well my kid is going back to school he's not gonna be my apprentice anymore thank god
uh no to be honest i i have to say like the coolest experience of my life so far uh has been
getting to work with my kid every day um so he started once school finished like immediately he
started as an apprentice and he's kind of came up with me over the years you know going out to job
sites he knew how to use drills and he knew how like how to put a plug in and stuff like that he's
been around this stuff quite a bit and i've drug him around to job sites because i was a single
dad forever and i just like i couldn't leave him at home he was like four you know six whatever um
so how did he do i think he did insanely good i was really expecting him to be way lazier and
to not have a good work ethic not because that's who he is but because this is texas and it's 110
degrees outside and it sucks and you can't dig and we have to constantly dig and i just thought it
was gonna be me like pulling him through the whole thing and really again not like i know him i know
who he is he's a miniature me so there shouldn't have been really an issue but i talked to a lot
of other people about having these young kids out there that have just been like in screens
non-stop their whole life and never really had to go and do any like like physical demanding work
and a lot of them are like dude these kids just like they're not even here they're on their phone
and they're trying to get to their phone they want to know what's going on with their phone non-stop
and it's like dude you're getting paid eight hours to work so [ __ ] work my kid he and i will sit
and play clash royale at lunchtime we will sit and do some 2v2s and we've got kind of i think
i don't want to say an unbeatable deck we've got a really good deck we've been playing forever we're
clammed up in the same plan we're in a good clan we win a lot uh but we finally found these two
decks comment below if you play clash royale and you want to see our deck and maybe i'll do a video
on that there's nothing to do with electrician you but about our clash royale decks um so
you know like we would send goof off but the cool thing about the nature of my son's relationship
and i my my and my son's relationship together um is that we always talk [ __ ] to each other
anyways so like being out in the field the natural like punking on each other for stuff uh i don't
know i just brought it to another level plus we're just sitting in a truck like all day every day
driving out to jobs or like we're wiring houses like throwing winer nuts at each other and stuff
like i don't know man it was one of the coolest experiences that i've gotten to have with him like
above going on vacations and trips i don't know snowboarding was pretty dope too can't take that
away but this was just a lot of fun so what i will say is out of him i saw a very hard work ethic
and that's what impressed me the most when i told him like yo go get those bring him over here there
was never like a bitching or like slow you know complaining ever if he was on his phone because
there was nothing going on and i'm like yo hey go get this he would just be like and go over and
immediately do it and he works diligently so like he enjoys doing something and it being done really
well and he stays working diligently and he's not like over [ __ ] around and he's not wasting time
like when he's got his tools on it is time to work he goes to work and he works the same way that i
do and honestly i think at the age he's at versus where i was at i was 22 i think when i started
i think he has a better temperament about him at 17 yeah he's 17. did i say 18 whatever
at 17 he's got a better like temperament for how to approach doing this work than i did at 22. i
was like a bull in a china cabinet i was just like trying to like prove who i was and like
prove my worth and and like i really wanted to to like i guess impress the people around me because
i wanted to climb the ranks right but i was also just a hard worker in general but i kind of like
over thought things and i broke things and like you know i was never on my phone or [ __ ] around
or anything like that but i think that i the way that i problem solve too i'm a very creative
person so i kind of like go outside of the problem to try to come back in it where like he'll just
he's a very left brain like linear thinker so like his way to just problem solve or come up
with solutions for things i think he's he has a brain for this stuff at 17 that's probably better
than the brain i had for this at 22. and he really liked it like he honestly said i like i don't want
to go to college this is dope i would love to just do this every day record youtube videos and do
electrical work wire houses now the thing that i know if i asked him and maybe i will maybe i'll do
like another video like this where i sit and do a video with him and he can explain to you what
he liked and hated the thing that sucks is like right now i'm running somebody else's company
uh if you don't know the whole story behind that guy that i really respect like one of the best men
i know and i will never work for somebody ever again except this dude uh got into an accident
he lost his arm like really bad accident actually like a head-on collision two big trucks um
crushed all of his ribs shattered his leg like dude's been [ __ ] up for months and
he's still having to deal with uh issues so anyways i stepped in to kind of like help
whatever you know uh and so that means that my role is to make sure jobs get done
by like everybody else and making sure schedule is going out and everything and going and looking
at jobs meeting with builders all of it right everything he was doing but i also have all
my own jobs that i've got like big crews that i have to run jobs and most of the jobs that
i've got going on are like these long term drag on jobs and funny enough every single
one of them we've got to dig like ridiculous undergrounds for so heap he spent most of the
time we're just like wiring homes right or like wiring businesses doing commercial work whatever
he spent his entire summer in 100 510 degree heat digging we dug so much and i think his perspective
on this job is like [ __ ] being an electrician all we do is dig things i have a shovel in my
hand his hands are torn up because we have rock bars here in texas we can get six inches down in
the soil and that's about it it's solid bedrock all of central texas is like one solid rock and
so like he we're like like just trying to get these big rock bars to like break rock by hand
