I have a customer that owns a genuine Sears & Roebuck Kit home. It was wired by it's builder using the parts that came with the kit. All of that was decades ago by folks now long dead. Customer decides he wants the last fuse panel in the house changed out to a new breaker panel. I deenergize the three wire feeder that has no EGC and build the new panel. Severe thunderstorms roll in with a lot of lightning so I stop work and take a break. Day runs out so I want to temporarily resupply the kitchen with the existing feeder. The feeder was run in BX; as in the original no bonding strip GE BronX plant armored cable. It was number six copper that was an electric range circuit which was extended and converted into a feeder for the kitchen panel. Yeah I know but it gets more interesting so bare with me. When I go to reconnect the feeder I try to verify the conductors and one of the phase conductors appears to be ground faulted and the neutral appears to be open. So I go back to the deep 4&11/16 square box were the stove circuit was extended and I find that the conductors were transposed. When I had started the job I had just opened the breaker on the feeder, checked with a proximity tester, opened the panel, tested with the proximity tester and again with with a genuine Wiggy, and went to work demolishing that panel. I did not check the installation as found because I had never intended to reuse any portion of it. If it had not been for an afternoon of severe weather I would have finished running the new larger feeder and been none the wiser. Now I'm a little shaken up so I go find the Lady of the house and ask her about her experience using the kitchen over the last ten years since the kitchen was updated and that panel I was to replace was added. She said the kitchen had given her many "static shocks" and she wondered if I could do anything about them.
So get this straight boys and girls for ten years the three wire feeder had every appliance in that kitchen hot to 120 volts on all of the metallic cases. The sink, that was plumbed with copper pipe including the waste lines, was right in among these energized appliance shells.
I asked her if she could figure out how to bottle whatever she was using for luck so we could both get rich beyond the dreams of Avarice. I had to get home and pick my spouse up from the Metro so I asked them to do without the kitchen power overnight. I finished the new feeder the following morning and restored the kitchen to full function. The electric stoves cook top worked a lot better now according to the wife and the oven baked much more quickly. The husband was visibly shaken and asked me to check every circuit in the home for grounding and proper polarity. Only the original Carter System three way switches remained non compliant. It was probably a good thing that it was the feeder that was crossed because that raised almost every conductive surface in the kitchen the same elevated voltage with only the sink to serve as a grounded surface that would have completed the circuit and taken her life. I repeat I still don't believe it. Tomorrow the story of the garage wiring.
So get this straight boys and girls for ten years the three wire feeder had every appliance in that kitchen hot to 120 volts on all of the metallic cases. The sink, that was plumbed with copper pipe including the waste lines, was right in among these energized appliance shells.
I asked her if she could figure out how to bottle whatever she was using for luck so we could both get rich beyond the dreams of Avarice. I had to get home and pick my spouse up from the Metro so I asked them to do without the kitchen power overnight. I finished the new feeder the following morning and restored the kitchen to full function. The electric stoves cook top worked a lot better now according to the wife and the oven baked much more quickly. The husband was visibly shaken and asked me to check every circuit in the home for grounding and proper polarity. Only the original Carter System three way switches remained non compliant. It was probably a good thing that it was the feeder that was crossed because that raised almost every conductive surface in the kitchen the same elevated voltage with only the sink to serve as a grounded surface that would have completed the circuit and taken her life. I repeat I still don't believe it. Tomorrow the story of the garage wiring.
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