How to get neighbors to talk

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tom baker

tom baker

First Chief Moderator & NEC Expert
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Bremerton, Washington
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Master Electrician
Working on computer this evening at 8PM, a big explosion, and lights out. All the neighbors gather outside looking at the transformer.
A squirrel got on top of it and boom that was it for him.
Had a nice chat with the neighbors and the power was back on in 1 hour. It was a nice summer evening.
This is my second squirrel related outage this week. Per the lineman, they get about 10-12 squirrel caused outages a week.

How common is this else where? Are there any other animals that cause outages?
 
tom baker said:
Working on computer this evening at 8PM, a big explosion, and lights out. All the neighbors gather outside looking at the transformer.
A squirrel got on top of it and boom that was it for him.
Had a nice chat with the neighbors and the power was back on in 1 hour. It was a nice summer evening.
This is my second squirrel related outage this week. Per the lineman, they get about 10-12 squirrel caused outages a week.

How common is this else where? Are there any other animals that cause outages?
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I have witnessed a swan flying between the horizontal primary rolling to vertical primary on main street in West Hampton Beach, NY Long Island. There was about a 12 foot wide arc flash engulfing all3 phases the sound was awesome and the goose crashed to the ground in front of the post office. It was a wed morning around 1995.
 
quogueelectric said:
I have witnessed a swan flying between the horizontal primary rolling to vertical primary on main street in West Hampton Beach, NY Long Island. There was about a 12 foot wide arc flash engulfing all3 phases the sound was awesome and the goose crashed to the ground in front of the post office. It was a wed morning around 1995.
Click to expand...

Brutal. But which was it? Goose or swan? :wink:

We had a nasty wind storm here a couple years ago and I saw a large douglas fir branch rip off a tree and fly across the street and connect all 3 phases. I was driving up the road when it happened and got a great view of it from maybe 100 feet away. Big ol' boom.

In that same storm, a pad mounted utility transformer down the block wound up going boom because a storm drain plugged up and made a gigantic puddle (borderline pond) pretty quickly.
 
Tom
My wife and I were in our home office, both of us working on our computers. There was a loud boom! and then the lights and computers went out...except mine, I have a UPS. :cool:

I grabbed my camera and started to run out the door...my wife stopped me and asked what I was doing. I told her a transformer just blew up and I am going to see if I can get some good pictures. She was totally baffled and wondered how I knew it was transformer.:grin:

We loose power here several times a year, mostly from car acidents...hitting poles.
 
tom baker said:
This is my second squirrel related outage this week. Per the lineman, they get about 10-12 squirrel caused outages a week.

How common is this else where? Are there any other animals that cause outages?
Click to expand...

It is very common for squirrels to cause problems. In fact, many poco's have a squirrel guard that they put over the lines. 3m makes them and they are called the electrostatic animal guard (formerly the Guthrie Guard). Apparently these shocks animals that get too close to electrical insulators, before they can cause outages by frying themselves on the equipment


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tom baker said:
Working on computer this evening at 8PM, a big explosion, and lights out. All the neighbors gather outside looking at the transformer.
A squirrel got on top of it and boom that was it for him.
Had a nice chat with the neighbors and the power was back on in 1 hour. It was a nice summer evening.
This is my second squirrel related outage this week. Per the lineman, they get about 10-12 squirrel caused outages a week.

How common is this else where? Are there any other animals that cause outages?
Click to expand...
Here, we try to "stew em up" before the're able to short stuff out. :grin:
 
When I lived on the Oregon coast, they had a problem with Starlings. Thousands of them would land on the powerlines and cause outages. I assume it was the weight of all the birds pulling connections apart?:-?
 
We have a 100 + year old oak tree with many squirrel families. Guess been very lucky. Power line is only inches away. Wife tries to keep me inside, says they are looking for me.
 
i work in the substation dept .for a poco in mass and we see more racoons then anything,but they are for some reason attracted to the transformers which usually leads to a lot of broken glass
 
There was an old K-Mart on the west side of Atlanta that a squirell would get fried once a year several years in a row. Never liked to throw that main, old as heck, Sherman missed it when he burned Atlanta!
 
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