Hot Roses

[kid_stevens]

Easy job-cut sign off and raise it 11 feet up and weld in tubing from original post to stub up in sign. Rebuild sign electronics and re-lamp. Run conduit up the pole and install switch and photocell. Hook up wires and Viola UH What

No reliable power today but there was on Monday. Find open neutral by running toner and hooking it up where some one else had disconnected it in the building. Still no reliable voltage. Out comes handy Fluke Voltage probe. Neutral says hot and hot says hot the meters says 12 volts.

I walk past a rose bush around the sign with out turning off the probe and it goes off. I walk back to the bush and the probe lights up. Every bush and the sign post is hot enough to trigger the warning. With power still applied I put my Meter in Ohms mode and see the 12 volts on the bar graph and 7.62K ohms on the meter. Tomorrow we dig up the conduit and look for the problem.

Phew!

 

[JohnJ0906]

How old is the original instalation?
How long has the rose bush been there?

I'm thinking the roots might have grown down and broken the conduit.

 

[kid_stevens]

The roses are 6 or so feet away, the original sign was there in 1978. Though the wire color goes from red to yellow on the Hot lead so I fear a repair underground. At the place where the wires came up there was a PVC stub with the wires in it and an EMT Stub 8 inches high sticking up from alongside with nothing in it. I hope the problem is straight down.

 

[JohnJ0906]

I hate to say it, but the wire color difference and the 2 different conduits makes it sound like an underground splice gone bad.

 

[VernB]

Ah, you've got to love people hiding splices inside conduits. I gutted a run of 4 THW a week or so ago and when I pulled it out, found 20 feet of 4 type R spliced into it

Vern

 

[kid_stevens]

Yep good thing for my assistant to work on.

 

[LarryFine]

I gutted a run of 4 THW a week or so ago and when I pulled it out, found 20 feet of 4 type R spliced into it.

Solder and heat-shrink?

 

[VernB]

Solder and heat-shrink?

Heh, sure. The conduit was enough oversized that they pulled split bolt splices inside of it. Totally brain damaged.

I've impressed the owners here that nothing here is safe to reactivate unless one of us personally watched it going in or it can be inspected completely from end to end.

Vern

 

[kid_stevens]

found zee probleeeem. New PVC above old pipe that did not follow the original path but angled over towards the side of the store. We cut the brush and there is a box with the original color wires in it but they go back inside on metal pipe that is not inside. I boom to the roof and find a photocell that is on that pipe (trusty tone generator). The conduit going down to the load center is again PVC. We power the circuit up and the photocell housing, EMT to outside box and that metal side of the building went hot. The metal side of the building goes down into the earth and that lit off the damp earth and rose bushes.

The Photocell had a 7.62 K ohm junction inside isolating the circuit in bright light but when hot it has 5 ohms to the housing and the voltage went that way. Removed the photocell and all is well and I got paid 2 hours over the bid.

 

[JohnJ0906]

Nice job!