Take NOTHING for Granted

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J

jmellc

Senior Member
Location
Durham, NC
Occupation
Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Finished a small job this week that really blew me away. Simple job in a local church, church has several buildings in an office park. Installed a light & switch in each room. Tapped an exit light in one room & a j box in the other, right next to a panel. Roughed in the MC cable & switch boxes last week, came back this week to finish out. All good, but put on my arc flash suit to open the panel and find the right circuit; no power in the panel.

225 amp panel, full of breakers, some on & some off. Index card in panel, telling loads. 11 conduits feeding out, multiple ckts in most. All the home runs were cut from the breakers & feeder wires had been pulled out. Home runs remained hanging in panel. I'm sure ckts were refed nearby from other panels.

I would have never thought of this happening. If it were an old beat up panel in a decrepit building, I may have thought to check it, but not in a building built in the last 10 years & it looking normal. If I had to kill a panel for some reason and leave it in place, I'd label it "No Power, Not in Use" or some such. Boss looked at it when estimating job & I saw it when he & I walked through. Neither of us had any reason to suspect it was dead.
 
Yea I hate when that happens:rant:

Wired a above ground swimming pool along with all kinds of lights and recepts on the deck that was around it, it was next to a very new looking out building that had an 1?" PVC conduit coming out of the ground that LB'ed in to it, and two ground rods with a GEC all ran into the shed, even had outside receptacles and lights on it.

Problem was the owner was on vacation when I wired it as he said if I wanted I could go ahead and get my wiring done while he was gone, so I trenched in all my PVC pipe over to this shed thinking it was a no brainier that this was where he wanted me to pick up the power from, well he got back and to my surprise that he never had the shed fed, the last EC shot him a very high price on feeding the shed from the house which was about a 200' run and he decided to not have electric in the shed, (he had bought it from a neighbor which is why it was already wired, well it took me a bit but we came to a deal for me to feed the shed for a very reduced cost than I would have charged, but I did make some money on it, just not what I should have, oh and the PVC pipe that ran into the ground, well that is all it did:rant:
 
I went and looked at a job wiring a new split system AC unit, found a 225 amp 42 circuit panel with only a few circuits in the area I needed. Great!

Went back a few days later with help, we pull the circuits to the panel, do the rest of the work and finally go to tie into the panel.

Open the panel up and yeah it is live but only supplied with 10 AWG from a 1.5 KW transformer. It could barley supply the circuits already in it never mind adding a 2 pole 50.
 
Went into a place one time and must have spent almost a year there working. Panels all over the place. Did some work in one area that had two panels, one was full and the other only had two or three circuits in it. So we did all the pipe work and even tied into the panel. I was pulling the home run when, I called my buddy over and asked what's wrong with this picture. No neutral. Only panel in the whole place that was a straight three wire.
 
iwire said:
I went and looked at a job wiring a new split system AC unit, found a 225 amp 42 circuit panel with only a few circuits in the area I needed. Great!

Went back a few days later with help, we pull the circuits to the panel, do the rest of the work and finally go to tie into the panel.

Open the panel up and yeah it is live but only supplied with 10 AWG from a 1.5 KW transformer. It could barley supply the circuits already in it never mind adding a 2 pole 50.
Click to expand...

OOPS!
 
Similar issue: C H Classic panel, add 2 circuits . Simple enough the basement is unfinished & there are 4 empty slots at the bottom of the panel cover. Land the wires at the panel is the last task. Take the panel cover off & notice the bus stops at the last breaker. Tandem breakers were the solution.
 
John120/240 said:
Similar issue: C H Classic panel, add 2 circuits . Simple enough the basement is unfinished & there are 4 empty slots at the bottom of the panel cover. Land the wires at the panel is the last task. Take the panel cover off & notice the bus stops at the last breaker. Tandem breakers were the solution.
Click to expand...

Been burned on Square D panels like that too! We tell the supervisor / estimator you MUST
open the panel and verify feeds and actual breaker space.

Just got back from checking a job.
Pool contractor says he is going to add electric heat to an existing pool He goes on: "it will be easy for you, there is a sub panel right next to the pad".

I say, Let me have the address I'll run by and check it.
Low and behold Cutler Hammer CH 8 circuit raintight sub panel next to the pad with 4 open spaces, great! Open the cover, its fed with 10/3 romex! UGG:weeping:

At least it was caught before any one quoted numbers.
 
Sierrasparky said:
So what did you do?
Click to expand...

I fed it from an exit light in the room. Fortunately, it was not too far away.

I also marked the panel "DEAD, NOT IN USE, NO FEEDERS" to warn anyone else working there, or even our own guys if someone else were to do work there besides me.
 
John120/240 said:
Similar issue: C H Classic panel, add 2 circuits . Simple enough the basement is unfinished & there are 4 empty slots at the bottom of the panel cover. Land the wires at the panel is the last task. Take the panel cover off & notice the bus stops at the last breaker. Tandem breakers were the solution.
Click to expand...


Was the panel listed for twins? Most are not and none of the older ones are, I was ticked when C-H started to make a twin for the C-H Classic panels.



The only part of that interior that is designed for twins is on the lower section, a twin on the upper part flops around where the breaker attaches/clips on to the metal rail.
 
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