Poles not working

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Look for evidence of sawcutting new landscaping anything that involves digging that recently happened.
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Excellent suggestion.

How often do parking lot lights get rewired? Am I missing a major niche market by not doing that on a regular basis?
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Underground faults are common. Out here, the conduits are generally full of water. I have pulled out wire from PVC that looked new and clean.......until the faulted area. A little scuff on the original installation plus current plus dirty water equals eventual failure.

Usually the failures are at least 20 to 30 years old.
 
Rent a pull behind air compresser and turn the air on the conduit at the feed. Your not going to want any power in the box your doing this to. You should be able to see water shooting out the pole that is the first in line. To be honest, you might want to try it with a shp vac first.
 
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480sparky said:
How often do parking lot lights get rewired? Am I missing a major niche market by not doing that on a regular basis?
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If you have a two electricians you can put on a bucket truck you can charge bewtwwen $800 - $1000 a day for the two men and the truck. You may have to have a CDL to drive the truck. That is how I got my cuurent job since I have a CDL and Master License.

Went to another call today with six pole lights out. Spent the afternoon tracing circuits. Narrowed them down to one pole. Looks like we will be pulling in more wire in the next few days. Feeders are OK this time.


The others contractors were once again at the other job I mentioned in my first post on this thread. They hit another underground conduit and killed the lights we just got working. They got into our poles again and onces again tied the wrong wires together. Didn't even phase the wires.
 
BackInTheHabit said:
Another contractor was hired to install some smaller light poles in a well-to-do part of the shopping center.
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wtf? is there a set of train tracks through the shopping center's parking lot seperating the good part from the not so good part?
 
wireguru said:
wtf? is there a set of train tracks through the shopping center's parking lot seperating the good part from the not so good part?
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We are contracted to maintain the 1000 or so light poles in a major shopping center. In one section of the shopping center is a pavillion with shops on either side. Will try to attach a copy of the layout later.

To aid in the visual: The pavillion is the center point of a + with parking and drives at North, South, East and West as to the + . There are 480 volt light pole in the median that have been lighting the area for ten years. Some of the feeders go to a three head pole and also service the perimeter of the complex. The plans were changed and smaller 120 volt light pole are being installed by another contractor who the general contractor uses. These light poles were installed on the sidewalks and in the center median.

The general contractor has been digging up the pavement to install brick pavers and while doing so have hit several of our conduits. The other EC while installing their lights poles hit several of our conduits. They never called for a utility check to have the line locations marked, which they just had done today. Another contractor was hired to run the conduit for the poles. We have since found out that none of the as-built plans were followed.
 
I found a picture of some Poles that aren't working.

PolishWorkersStrike.jpg


Oops! I thought this thread was about Polish people that were on strike.
 
Back to the original post, I found the problem, and got my company the contract for all the electrical maintenance in the center in the process. I found out the property owners previous electrician spent two days searching for the problem before I got the call. Heres what happened- I had already checked the 100A 480V lighting panel w/ integral contactor yesterday- all was fine. I identified the wires in the panel today feeding the troubled poles by checking which wires had no load. I pulled those wires off the breakers and was reading 23V between the two. As I shut off misc. other breakers for wires in the same 2" conduit going out to the pole the voltage would fluctuate on the wires I had pulled off-this is with the feed wires disconnected at the first pole. I found a spare set of wires from the 2" conduit coiled up in a trough labeled parking lot JB. I searched for over an hour with no luck finding any jb's in the lot. I then hooked an undergroung tracer to the spare lines and was able to trace the route of the conduit from the utility room, under a vacant tenant space and out into the parking lot. The conduit headed right toward the first pole (in an island)in the line that wasnt working. I decided to start digging, figuring I could cut the conduit there and put in a JB to feed the five lights with another circuit that was working. I decided to grab a ground rod and start poking around. On my fifth tap I heard a thump. I started digging and 6" under the mulch was a large JB. Opened it up, was full of water, multiple severed wires and every connection was severely corroded. Sucked the water out, remade all the connections, siliconed it up and everything works. I think Im more lucky than good-but hey whatever works. Thanks for all your input-The reply I got regarding checking the amperage of the lines turned out to save me alot of time.
Thanks,
Bill
BTW-I have pictures, just need to figure out the easiest way to post em-First time
 
A proprty owner we work for called CBYD to have an area marked where he was installing a telephone pole for some lights, and the person who came out to mark for the POCO informed him that they(his company) do not mark for anything but their lines. We had to get an underground tracer, disconnect wires from the nearest pole and trace the conduit ourselves. I was surprised to hear they dont mark all undergroung electric lines, but when I see their markings it says NO UI(POCO), NO SCG(GAS), Is it different in your area?
 
This is a link that homeowners or contractors can call to get assistance in spotting and marking of lines. Your location will usually depend on who responds. We have standardized colors for marking utilities. They will come out and mark any or all lines at your request.

I know an are north of me that has a phone system hub that controls several counties. If you dig near their site and hit a line, it can cost you $250k an hour while they are down for repairs.

http://www.kentucky811.org/know.php
 
OK- So they provide you with a list of contractors to pay to locate any private lines(Utilities are free)-Im sure Call Before You Dig in CT has the same policy. I should buy an underground circuit tracer on get on that list in my state
 
Mr. Frogneck,
Thank you for posting the answer to your problem.
Underground [handhole] connections are not a good idea. That is, they may work-- until the first big rain. It is too bad there is a regulation that prohibits making a detailed survey of where everything is buried.:confused:
I was going to suggest disconnecting every connection at every pole to isolate the first fed pole but you regretably don't need my advice. Oh well. Congradulations on fixing your enigma.
I spent a week on two parking lots with various problems. Even the site supervisor didn't have a good idea where the home runs led to. There were things like turning off Ckt. [is there a "k" in "circuit"?] #3 AND ckt. #25 to turn off a particular pole or maybe either Ckt. # 5 OR ckt. #31 would turn off the light. [The system was, of course, designed with double pole, 277 volt breakers.]
There were a couple of handholes. One was perpetually flooded with hydraulic water. The liquid was warm and tingled. As far as I know, it is still producing Hydrogen and Oxygen today. Greetings landscapers.:rolleyes:
~Peter
 
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