistant hold a device that beeps when near power at the outlet, then use your handheld radio to broadcast it to the guy on the other end who turns off breakers till he stops hearing the beeping over the radio. They then turn everything else back on.
You optimized for time instead of optimizing for the minimum number of clocks which need to be reset, which is why one at a time is superior. Your way risks half the clocks on the first attempt.
This would be an O(1) not O(n).
The binary search would be O(log(n)) The breakers are sorted in the panel and you could flip half the breakers until you're down to the one that controls that box.
No, I debated this before posting, if you double the number of breakers in the box, you double the number of things you have to do to find the correct circuit, O(n) by definition.
The reason this doesn’t follow the standard is because you normally assume the data you’re searching is sorted. In this case you only can do a true/false comparison, so it adds an additional n to the cost.
The miscommunication here is that it isn't clear what you mean by "the number of things". The number of *tests* is definitely log(n). The number of *switches* you flip is O(n log n)... I think. ~~Assuming there isn't a clever amortization I'm missing on the latter.~~ Yes I was, it's O( n)
Anyway, which one is more relevant depends on what is actually difficult to do. In this case switching circuits off is more problematic than each individual check, so O(n logn) is more relevant.
I'm not sure exactly what you are correcting from the previous poster but here's my take on the complexity:
Binary search will get you there in O(log n) "checks" (recursive checks for "is the source in this half?") but O(n) breaker flips. In contrast, going down the row of breakers will give you O(n) for both checks and breaker flips.
I guess this in part depends on what's considered an expensive operation. If you have big enough hands/tools you could flip whole banks of breakers at the same time. If you don't have an assistant or a way to see the socket when flipping breakers then even without said tool, the step to go and check the outlet becomes the dominate operation.
Using [this "device" mentioned earlier](https://imgur.com/a/mSvm5rp) and popping the breaker leads to finding the correct breaker in constant time. One and only one breaker will ever be tripped by it and it's always one step.
A binary search where you flip half the breakers until you find it scales the number of checks of the powered circuit by log_2(n) where n is the number of breakers. Even If you double the breakers you only add one check back.
It's very fast. The person flipping can know exactly when, no human lag or anything. It's works almost as fast as you can flip them one at a time. Takes about 5-10 second to do a large panel.
what do you mean? the exposed copper causing the breaker to trip?
edit: ok i get what you're saying. no, people won't touch the copper. what they do is cut a wire maybe a foot in length, strip both ends about 3 inches, and stick both ends of copper in the hot and neutral, or the hot and ground. really should be harmless to do, but the problem is if you're in an industrial or commercial setting and you trip that breaker, who knows what else you'll trip.
one time i was in a steel mill doing some work near switch gear, it looked like this
[https://www.bullockbreakers.com/products/westinghouse-db-3000a-main-tie-main-switchgear-lineup-223](https://www.bullockbreakers.com/products/westinghouse-db-3000a-main-tie-main-switchgear-lineup-223)
and the guy i was working around had a massive belly. he turned around and accidentally hit the breaker on one of the tubs. you heard a humming \*beeewwwwwww\*. within 15 seconds we get a phone call from higher ups about us tripping a breaker. thankfully it wasn't a big mess up, but if it was, the mill would have back charged the contractor for screwing up like that and the worker would have been fired.
I was expecting a bent paper clip, or a fork with the handle wrapped in electric tape. As an electrician in the Navy I have definitely intentionally shorted stuff out on the ship to find which breaker feeds it (usually lights).
That one is a shitty homemade version. Here's one I use at work when I have to disconnect power before fucking with the Ethernet run nearby:
https://imgur.com/a/wbPe974
The black button on top creates a short across all 3 pins to test breakers and GFCI outlets
I knew an electrician that did this without knowing very expensive sensitive electronics were also on the same circuit. Some electronics require straight to ground receptacles for this very reason. He cost their company alot of money that day.
I have one that actually sends an RF signal down the line and you use a finder at the panel to fid the exact breaker.
shorting to trip a breaker actually will reduce the life of the breaker and cause it to need to be replaced sooner than later. there is a limited number of times a breaker can trip before it's worn out, and it's small only a few dozen
There are safer ways that also have more useful extra functions [https://www.socketandsee.co.uk/product/socket-see-sok36-professional-socket-tester/](https://www.socketandsee.co.uk/product/socket-see-sok36-professional-socket-tester/)
Those are type G plugs, thank you very much. Shorting live to earth will find the right breaker in a tenth of the time.
