Energizing a damaged/looted service that been off a while

W

WD40

Member
Location
Philly
Occupation
Electrician
Hey all I was asked to go thru a industrial building thats been vacant to clean up a mess and get some power on for lights as its going on the market.
It has only been empty a few years but druggies and thieves have broke in and stolen lots of copper
There are burn marks in a gutter and a few disconnects where something very bad happened, so thats probably when the copper thieves left.
The utility has cut the power at the primary on the pole, but they will turn it on when I say its OK to.
The service is mostly OK no burn marks though they did possibly get in the MDP,
or the former tenant may have removed feeders.
Service is about 10 years old I'd hate to replace it as the building is for sale.
Someone removed feeder breakers out of the MDP, leaving those 'fingers' that go up to the breakers.
There are empty conduits, conduits just cut off with wire in them its a mess.
I can clean all that up,
I'll remove and save the fingers from the MDP,
put in K/O seals;
fix the gounding / bonding;
Ohm out the service;
I'll make sure nothing else gets energized other than a few lights.

My question for you guys here on the safety forum is should I do any tests before having the utility energize the transformer energizing the main 800A breaker like a megger test?
 
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Been there, done that. They stripped out most of the big wire, they started to cut the 480 volt service conductors to the transformer, but figured out it was still hot! LOL! I would megger the service, but it would require you to disconnect it from the transformer. You can leave it on the breaker, but if any of the parallels give a funky reading, then they will need disconnecting also.
 
Verify grounding of the service wasn't disturbed. They usually take the exposed copper or the green wires. There is probably a forum somewhere that says those are safe to cut / steal.

After that it is more of a game of what the customer is willing to pay for.

Last week there was copper theft at a service but the tenets were in a dispute with the landlord. I have no idea how that one will go. Utility disconnected at the transformer.
 
I did a couple of similar jobs but on time & material only. I would use either a 30 amp fused safety switch with 15 amp fuses or lower or a circuit breaker panel with 15 or 20 amp breakers to feed panels with everything off then turn on one circuit at a time. Would use a 500 volt megger to test every wire and circuit. I recommend that you do not apply 500 volts to anything with electronics. Some megger have a lower scale. Would pull wall.plates off the receptacles & switches and pull devices out of boxes v to check wire condition, dust, bugs etc. I would pull a permit and have it inspected . Take lots if before & after pictures including luminaries working and a circuit testor plugged into receptacles indicating that it has power & is grounded properly. Would recommend that you have a couple of fire extinguishers on hand. So you would need a portable generator, next store business temporary feed or other source of power to perform testing before service being energised. Some jobs can be rushed but what you have must be thought out and properly done. For 120 volt receptacles I liked to install a 1500 or 1800 watt heater load on for several minutes and measure the voltage at start then ten minutes later. If voltage decreases while the supply did not change great indication of a bad splice, breaker or device. Difficult to tell but any device that got wet should be replaced.
 
I normally use my K60 solenoid tester from the incoming line or other source to each circuit terminal to check for faults, after unplugging everything and turning off switches. If you have 3-ways, you have to experiment or loosen bulbs. I also like to use fall-of-potential testing under load to expose weak links.
 
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