Wow! After reading these stories, I am very glad that I am not in the residential market, only industrial / professional. But I have a nice horror story too. We just finished installation of a sound system in a large public hall. Two large speaker clusters had been suspended from the ceiling, about 120' up. The clusters could be lowered and raised as needed for performances, storage when not needed and all the way down for maintenance. The hoist/motor/gearbox etc. all is on the platform under which the speakers (2 large bass horns, mid- range horns and highs, all high Q stuff because of terrible acoustics) are suspended with wire rope. Everything worked perfectly, until the building was taken off of the temporary construction power and moved to the permanent power feed. This happened about three months after the Grand Opening. The problem was that the phases where reversed in the process. The operator pushed the button to lower the speaker cluster for an upcoming performance. Well, instead of down, the speaker cluster goes up. No problem, it hits the switch for the storage position and stops. Hmm. The operator doesn't quite understand what is going on, so he tries again. And again. He keeps hitting the down button, every time he does, the cluster moves a little, and finally he makes it past the storage position cut off switch. And the cluster moves up further. Hey, no big deal, it hits the ultimate safety cut off switch and that trips the power relay entirely. So the whole affair now gets no power whatsoever. Unless someone resets the power relay...it actually needs to be held on, forced on manually and then keep your finger on it. The power relay is about 12' away from the speaker cluster-operating panel. Well, no problem for our clever house sound system operator, nothing a broomstick wouldn't take care of. So that idiot takes the broom stick, holds the safety power relay on with it, and pushes the f...ing down button again. Now the cluster goes up again, hits the ceiling, tries to go up some more, can't make it through the roof. The gearbox finally brakes, and the whole thing falls down into the occupied space. Luckily, it didn't kill anyone. 30 minutes later, people having lunch would have occupied the dining tables it crushed. The amazing end of the story: The operator didn’t get fired. He still works there.