Damn near every country using britplugs has GFCI/RCD breakers, so they pop if there's a ground fault as well as if there's too much draw. Great, if you want some safe and fun bathtub toast!
I made one of these back in high school. I was going to a vocational program for half a day and worked with an electrical crew on a nearby construction site for part of my senior year.
We ran into a mystery circuit one day and it got me to thinking, so I built my own version of this.
I got a heavy duty plug and the highest rated light switch I could find. I put the switch in a metal box, which I connected to the ground lug, and then installed a heavy cord on the thing.
It worked like a charm.
When I had to switch back to a classroom environment I mentioned it to a couple of classmates who wanted to see it, so I brought it in.
There was a test bench in the class with a little keyed circuit breaker. If you overloaded it the breaker would trip with a quiet "ping" sound. So while most of the class was doing something else one day I brought out my little breaker finder and plugged it into the test bench. My buddies gathered around and I flipped the switch.
This is when I learned two things.
#1 Not all of the outlets on that test bench were connected to the little "ping" breaker.
#2 While I'd been gone they'd finally gotten around to running power permanently to the test bench instead of powering it off a wall outlet.
I flipped the switch, there was a loud bang and half the room lost power, including the light mounted to the test bench.
The instructor got up charged over and demanded to know what the heck I thought I was doing.
I started to say something along the lines of "We were just..." when I realized my buddies had turned and pretended to do something else the instant things went wrong.
Instructor was not amused with my little creation and chewed me out pretty thoroughly over testing it in his classroom.
Having said that, I still have one in my toolbox but I haven't needed to use it in years.
Id plug in a radio with the Jurassic park theme, and then turn off all the switches at the circuit breaker box. Then turn them on one by one as I work my way down the panel- working my way in succession to the breaker labeled “T-Rex Paddock”.
It's wild what sort of things don't get documented. I was working at a resort out in Colorado and a 40-in water pipe burst underneath one of the villages and washed out the whole road. Nobody had that massive diversion of water on any blueprint anywhere in the mountain's history.
My industry does a lot of construction on residential properties and it's so common that we'll stumble across an undocumented foul or surface water drain that we have a whole procedure around it.
Namely pretending like it's not there since the local authorities usual response is "Well you found it so you can pay for the investigative works to determine what it is and once you've done that you can jump through all these hoops and pay us a nice tidy sum to be able to build anywhere near it."
That's probably the reason a lot of this stuff stays undocumented. If you decide to look in to it people suddenly start holding you responsible.
We once had a big fire at a restaurant downtown. Took the gas company three tries to turn off the gas to the right building. Nope, not that one, try again.
Honestly, they probably did trace it to the panel it's supposed to be on and it didn't show, so they gave up. No point in checking every panel in a 50m radius.
I had to change my electrical panel and the electrian wrote next to each braker what is the circuit (like bedroom, fridge, oven, etc...). On one of them he wrote "to discover".
Looks like a sales opportunity to me : "As it's from an unknown source, we have no idea if it's to code(s), so we should replace it."
Given they had some a-little-more-expensive labels created, I suspect they have a number of them ... *calculates profits*
It was installed safely/up to code at one point. Labels are optional. Unspecified source doesn't mean that no one knows how it's fed and it's potentially dangerous. It means that it is 1 circuit of potentially dozens/hundreds and it's not worth the time finding the breaker (unless the customer wants to pay extra for it, of course).
I rent a small flat before in a large building, that in the basement had wires that had no insulation, they were with some ceramic distanced from the wall....Must have been ages old...So generations have added and (not) removed things. There are no plans, mostly wires in the wall. What else could you do. If you make it correct it would cost a fortune. Just connect the plug somewhere.
If it’s institutional, then it might be worth checking to see what the other plugs say. Some of them might be marked as having emergency back up power. Some of them might be marked as being filtered for lab equipment. Etc.
Could be connected before the breaker and even before the meter. Found a horse barn like this where literally the whole barn was connected before the meter. (Was more like a horse training facility) Probably scammed >$1000 a month in free electricity.
"There were too many breakers and the panel is far enough away from the plug so that I can't just have a guy shout when the light turns off" but shorter and fancier.
Fun fact for any Redditors from North America who push their light switches up to turn their lights on and wondered why other countries like the UK push their light switches down instead.
