ooh, whee.....

[Fulthrotl]

a customer sent me this today, wants me to meet with them tomorrow
to fix it.....

yeah, don't even get close to it....... 120/240 3 wire commercial service,
feeding a six pack of meters.

wierd part is, it's a service lateral, and edison is saying it's the customers
responsiblility to fix it. they won't touch it, but anything above the meter
clips is theirs... :huh:

whatever..... looks like an after hours power off thing..... amazing how
close it can get without going the full bang, isn't it?

 

[gadfly56]

a customer sent me this today, wants me to meet with them tomorrow
to fix it.....

yeah, don't even get close to it....... 120/240 3 wire commercial service,
feeding a six pack of meters.

wierd part is, it's a service lateral, and edison is saying it's the customers
responsiblility to fix it. they won't touch it, but anything above the meter
clips is theirs... :huh:

whatever..... looks like an after hours power off thing..... amazing how
close it can get without going the full bang, isn't it?

OK, I plead ignorance.:dunce: Power distribution's not really my thing. What am I seeing here?

 

[qcroanoke]

OK, I plead ignorance.:dunce: Power distribution's not really my thing. What am I seeing here?

A service drop from POCO to top of residence. It is known as triplex. Almost looks like the insulated conductor was ringed by someone's cable cutters......
It got hot and as you can see dang near shorted out to the grounded conductor. Oh wa oh wa oh wa! that would have been a show until it finally blew xfmr primary fuse.

 

[ptonsparky]

I'll bet it is fun to watch in the evening after a nice rain.

 

[growler]

wierd part is, it's a service lateral, and edison is saying it's the customers
responsiblility to fix it. they won't touch it, but anything above the meter
clips is theirs... :huh:

That is wierd. Here the power company would probably just splice in a short section of cable, 15 minute job or they would have to come out to cut power anyway.

Most of our local power companies would be there and finished in half an hour or so.

 

[hbiss]

You couldn't make a clean cut like that if you tried. Looks like it was ringed and the insulation shrunk back? How far from the end was it? If it's out in the middle I would say factory defect.

-Hal

 

[tyha]

Ive seen the POCO around here use insulated T's that dont even need the cable insulation jacket peeled back. Its wierd and I didnt know or beleive what they were doing until he came down and I asked.... I just wanted interject something here thats kind amusing and fits the topic. When I first started long long ago I was helping this guy (EC) just finish up a house on the weekend by going through the house and installing fixtures and the occasional ceiling fan. This was like in febuary and there was snow on the ground ( pretty cold). anyway we had just finished the upstairs and he wanting to turn power on to check. He said go get the roll of mc cable out of the van. there was no meter installed the temp pole for lanscaping reasons had ben pulled up, it was just a triplex loop tied to the service mast. so my friend used his sidecutters skinned the cable and wrapped the #12 mc cable wires to the service lateral. It seemed dangerous to me at the time but for one I had never done residential and I was less than a year in. so i was like "thats Cool" ...lol. we go back inside test the main/ good start checking branch/ all good. so we decide to continue mountng the reamaning
fixtures. with in about maybe 15-20 I noticed it was getting a little warm. I took my jacket off and kept working not thinking anything about just thinking Im working so my temp goes up. then all of a sudden it sounds like someone is shooting fireworks in the back yard. This is a nice neighborhood so I thought it was odd. then it kept going until until I got whif of that unmistakable smell of burning thermoplastic. I yelled to my friend to come up from the basement because the house is "about to Blow"...What happened was the HP kicked on overloaded the conductors and it was so close to the tap point we could do nothing but watch the show, pray it didnt catch the house on fire and wait until the mc cable burned through which it eventually did. Luckily no house fire or utility fuses blown!:lol:

 

[Little Bill]

wierd part is, it's a service lateral, and edison is saying it's the customers
responsiblility to fix it. they won't touch it,

A service drop from POCO to top of residence. It is known as triplex. Almost looks like the insulated conductor was ringed by someone's cable cutters......
It got hot and as you can see dang near shorted out to the grounded conductor. Oh wa oh wa oh wa! that would have been a show until it finally blew xfmr primary fuse.

I thought a lateral was underground.

 

[GUNNING]

Ive seen the POCO around here use insulated T's that dont even need the cable insulation jacket peeled back. Its wierd and I didnt know or beleive what they were doing until he came down and I asked.... I just wanted interject something here thats kind amusing and fits the topic. When I first started long long ago I was helping this guy (EC) just finish up a house on the weekend by going through the house and installing fixtures and the occasional ceiling fan. This was like in febuary and there was snow on the ground ( pretty cold). anyway we had just finished the upstairs and he wanting to turn power on to check. He said go get the roll of mc cable out of the van. there was no meter installed the temp pole for lanscaping reasons had ben pulled up, it was just a triplex loop tied to the service mast. so my friend used his sidecutters skinned the cable and wrapped the #12 mc cable wires to the service lateral. It seemed dangerous to me at the time but for one I had never done residential and I was less than a year in. so i was like "thats Cool" ...lol. we go back inside test the main/ good start checking branch/ all good. so we decide to continue mountng the reamaning
fixtures. with in about maybe 15-20 I noticed it was getting a little warm. I took my jacket off and kept working not thinking anything about just thinking Im working so my temp goes up. then all of a sudden it sounds like someone is shooting fireworks in the back yard. This is a nice neighborhood so I thought it was odd. then it kept going until until I got whif of that unmistakable smell of burning thermoplastic. I yelled to my friend to come up from the basement because the house is "about to Blow"...What happened was the HP kicked on overloaded the conductors and it was so close to the tap point we could do nothing but watch the show, pray it didnt catch the house on fire and wait until the mc cable burned through which it eventually did. Luckily no house fire or utility fuses blown!:lol:

Learning curve.

