Ground

I admire the talents and skills of tradesmen. I have yet to successfully master even home projects, let alone profession endeavors. Those who know me best have come to expect any home project trusted to me starts with a substantial purchase of tools that I either don’t have or can’t find. That’s followed by the purchase of anything suggested as a possible fix by anyone at Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, or True Value—usually all of them. Eventually that’s followed by summoning a true highly-trained/highly-paid professional to undo or restore my project. Folks have a difficult time believing that I actually was a trained aircraft electrician at one point in my life. I think I was a pretty good troubleshooter, just never co-ordinated enough to always do a professional fix, especially in tight spaces. Not to digress too far, but one night I actually partially burned the hair off my head leaning too far into the electrical panel on the side of a B-57 bomber.



I still remember some basic electrical theory, but not enough to reliably or effectively fix much of anything. I recently encountered two very similar electrical problems and actually diagnosed and fixed one on my lawn tractor while turning the other over to a true technician. My lawn tractor suddenly stopped in the middle of mowing with no lights or gauges or anything else. The other problem was on my sister’s van as she made her way through heavy traffic here from York on Interstate Route 78. She also had no lights, flashers, or anything else. That problem I am trusting to a professional.


All the equipment on my lawn tractor was recently checked out and, in fact, it sports a brand new battery and only a few hundred hours on the hour meter. The tractor is a rather simple design and I very quickly went from component to component. All seemed fine. The components were functionally sound but nothing worked.


The diagnosis—the tractor wasn’t well grounded. Our lawn is rather bumpy to say the least. One of those bumps dislodged the electrical ground necessary for all electrical components to operate. My tractor is now back in commission and is generating a steady stream of grass clippings, but the lesson lingers. I realize that like the tractor, no matter how effectively I may appear to function, if I am poorly or inadequately grounded some unexpected bumps in my life can bring everything to a halt. Hopefully, I won’t be in such a hurry to move beyond “basic grounding” into life’s “important stuff.”


The lessons just keep coming.