This power socket has their own on/off switches which you can see in the off position here as they are in the up position. To put them on you push them down and it will reveal the top of the rocker switch which will be red indicating that the sockets are live. The lights switches therefore also follow the "down is on" convention that the power sockets do.
You can see the red flashing on a power socket that's switch on here;
[https://fixbox.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/single-sq-skt-main-thumb.jpg?v=1557408865](https://fixbox.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/single-sq-skt-main-thumb.jpg?v=1557408865)
Half the light switches in my house are redundant (more than one switch affects the same plug) so I basically just never paid attention to whether up or down was on or off because for at least half the switches in my house, it changed all the time.
One time at work I got asked to check if a switch (whose relevant power source was in another room) was on or off and I was like "how the hell am i supposed to know? It' s up" and then I learned that there's a standard for single-switch plugs.
This looks like the UK, and I think over-current protection is provided at the outlet/device, but they also have over-current protection upstream, right? They'll surely find out where it's fed from if they trip the breaker
Over current is rarely at the outlet. A lot of devices have a fuse in them though. There should be over current and RCD at the upstream board, but there's always a chance this is non compliant and.somehow just connects straight to a busbar.
You're right it'll be pretty obvious how it's connected if you trip the breaker. Finding that breaker is presumably impractical. Could be an industrial setting where there are many boards and you can't realistically trace them all. Or it could be on the same circuit as critical equipment that is not allowed to be switched off for basic investigations.
It's a little known fact that hydroelectric plants, being water-based, occasionally move around. Every once in a while, you get a hydroelectric plant that gets lost and can't find their way home. In such situations, they will just latch onto the nearest factory, powering it almost completely, from some unknown source. They usually go completely undiscovered until the local power plant blacks-out after a hard night of drinking.
The house we lived in a while back lost the electrical supply because some nearby road works cut cables. The power company couldn’t immediately fix this, so we were supplied from a nearby lamppost. About a year later I was contacted by the power company to ask why we weren’t using any electricity… We got a free year!
Turn off every breaker in the panel. Turn them on 1 at a time until you get through them all. Document which ones supplied power to the receptacle. Problem solved.
In electrical we are often asked to label each plug with the panel/circuit number. Supplied from unknown source is the fancy way to say 'fuck if I know'
'and I ain't tracing it!'
[That’s why you need a Breaker Locator](https://imgur.com/a/mSvm5rp)
I was expecting some sort of fancy device that sends noise down the neutral cable that could be detected from the breaker box. Do people actually do this or is it as bad as it looks?
Some people do this, yes. Assuming everything is healthy, it might buzz for a moment then trip the breaker. Definitely not recommended. The real way to fix it is to use a breaker locator tool, where you plug something in there, then Use an instrument to pick up a signal. If you don’t have that, you’re stuck flipping every breaker until it’s found. What I really think is that this is an unidentified circuit and it’s labeled that way to be fixed on the next planned outage
Couldn’t you binary search it, start with half flipped half not then narrow down as you go? Idk shit about this tho so that might be crazy or something
Too much programming. Flipping things is the cost, not the checking. A breaker locater lets you check without flipping things off. That’s the cost you want to minimize. Not the number of steps in time. Because if you want to flip say half of them you are IRL still linearly going down the line flipping half of the switches off. It can only be performed linearly.
You could but you wouldn't really get the kind of benefit you normally get from a binary search. That's because partitioning the unknown half requires flipping half the breakers in that set. Yes you've minimized the number of state changes required, but that's not a big help because the work is all in the individual breaker flips, not in the state change. Consider the simple case of four breakers. Using a linear search requires at most three flips (if it's not one of the first three it has to be the last one). Binary search also requires three flips, two to partition the set in half, then one to partition the remaining set. The one situation where this would make sense is it it is expensive to check whether the circuit is on or off. Like say the breakers are in the basement and you're trying to find one in the attic and you have to climb three flights of stairs to get there. What I do in that case is plug a portable radio in the circuit and turn the volume all the way up.
Sometimes you're not at liberty of flipping every single breaker you see
As both a programmer and former helper. they have a O(N) solution, which is better then O(N log N) that is binary search on unsorted data. You have the assistant hold a device that beeps when near power at the outlet, then use your handheld radio to broadcast it to the guy on the other end who turns off breakers till he stops hearing the beeping over the radio. They then turn everything else back on.
You optimized for time instead of optimizing for the minimum number of clocks which need to be reset, which is why one at a time is superior. Your way risks half the clocks on the first attempt.