all day in the heat no cloud cover super hot like dehydrated um and so i think it's perspective on
all of this is like that's all we do and i told him like no dude i'm just the one that has to make
sure everybody else has stuff that's up to their capability you know like some of our guys are
like newer and they they can't take on a 10 000 square foot custom home um or some of them have
no commercial experience whatsoever so if they're gonna go if i'm gonna throw them into a commercial
job i have to be there with them to kind of like make sure everything's fine and do calculations
for them and like show you know just show and teach and then like like just keep a close eye
and so i can't do all of that and be over here doing all of my jobs that i've got to get done
so it just ended up that i would i would kind of like clear out the tracks so that the train could
keep moving and i would make sure everybody was put where they needed to be put for them to be
successful and then i took the [ __ ] leftovers not just me there's an old guy at the company
uh that uh i call him an old guy he's really not that [ __ ] old he would probably hate me
for calling him an old guy uh older gentleman older than i by like two decades gentlemen
uh fantastic electrician actually one of the best electricians i've ever seen um so between
he and i we're like trying to keep the ship going but he gets a lot of the [ __ ] work too
just because we can right we get a customer that's like hey i need to put
uh i need to size a generator and figure out if this service is big enough for this or like hey
we want to put some phase converters in an airport so like i can't just send random p i have to be
the person that goes and looks at all of that to figure out how we're going to do it where we're
getting materials all of that kind of stuff so it ended up that josh and i got the [ __ ] leftovers
and a lot of the [ __ ] leftovers were driving many x's and digging and we dug all summer long
i had a commercial job that we did all of the site work for we had to dig like 300 feet of
underground we had to put three four inch pvc schedule 80 conduits all the way uh 90
of them up where we're going to have this big mdp we had to deal with the utility company and
getting inspections and all that we had to run communications across the property so like that
took two people driving two mini exes weeks to do well not just that we also had all these parking
lot polls light poles there's seven of them on the property and this property is huge so like we're
going all around the outside of this property to try to get all these conduits uh connected
um and then we had subpanels inside the building so we had to dig from the main distribution panel
the mdp uh we had to go inside and dig all these undergrounds into the slab and get all of that put
together so it was just like that one job took us weeks and weeks and weeks and we're just out there
in the heat digging so josh probably hated that and then i'm like hey dude we have another job
uh gotta go driving maniacs over here it was to some one of the ranches that we did there's like
a compound for hunters and there's you know four buildings on this compound and we they did all
the underground like not even an electrician just i think the builder hired somebody or something i
don't know they put a bunch of conduits in and they were all [ __ ] up and none of them worked
where they were supposed to go some of them like stubbed up three feet away from the house
and it's like dude you gotta go up next to the house we're gonna put a meter here or you know
we're gonna put like a panel or something here but like why the [ __ ] is this like cocked at a
45 degree angle three feet away from the building you know just dumb [ __ ] like that that we had
to fix so we're like digging all of that up then at the end they're like hey we want to add solar
where well on the buildings like on the roofs of the buildings i'm like you realize the service
is 300 feet away from the buildings all of them where you know so two of the buildings we ended
up having to re-trench after they had already trenched all of this kind of [ __ ] up underground
we had to retrench on top of all of the other conduits so i ended up like ripping up our
conduits in several different places and i knew i was going to so i just brought extra conduit out
there with me but i spent days out there with a mini x just digging and again i say days those of
you in like wisconsin where you could dig a hole to china and never even see a pebble i'm talking
like hard texas boulders that you either have to get a piece of equipment with a hammer on it
to try to hammer through or get a jackhammer or something like that some of the stuff a mini x
just will not get through so it was just days and days of digging and then you got to hand clean out
a bunch of different things and if you're going to get close to buildings you got to do all that by
hand and it's [ __ ] digging because it's so hard that you have to do everything with a rock bar
so uh there was that job like immediately after the other commercial one and josh was like for
real dude we have to do that again yeah we do um where was the next one oh and then we had
another one we just finished this one last week we had a a job that was out of the lake and the
property is 475 feet from the service at the front of the property all the way down to the boat dock
and they wanted to get their boat dock powered because this guy bought like a 300 000
wake boarding boat and wanted to be able to park it in the cradles and the lips and you
know raise it up and so we had to dig a trench that was [ __ ] 475 feet and bury huge conductors
because i i ran like temporary power down there i ran i think four three um all the way down there
thinking you know like that's 65 70 amp wire that should be fine enough to lift those boats
and it ended up that it wouldn't lift the boat because the boat's almost 7 000 pounds so that
little 15 amp motor is really really straining to lift so it would lift but it wouldn't get all the
way up or wouldn't get all the way back down so we were having like severe voltage drop issues
normally you know like you do a voltage drop calculation everything ends up panning out i
even asked engineers electrical engineers i'm like dude this this four rod over this whole or this uh
number four aluminum over this whole distance is still not lifting this boat and it was just you
know with fuel it's like another 700 pounds worth of uh fuel and then the amount of number 12 that
we had that ran through the dock underneath the dock over the boathouse into the panel
