Tried using a thermal camera to find a short in a wall and it worked way too well

I picked up a cheap FLIR unit off Facebook Marketplace for $150 last month and figured I'd test it on a tricky outlet that kept tripping the breaker in my buddy's house. Pointed it at the wall and saw a hot spot right where a nail had gone through the wire, clear as day. Has anyone else had a tool pay for itself on the first job like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

emerym361mo ago

That whole "tool pays for itself on the first job" thing is honestly kind of rare in my experience. Most of the time you buy something like that and it sits in the garage for six months before you even remember you own it. But when it does work out that way, it's such a satisfying feeling, like you just beat the system somehow. It makes me think about how we spend so much money on things we hope will be useful eventually, but the real winners are the ones that solve a problem almost immediately.

miles_burns1mo ago

Buddy of mine bought a cordless impact wrench for a side job changing tires on an old truck. It sat in his trunk for eight months collecting dust. Then his neighbor's water heater went out and the drain bolt was frozen solid. He tried everything, even a breaker bar with a pipe cheater and the thing wouldn't budge. My buddy grabbed that impact wrench, zipped it off in three seconds flat. Neighbor paid him fifty bucks for the help. Tool cost forty-two dollars on clearance. The guy still talks about it like he robbed somebody.

milam481mo ago

Does it actually pay for itself though, or are we just bad at math? Like, $42 on clearance for an impact wrench, yeah the neighbor paid him $50. But he also spent eight months hauling that thing around in his trunk. That's a mental cost. Every time he opened his trunk and saw it, he probably felt a little dumb. Then the one time it works, he feels like a genius, but the whole time he was just breaking even on a weird game of mental accounting.