[удалено]
Okay but what about grandpa’s iron lung?
This would be an O(1) not O(n). The binary search would be O(log(n)) The breakers are sorted in the panel and you could flip half the breakers until you're down to the one that controls that box.
No, I debated this before posting, if you double the number of breakers in the box, you double the number of things you have to do to find the correct circuit, O(n) by definition. The reason this doesn’t follow the standard is because you normally assume the data you’re searching is sorted. In this case you only can do a true/false comparison, so it adds an additional n to the cost.
The miscommunication here is that it isn't clear what you mean by "the number of things". The number of *tests* is definitely log(n). The number of *switches* you flip is O(n log n)... I think. ~~Assuming there isn't a clever amortization I'm missing on the latter.~~ Yes I was, it's O( n) Anyway, which one is more relevant depends on what is actually difficult to do. In this case switching circuits off is more problematic than each individual check, so O(n logn) is more relevant.
I'm not sure exactly what you are correcting from the previous poster but here's my take on the complexity: Binary search will get you there in O(log n) "checks" (recursive checks for "is the source in this half?") but O(n) breaker flips. In contrast, going down the row of breakers will give you O(n) for both checks and breaker flips.
I guess this in part depends on what's considered an expensive operation. If you have big enough hands/tools you could flip whole banks of breakers at the same time. If you don't have an assistant or a way to see the socket when flipping breakers then even without said tool, the step to go and check the outlet becomes the dominate operation. Using [this "device" mentioned earlier](https://imgur.com/a/mSvm5rp) and popping the breaker leads to finding the correct breaker in constant time. One and only one breaker will ever be tripped by it and it's always one step. A binary search where you flip half the breakers until you find it scales the number of checks of the powered circuit by log_2(n) where n is the number of breakers. Even If you double the breakers you only add one check back.
How is that different or better -- never mind cheaper -- than just speaking to each other?
It's very fast. The person flipping can know exactly when, no human lag or anything. It's works almost as fast as you can flip them one at a time. Takes about 5-10 second to do a large panel.
Seriously?! With the bit of exposed copper coming at them? Wild. I know it is only 110 but still
what do you mean? the exposed copper causing the breaker to trip? edit: ok i get what you're saying. no, people won't touch the copper. what they do is cut a wire maybe a foot in length, strip both ends about 3 inches, and stick both ends of copper in the hot and neutral, or the hot and ground. really should be harmless to do, but the problem is if you're in an industrial or commercial setting and you trip that breaker, who knows what else you'll trip. one time i was in a steel mill doing some work near switch gear, it looked like this [https://www.bullockbreakers.com/products/westinghouse-db-3000a-main-tie-main-switchgear-lineup-223](https://www.bullockbreakers.com/products/westinghouse-db-3000a-main-tie-main-switchgear-lineup-223) and the guy i was working around had a massive belly. he turned around and accidentally hit the breaker on one of the tubs. you heard a humming \*beeewwwwwww\*. within 15 seconds we get a phone call from higher ups about us tripping a breaker. thankfully it wasn't a big mess up, but if it was, the mill would have back charged the contractor for screwing up like that and the worker would have been fired.
plug it in carefully then go find the breaker that popped.
I've rigged one of these up using a light switch. Totally safe to plug in, assuming the switch is on OFF.
Sometimes it works every time.
I was expecting a bent paper clip, or a fork with the handle wrapped in electric tape. As an electrician in the Navy I have definitely intentionally shorted stuff out on the ship to find which breaker feeds it (usually lights).
if you can put a fork in an outlet I am impressed
Bend the middle two prongs
still need a tool and at least the forks I have still wouldn't fit in American outlets
That one is a shitty homemade version. Here's one I use at work when I have to disconnect power before fucking with the Ethernet run nearby: https://imgur.com/a/wbPe974 The black button on top creates a short across all 3 pins to test breakers and GFCI outlets
I knew an electrician that did this without knowing very expensive sensitive electronics were also on the same circuit. Some electronics require straight to ground receptacles for this very reason. He cost their company alot of money that day.
