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I understand this is wrong. I'm curious why it's dangerous? What can happen? I always like to learn something new and even though I would never do this, I don't know what bad can happen from doing it.
For sure, I will just have to make sure I vent the vapors really well for the weekend until i get the switch to fix it right.
Although the guy in this video sounds reasonably intelligent I take issue with several of his comments. Any of us boaters who got their cellphones wet know they were toast because they shorted out due to water intrusion. He also stated putting a lamp in water would short out by ionizing the water??? I believe it would short out because the sink would be grounded and the hot lamp wire would seek ground. Let's see him hold a 110v wire while standing in a puddle while explaining ionization. In this case all 15 Amps of current wouldn't flow through his body due to resistance but probably 8 to 12 amps would. It only takes 20 milliampers to stop the human heart.
Hmmmm... this doesn't track for me as an answer. If you were talking AC then this would make sense and I fully understand why you would only switch the hot on an AC circuit and how switching the neutral side could be a very dangerous and bad idea. However on DC, current actually flows from negative to positive and its a closed loop system, no danger of grounding out the system say by standing on the ground and touching positive terminal (unlike AC where you could potentially kill yourself by standing on the ground and touching a hot wire). I was under the impression that putting the switches and load on the positive side in DC applications was really nothing other than a convention that we all agree upon. In fact there are some vehicles that run a "positive ground" system, so all loads and switches are on the negative side. Not saying there isn't a reason why this is bad beyond convention but I've never heard of a reason and this answer doesn't really track for me or satisfy my curiosity - would love to know if there is a reason though.
Huh? Ok, likely my lack of knowledge is just the main hinderance here "getting it". Thanks for trying.
I'm shade tree electrician at best, with much more knowledge/experience working with AC, not so much with DC - which is the reason for my curiosity on this subject.
Certainly 120V will conduct in water, but low voltages like 12v dont. Unless you have enough conductive materials in it (like saliva does).
Yeah 120V AC is a totally different animal than 12v DC