 

[cdslotz]

I thought a lateral was underground.

That's the term I always used for UG.

Why is this triplex drop NOT the POCP's responsibility?

 

[sparkyrick]

a customer sent me this today, wants me to meet with them tomorrow
to fix it.....

yeah, don't even get close to it....... 120/240 3 wire commercial service,
feeding a six pack of meters.

wierd part is, it's a service lateral, and edison is saying it's the customers
responsiblility to fix it. they won't touch it, but anything above the meter
clips is theirs... :huh:

whatever..... looks like an after hours power off thing..... amazing how
close it can get without going the full bang, isn't it?

Soooooo, the PoCo won't fix it. Do they expect you to pull the fuses on the transformers too

 

[Fulthrotl]

Soooooo, the PoCo won't fix it. Do they expect you to pull the fuses on the transformers too

i went out there today, and took purty high rezolushun picturzes.

then i transferred said photos to laptop.
then i called edison and opened a trouble ticket,
with the pole number, meter number, account number,
service number, and the photo. the entire 100+ feet of
service drop is typical of this.... when it's quiet, it sort
of sounds like popcorn......

they assigned it a priority second only to downed lines.
there should be someone getting there in a short while.

then i emailed the photo to the customer with a summary
of what the status is, and i will follow up in a week to
learn the disposition of the trouble ticket before contacting
the next link in the resolution chain.....

flash update... while i was typing this, edison called back,
to verify the correct address and particulars, and is rolling
a line patrolman now......

amazing what a simple photo can do.......

 

[texie]

i went out there today, and took purty high rezolushun picturzes.

then i transferred said photos to laptop.
then i called edison and opened a trouble ticket,
with the pole number, meter number, account number,
service number, and the photo. the entire 100+ feet of
service drop is typical of this.... when it's quiet, it sort
of sounds like popcorn......

they assigned it a priority second only to downed lines.
there should be someone getting there in a short while.

then i emailed the photo to the customer with a summary
of what the status is, and i will follow up in a week to
learn the disposition of the trouble ticket before contacting
the next link in the resolution chain.....

flash update... while i was typing this, edison called back,
to verify the correct address and particulars, and is rolling
a line patrolman now......

amazing what a simple photo can do.......

Kind of makes one wonder, as this appears to be an obvious case of defective insulation properties at the manufacturing level. I've seen triplex/quadplex 50 years old and not look like this. That begs the next question of, what about the rest of the spool and/or batch that this was installed from? It would seem that this would be showing up in other installations from the same spool/batch, but of course all responsible parties will say, "gee, we've never seen that before".

 

[Fulthrotl]

Kind of makes one wonder, as this appears to be an obvious case of defective insulation properties at the manufacturing level. I've seen triplex/quadplex 50 years old and not look like this. That begs the next question of, what about the rest of the spool and/or batch that this was installed from? It would seem that this would be showing up in other installations from the same spool/batch, but of course all responsible parties will say, "gee, we've never seen that before".

funny thing is, that isn't what they said.... i got a call from the line patrolman who came out
to review the situation, and he said SCE got a bad batch of cable a number of years ago,
and this was just one more install that would have to be changed out..... i got the impression
that it was a fair amount of wire.....

kudos to SCE, however. they had an assessment, and a plan to resolve it promptly within
two hours of my phone call. something i didn't twig to that the line patrolman brought up
is the white crusty residue from the arcing is aluminum oxide, an insulator. so that was
why it wasn't burning up.... duh. sort of cauterizing itself as it went.

 

[ActionDave]

kudos to SCE, however. they had an assessment, and a plan to resolve it promptly within
two hours of my phone call. something i didn't twig to that the line patrolman brought up
is the white crusty residue from the arcing is aluminum oxide, an insulator. so that was
why it wasn't burning up.... duh. sort of cauterizing itself as it went.

Absolutly. Within two to six months the whole problem should cure itself.

 

[gadfly56]

funny thing is, that isn't what they said.... i got a call from the line patrolman who came out
to review the situation, and he said SCE got a bad batch of cable a number of years ago,
and this was just one more install that would have to be changed out..... i got the impression
that it was a fair amount of wire.....

kudos to SCE, however. they had an assessment, and a plan to resolve it promptly within
two hours of my phone call. something i didn't twig to that the line patrolman brought up
is the white crusty residue from the arcing is aluminum oxide, an insulator. so that was
why it wasn't burning up.... duh. sort of cauterizing itself as it went.

Totally speculating here, but I wonder if someone goofed the amount of cross-linker when they compounded the insulation? Too much and the plastic will continue to cross link way too much. As the cross linking increases, the chain-to-chain distance is reduced, causing the plastic to shrink. If the insulation is far more brittle than you would expect that would be positive evidence of this kind of error.

 

[hbiss]

Looks like what happens when the cable isn't UV resistant and the plastic just dries out and cracks.

-Hal

 

[mivey]

funny thing is, that isn't what they said.... i got a call from the line patrolman who came out
to review the situation, and he said SCE got a bad batch of cable a number of years ago,
and this was just one more install that would have to be changed out..... i got the impression
that it was a fair amount of wire.....

Then why the original guff and them saying it was the customer's problem? Sounds like someone at the POCO is confused.

something i didn't twig to that the line patrolman brought up
is the white crusty residue from the arcing is aluminum oxide, an insulator. so that was
why it wasn't burning up.... duh. sort of cauterizing itself as it went.

Cool: self-healing cable...cancel the dispatch.

 

[ActionDave]

Then why the original guff and them saying it was the customer's problem? Sounds like someone at the POCO is confused.

Cool: self-healing cable...cancel the dispatch.

Plagiariser.:happyyes:

 

[mivey]

Plagiariser.:happyyes:

Not at all...just sincere flattery.