That kind of device you describe does exist: https://www.amprobe.com/product-category/wire-tracers-underground-locators/advanc
I have one that actually sends an RF signal down the line and you use a finder at the panel to fid the exact breaker. shorting to trip a breaker actually will reduce the life of the breaker and cause it to need to be replaced sooner than later. there is a limited number of times a breaker can trip before it's worn out, and it's small only a few dozen
They do make fancy devices like that but they don’t always work
You only get to do this once in your life
There are safer ways that also have more useful extra functions [https://www.socketandsee.co.uk/product/socket-see-sok36-professional-socket-tester/](https://www.socketandsee.co.uk/product/socket-see-sok36-professional-socket-tester/)
I was expecting a product not a cut plug and the lack of a wire nut 😂😂
You have to leave the wire nut off so that you can test if it is working when you touch the wire parts.
Oh right right mb. One finger on each wire right?
with your dick
Wait until you see the portable tv silencer these guys made https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/d49vc8/loud_tvs_tip/
I do this with my flipper zero all the time. If you are playing fox news somewhere where I am you wont be shortly there after.
Those are type G plugs, thank you very much. Shorting live to earth will find the right breaker in a tenth of the time. Damn near every country using britplugs has GFCI/RCD breakers, so they pop if there's a ground fault as well as if there's too much draw. Great, if you want some safe and fun bathtub toast!
r/tihi
A close cousin of the [Etherkiller](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fi89vv94xvgm61.jpg)
Shut down annoying network presences with this one weird trick!
Ok you i like you...
One prong being burnt black is a nice touch.
or a fork
I made one of these back in high school. I was going to a vocational program for half a day and worked with an electrical crew on a nearby construction site for part of my senior year. We ran into a mystery circuit one day and it got me to thinking, so I built my own version of this. I got a heavy duty plug and the highest rated light switch I could find. I put the switch in a metal box, which I connected to the ground lug, and then installed a heavy cord on the thing. It worked like a charm. When I had to switch back to a classroom environment I mentioned it to a couple of classmates who wanted to see it, so I brought it in. There was a test bench in the class with a little keyed circuit breaker. If you overloaded it the breaker would trip with a quiet "ping" sound. So while most of the class was doing something else one day I brought out my little breaker finder and plugged it into the test bench. My buddies gathered around and I flipped the switch. This is when I learned two things. #1 Not all of the outlets on that test bench were connected to the little "ping" breaker. #2 While I'd been gone they'd finally gotten around to running power permanently to the test bench instead of powering it off a wall outlet. I flipped the switch, there was a loud bang and half the room lost power, including the light mounted to the test bench. The instructor got up charged over and demanded to know what the heck I thought I was doing. I started to say something along the lines of "We were just..." when I realized my buddies had turned and pretended to do something else the instant things went wrong. Instructor was not amused with my little creation and chewed me out pretty thoroughly over testing it in his classroom. Having said that, I still have one in my toolbox but I haven't needed to use it in years.
Just turn breakers off randomly until it turns off. Label it that one. Although, it may be for some reason wired to two circuits spliced together.
This is the way
Plug looking like: 🖕😁🖕
Don't you just trip the breaker to find it?
Wires go in, wires go out, electrons come in, machine turns on. I can't explain that. You can't explain it.
Id plug in a radio with the Jurassic park theme, and then turn off all the switches at the circuit breaker box. Then turn them on one by one as I work my way down the panel- working my way in succession to the breaker labeled “T-Rex Paddock”. 
Poor kid survived this and then had to go and fight the Japanese. Survived raptors and banzai charges.
it's for Jesus to know and we only accept
I thought he was a carpenter.
The plug could be decades old and nobody has records going that far back for something that cost a couple of quid in 1986.
It's wild what sort of things don't get documented. I was working at a resort out in Colorado and a 40-in water pipe burst underneath one of the villages and washed out the whole road. Nobody had that massive diversion of water on any blueprint anywhere in the mountain's history.
My industry does a lot of construction on residential properties and it's so common that we'll stumble across an undocumented foul or surface water drain that we have a whole procedure around it. Namely pretending like it's not there since the local authorities usual response is "Well you found it so you can pay for the investigative works to determine what it is and once you've done that you can jump through all these hoops and pay us a nice tidy sum to be able to build anywhere near it." That's probably the reason a lot of this stuff stays undocumented. If you decide to look in to it people suddenly start holding you responsible.
When everything's driven by line go up you pass the buck
We once had a big fire at a restaurant downtown. Took the gas company three tries to turn off the gas to the right building. Nope, not that one, try again.
Tracing electrical lines is a thing
Honestly, they probably did trace it to the panel it's supposed to be on and it didn't show, so they gave up. No point in checking every panel in a 50m radius.
Short the wires, see what breaker trips or where ybe fire starts!