there's probably like an extra 75 feet or so of wire that we weren't really accounting for
so it was just like right on the verge so even our voltage drop calculations were like saying oh it's
going to drop four amps and i have my multimeter out there i'm like hmm this is 30 extra amps that
it shouldn't be so there's something wrong here so it was definitely a voltage drop issue but it
was just temp wire anyways because we're building a house on the property too so it was just like a
guy wanted to use his boat for the summer and that was all there was to it so we ended up replacing
that wire and putting the permanent run in which i ran three ott ungrounded conductors which three
hots throughout copper though so like four times the size of wire and copper
um and then i think i ran a two ought neutral and a number two ground i had to dig this crazy
ass long trench again but this one the property from where the service is goes up and then in the
middle of the property starts to go back down and then at the end of the property by the boat they
had to dig out this whole area for them to build a dropped wall and then that's where the water
level was so they built a dock and then there's this huge probably six eight foot wall of dirt
so getting the mini x we had to take the the trench and dig as far down as that bucket would
go so we started out probably about 24 inches deep we ended up going to about like eight or nine feet
deep just to get through you know like the top of the properties up here we got a cliff and then
we've got to get under the dirt over here we had to like slope that thing down enough just to get
underneath and still be at depth for our burial coverage um so dude it was that was another thing
we was just like jesus we have had shovels in our hands for so long so sorry josh you had a whole
lot of digging this summer he did it did get to wire some homes we had a job out by the lake that
was like really nice just a beautiful probably 5 000 square foot custom home so not not too big um
but the crappy thing on that job actually it seems like every job we worked on was like some level of
shittiness uh that job instead of just being able to wire it we were beam locked everywhere so we
had huge lvls everywhere in this place downstairs so for us to get from our sub-panels in the garage
to like anywhere else downstairs we had to go through the garage with our home runs we had to go
up to the second story up into the ceiling or up in you know the attic and run all the way across
the house come back down on the other side and run over to the rooms that we wanted to so like each
home runs probably like 150 to 200 feet long it was [ __ ] stupid so just dealing with all
of these crazy long pulls and then you know you you have all your reels on the ground and you're
pulling everything but you have to pull from the middle point you don't want to pull from the end
because you've got like 700 turns and 90s and stuff so you'd never get the wire through so we
would like run half of the house for our home runs and then we'd have to pull out and roll out still
on the roll all of the rest of our conductors and get over there and then go downstairs and
take tape measures and figure out like how long do we need to cut these and then lay them out
and sit there with tape measures and go all right i think this is it let's pull another five feet
just in case cut it and then we'd add all these to like manage all these wires it was just a
nightmare so i think he kind of had like a [ __ ] summer and josh if you're watching this dude it's
not normally like that uh a you were just working with me and i have to do all the stuff everybody
else can't that's just how it goes if you were working with one of the other guys that's like
honed in on one project and that's all they're doing i think you would have
had such more of a like just chill time um but i have to say all in all you killed it dude i'm
super proud of you i'm really happy that you have a really strong work ethic and that you
work diligently and when something's in front of you you take pride in what you do i think like
just those traits alone are so difficult to find in people these days um and it's it seems with the
younger generations it's like fading more and more there's kind of like this old school thing that's
being lost and unfortunately that's just how it's gonna be so it's it's up to us like middle
aged guys to try to keep that keep that burning uh there's also a couple times i yelled at josh
he would just do stupid [ __ ] from time to time leaving ladders on jobs granted you know i didn't
check either so it's partially my fault i always owned up to that if you [ __ ] something up i'm
like dude it's all right i i didn't see it either don't worry about it but there was this one time
where he dropped a a piece of schedule 80 pvc on my head it was probably like a three inch and uh
he was supposed to grab onto this conduit and i was cutting down below so i'm like bent down
looking at where i'm cutting and i'm like just grab this and make sure that it doesn't fall
so he's got his hands on it and i don't know if he's like off looking at the road or something
like that i get through this thing and it falls square on top of my head and doesn't seem like
that big of a deal but we were out in the sun i think he had [ __ ] an a couple of other things up
like he would go to the truck and i'd be like hey get the sawzall and come back with a screwdriver
kind of [ __ ] all day long and i was just irritated already for having to like be the
one that goes and does everything myself because he just doesn't know [ __ ] yet you know that's
just part of it all but him dropping this [ __ ] conduit on my head was the last draw and dude
i lit him up for that i was so [ __ ] mad um and then i think later that day i think i hit my head
like three more times just in a [ __ ] up ceiling or something like that i remember just hitting it
and hitting it and hitting it and by the end of the day i was like i'm [ __ ] done with this day
i'm so pissed um but that only happened once so like you know we'd get on each other's nerves
every once in a while and then we'd get back in the truck and be like yo so uh what what
anime are we watching tonight you know like we just have that kind of relationship so dude
again super proud of you you [ __ ] killed it uh i'd love to have you right see any day of the week
man you're you're a great apprentice so uh thank you guys for watching that's all i got for you um
love you crazy [ __ ] and i'll see you in the next one