you don’t need to be standing in water to be electrocuted. any path to ground over any parts of your body is good enough.
you will feel pain from 100V AC if you contact it and are not grounded. you luckily might not die though you will ache for a bit.
smart living electricians, electronic technicians, linemen only work on live circuits when they have to. when they do they take a whole lot of precautions which aren’t obvious to an untrained person.
[I acknowledge that this thread is a couple months old.]
While rare, it’s not out of the question that a bulb’s filament can detach and then reconnect temporarily, so if this particular bulb stopped working again I’d replace the bulb first.
Generally yes, but when my parents had their house built the contractor cut every conceivable corner – including the choice of electricians. We had outlets miswired, improper grounding, you name it. Never assume correct wiring unless you did it yourself. Even then, do you really think you’re so smart you NEVER made a mistake?
Why would anyone even want to skip a step that takes maybe 10 seconds?
I totally agree, but apparently, this guy thinks it’s A-OK! :rolleyes:
Ten seconds? To open the panel door and flip the breaker switch may take ten seconds, but the whole process can be quite a bit more involved.
Sometimes the breaker box is in an obscure location, far removed from where the work is being done. Often the breakers aren’t labeled, so there’s a trial and error process in identifying which one to shut off. Going back and forth from the box to the work area to see if the right one was flipped gets tedious and time-consuming if there are a few wrong guesses. Add the possibility that the circuit can be safely disconnected at the switch that operates the particular device and there’s a fair amount of incentive to not deal with the breaker.
I agree, that’s why I stated that at the end. But, since this is GQ, it is factual that if the light is wired correctly, then you’ll have a dead circuit, barring something downline that puts a voltage on the neutral…which is why I mentioned testing the wires with a multimeter if one truly wanted to avoid flipping the breaker.
I’ve done work on light fixtures with just the switch off (taped off), but I did test every line with a multimeter to ensure there was no power anywhere in the box or the wires. I wouldn’t recommend that, as it’s usually just easier to flip the breaker and ensure that you have no power to the line, and it’s much safer.
I actually just finished work on wiring my basement (I’m in the process of finishing it.) Just hooked my two new circuits with a bunch of receptacles and new LED downlights into my panel. Did the safe thing: shut off the main breaker, taped a piece of cardboard over the live lugs on the utility side, wore gloves when working near that live side (even with it blocked off), just in case of a brush by. Was very satisfying to hook everything up to the new breakers (AFCI of course) and actually see everything work and all my plugs test out well with my circuit tester. 
Well said, Gary T. 
But, for the majority of ‘average joes’ out there that don’t have the mechanical aptitude of you and I, or the proper tools to test for live circuits, it’s not unreasonable to take the time to find the breaker for that particular circuit, wouldn’t you agree?
At the very least, they can then label that breaker for future reference, if it is in fact, unlabeled. 
Yes. It’s certainly the safest approach, and wise for anyone who isn’t CERTAIN about the state of the wires he possibly could contact.
Well sure, if they don’t take the lazy approach and think they’ll remember, like I would. :smack:
We once had an older three-story house with the breaker box in the basement, unlableled. It did take a bunch of trial and error to identify the desired breaker. We found that some rooms had three different breakers controlling the various outlets and fixtures in them. One breaker might control the east-side outlets in room A and the west-side outlets and ceiling fixture in room B, while another controlled the north-side outlets and wall fixture in room A. Problably made sense during installation, but it was not handy in use. We never did get it fully sorted out.
So will incandescent bulbs that screw in upside down (from rising heat). Replacing the fixture with one in which the bulb screws in sideways will help.
I’ve used this trick a few times. Obviously this only helps with outlets, but if your breaker box is far away/in a basement/whatever, plug a radio into the outlet and crank it up nice and loud. Makes it easy to tell when you’ve flipped the correct breaker.
Good advice.