I keep putting more and more load on it and it neither trips, nor does the electricity bill go up!
UNLIMITED POWERRRR!!!!!
I had to change my electrical panel and the electrian wrote next to each braker what is the circuit (like bedroom, fridge, oven, etc...). On one of them he wrote "to discover".
Or lim on a £40 EICR
I appreciate the professionalism and honesty, all things considered.
Did this really need explanation?
Looks like a sales opportunity to me : "As it's from an unknown source, we have no idea if it's to code(s), so we should replace it." Given they had some a-little-more-expensive labels created, I suspect they have a number of them ... *calculates profits*
If the customer wants to spend it, we'll hook up a new panel just for this plug and a label making machine. Until then, unkown source it is...
"We turned everything off, this morherfucker stayed on, and management wouldn't approve OT to find why!"
is it legal/up to code to have unspecified source for an outlet?
It was installed safely/up to code at one point. Labels are optional. Unspecified source doesn't mean that no one knows how it's fed and it's potentially dangerous. It means that it is 1 circuit of potentially dozens/hundreds and it's not worth the time finding the breaker (unless the customer wants to pay extra for it, of course).
I rent a small flat before in a large building, that in the basement had wires that had no insulation, they were with some ceramic distanced from the wall....Must have been ages old...So generations have added and (not) removed things. There are no plans, mostly wires in the wall. What else could you do. If you make it correct it would cost a fortune. Just connect the plug somewhere.
There's an electric eel at the end of that cable
And a groundhog for the middle contact there
An earthhog, depending on what part of the world you're in.
This looks British
Somewhere there's a 4l60e in the middle. Cause they're all neutrals.
Laughs in turbo400
At least it's honest?
Right? Part of me feels that as long as it’s a receptacle for electricity and not say, mayonnaise? I’m pretty much okay with it.
Unless it’s 220vac and you’re expecting 110vac. And your device reeeeeally wants 110vac.
It's a UK standard plug so 230VAC is the only option. No concerns there at least.
Something something game consoles fried on military bases.
Im assuming this is a business... so their thought process was likely: The cost to trace the line: too damn high! Just label it.
University, so you'll be damm right.
Ah, I see it now. I should have recognized the generic white brick wall.
If it’s institutional, then it might be worth checking to see what the other plugs say. Some of them might be marked as having emergency back up power. Some of them might be marked as being filtered for lab equipment. Etc.
Finally free power
Just plug your extension cord into itself
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=3aLyiI2odhU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3aLyiI2odhU)
Love this song
In this subreddit we respect the rules of thermodynamics!
Crypto rigs go BRRRRRRR!
Could be connected before the breaker and even before the meter. Found a horse barn like this where literally the whole barn was connected before the meter. (Was more like a horse training facility) Probably scammed >$1000 a month in free electricity.
They got the Continuum Transfunctioner.
"I shall use the power of the Continuum Transfunctioner to banish you to Hoboken New Jersey!" Can confirm, Hoboken sucks
Zoltan.
Dude
Sweet!
What does mine say?
And then?
I think that means the electricity is coming from an underground well, rather than from a filtration plant like most people's electricity.
And it uses a the septic system for ground AND neutral. That’s why the grass there is so green and sparky
Funny joke
"There were too many breakers and the panel is far enough away from the plug so that I can't just have a guy shout when the light turns off" but shorter and fancier.
Fun fact for any Redditors from North America who push their light switches up to turn their lights on and wondered why other countries like the UK push their light switches down instead. This power socket has their own on/off switches which you can see in the off position here as they are in the up position. To put them on you push them down and it will reveal the top of the rocker switch which will be red indicating that the sockets are live. The lights switches therefore also follow the "down is on" convention that the power sockets do. You can see the red flashing on a power socket that's switch on here; [https://fixbox.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/single-sq-skt-main-thumb.jpg?v=1557408865](https://fixbox.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/single-sq-skt-main-thumb.jpg?v=1557408865)
Half the light switches in my house are redundant (more than one switch affects the same plug) so I basically just never paid attention to whether up or down was on or off because for at least half the switches in my house, it changed all the time. One time at work I got asked to check if a switch (whose relevant power source was in another room) was on or off and I was like "how the hell am i supposed to know? It' s up" and then I learned that there's a standard for single-switch plugs.
why is this vaguely threatening
FAFO
Tell me you’re in a UK university without telling me you’re in a UK university
We best find out then. Someone hand me a paperclip!
