ceb58
Senior Member
- Location
- Raeford, NC
This will be a little long but bear with me:grin: Service change on church upping from 100amp to 200amp. Poco supposed to arrive at 8:00am to cut overhead loose they show up at 10:00
. Get every thing tore off and new meter combo with overhead installed, new panel inside. There were two A/C units feed from old panel on out side, I was able to reuse the 2'' cond. and LB. While my son was mounting the indoor panel I was going to hook the A/C units back into new combo. While twisting the grounded conductor on the se cable I touched the can, felt a tingle ??? I did it again and got a nice bite from it. Break out meter 28v from grounding conductor to GEC ??????? Power is off the service conductors and the service drop are cut. Start looking. At some point in time they joined the fellowship hall to the church building which had its own service. So now we really have one structure with two services. OH crap some one is back feeding something. Turn main off in fellowship hall still have voltage. Every thing feeding this building is overhead ??????? Its now 1:00pm and the inspector shows up, OH crap no where close to being through. I tell him look I have ran into something and cannot find the problem. He is a former EC and a nice fellow, " no problem you my last inspection for the day lets find the stray voltage" Tell him what I have done so far. Try unhooking the neutral in fellowship hall. Did that, still voltage. We tried several thing he came up with, still voltage. Inspector is setting in a chair under a tree while sweat is dripping off my head and other places, I go over to talk to him to see if we can come up with other ideas. Behind him is a poco pole that the service drop is on and three feet away is a concrete filled pipe in the ground to protect the pole I said let me try something. Put meter on ground wire on the ploe scratch the paint on the pipe and damn 32volts. Its the ground rods picking up stray voltage. Inspector says you need to call poco THEY have a problem. He is correct THEY have a problem. I ask him what about this inspection, Fri. is a holiday for you, we are not through because of this and I need power back on today. He says, I have inspected your work before with no problems, you have worked your butt off trying to find a problem most would ignore, every thing you have done so far looks good. He fills out the sticker puts it on the can and says have a good 4Th. Poco shows up to reconnect, I show service guy what we have, he gets on phone and starts writing down transformer numbers and pole numbers for them to schedule an engineer to come and find where this voltage is coming from. He hooks up the service drop and the stray voltage went away from the can but its still on the poco ground on the pole. The moral of the story is #1 the poco stuff is not always right and #2 not all inspectors are jerks
. Get every thing tore off and new meter combo with overhead installed, new panel inside. There were two A/C units feed from old panel on out side, I was able to reuse the 2'' cond. and LB. While my son was mounting the indoor panel I was going to hook the A/C units back into new combo. While twisting the grounded conductor on the se cable I touched the can, felt a tingle ??? I did it again and got a nice bite from it. Break out meter 28v from grounding conductor to GEC ??????? Power is off the service conductors and the service drop are cut. Start looking. At some point in time they joined the fellowship hall to the church building which had its own service. So now we really have one structure with two services. OH crap some one is back feeding something. Turn main off in fellowship hall still have voltage. Every thing feeding this building is overhead ??????? Its now 1:00pm and the inspector shows up, OH crap no where close to being through. I tell him look I have ran into something and cannot find the problem. He is a former EC and a nice fellow, " no problem you my last inspection for the day lets find the stray voltage" Tell him what I have done so far. Try unhooking the neutral in fellowship hall. Did that, still voltage. We tried several thing he came up with, still voltage. Inspector is setting in a chair under a tree while sweat is dripping off my head and other places, I go over to talk to him to see if we can come up with other ideas. Behind him is a poco pole that the service drop is on and three feet away is a concrete filled pipe in the ground to protect the pole I said let me try something. Put meter on ground wire on the ploe scratch the paint on the pipe and damn 32volts. Its the ground rods picking up stray voltage. Inspector says you need to call poco THEY have a problem. He is correct THEY have a problem. I ask him what about this inspection, Fri. is a holiday for you, we are not through because of this and I need power back on today. He says, I have inspected your work before with no problems, you have worked your butt off trying to find a problem most would ignore, every thing you have done so far looks good. He fills out the sticker puts it on the can and says have a good 4Th. Poco shows up to reconnect, I show service guy what we have, he gets on phone and starts writing down transformer numbers and pole numbers for them to schedule an engineer to come and find where this voltage is coming from. He hooks up the service drop and the stray voltage went away from the can but its still on the poco ground on the pole. The moral of the story is #1 the poco stuff is not always right and #2 not all inspectors are jerks