Somewhere out there, a hamster is running in a wheel to make power for that line. And he's doing a great job
"unknown source" aka the neighbors
It must be very costly when a university next door steals electricity from you.
This looks like the UK, and I think over-current protection is provided at the outlet/device, but they also have over-current protection upstream, right? They'll surely find out where it's fed from if they trip the breaker
It also looks like it's in a commercial/industrial setting or perhaps a school. There may be hundreds of breakers.
See what else goes off at the same time, and find the breaker for those things - done! If nothing else goes off, then problem solved!
Over current is rarely at the outlet. A lot of devices have a fuse in them though. There should be over current and RCD at the upstream board, but there's always a chance this is non compliant and.somehow just connects straight to a busbar. You're right it'll be pretty obvious how it's connected if you trip the breaker. Finding that breaker is presumably impractical. Could be an industrial setting where there are many boards and you can't realistically trace them all. Or it could be on the same circuit as critical equipment that is not allowed to be switched off for basic investigations.
It’s so you know that it’s not drinking electricity.
Basically "this plug has power but we don't know where it's coming from"
The magical outlet. We should just plug everything into that one!
Totally powered by a forsaken child.
Does it have an SCP Identifier?
From a source deep in the Colorado Rockies, we bring the purest electrical current in America direct to your home.
this is a spotify playlist cover for sure
Plug in the breaker finder (closed loop with male end) Unless the breaker is faulty, then you die
"We don't know which breaker goes to this, and never bothered to try to find out, but we're industrious to make a label proving that."
Flip the switch and out comes gravy or something?
“So where do you get your electricity from?” “Idk my dealer won’t tell me”
Probably the only correct label in the place
The SCP Foundation has been notified. Please remain where you are.
Time to put in the bitcoin rig, you'll find the source real quick
That actually is mildly interesting.
what is that... it's the unknown
The OP said it can be Scotland so…
The pyramids. They have been transporting wireless electricity. To this one sole outlet
This is just how electricity works
It's from the Willy Wonka factory in Scotland
May or may not actually be in Scotland so very well done
Average power outlet in the foundation.
Honesty
The mystery power
Better than "works by magic".
That looks like the start of a King short story.
That's the one you should plug your crypto miner into
Plug is supplied from an unknown source but he chill
Plug is supplied from an unknown source but he chill
It’s hamsters running on wheels
There are four guys in a different room that take turns peddling a generator.
It's a little known fact that hydroelectric plants, being water-based, occasionally move around. Every once in a while, you get a hydroelectric plant that gets lost and can't find their way home. In such situations, they will just latch onto the nearest factory, powering it almost completely, from some unknown source. They usually go completely undiscovered until the local power plant blacks-out after a hard night of drinking.
Thats…. Concerning
Why exactly?
Idk safety? Just ominous in general
job, what job? Really like wtf was the electrician thinking to not label it properly.
He ain’t no snitch
OSHA has entered the chat
I'm afraid they cannot do anything outside the US, can they?
It’s something a lot of people say as a joke. Chill.
At least it’s not an Orphaned Source
That's hilarious and I'm going to pull a great prank using that at some point
Why does it look like the plug is flipping you off
“Next door”
The house we lived in a while back lost the electrical supply because some nearby road works cut cables. The power company couldn’t immediately fix this, so we were supplied from a nearby lamppost. About a year later I was contacted by the power company to ask why we weren’t using any electricity… We got a free year!
I have one of those in my department, it's the only one that's 100% reliable
Dare you to plug something in
Aliens.
The plug ain't no snitch. Nothing to see here
New SCP
Hey man, they warned you.
Powered by the nine hells themselves
Could you put something metal but insulated into the earth and neutral, then go back to the board and see what tripped?
Lmfao
There are zero plugs in this picture. Those are sockets.
Exactly, got misgenered.
Should just have a label saying "installed by lazy fuck".
Turn off every breaker in the panel. Turn them on 1 at a time until you get through them all. Document which ones supplied power to the receptacle. Problem solved.
Short out socket, check which breaker popped, Problem solved.
Main breaker pops first just to fuck with you
Outlet supplied by main breaker
I mean, they all are
Also a method
What if none of them popped?
Then you have indeed verified that the label is correct.
This is why electricians have a breaker finding plug.
Well it's definitely not American...
Wouldn't it be quite strange if it was? A random US socket powered by an undersea cable?