goldstar
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Electrical Contractor
Sometime last year I posted this photo of an electric service to a house in a very wealthy community in northern NJ. I say this because I can't understand why wealthy people look to save $$ by hiring a hack to do this work instead of someone like us to do the work. I had to re-attach a service head that had been pulled off the side of the house due to storm damage. When I climbed up the ladder I found that the aluminum strands of both the tri-plex service drop and the SE cable were split apart, twisted together as a splice and taped. The new homeowners had been in this house for 12 years.
I had originally gone there on a service call because an outddoor receptacle circuit was not working. I should have known, up front, that there was going to be a big problem. The breaker panel was behind a small door in the beautifully finished basement. My first problem was getting the cover off the breaker panel. The finished door in front was just big enough to allow the cover of the breaker panel to open. I had to use a stubby screw driver to get the panel cover off and then I had to warp the cover to get it out from behind the partition.
I got a call last week that their AC stopped working. I tried to walk the HO through a problem solving routine before going out to investigate myself. After 10 minutes or so he calls me back and tells me that he has one 2-pole, 50 amp breaker feeding two 2-ton units. So I tell him that there must be a breaker panel outside. He says "no, there's a junction box and 2 disconnects". So I go out there and this is what I found :
A 4 x 4 x 4 PVC junction box between 2 non-fused disconnects. The green wire with the insulation on it actually is the ground wire. The other green wires with no coating on it is what is left of the two of the copper AC phase conductors that were attached to one of the aluminum SER wires. They were spliced together with a big blue wire nut. Whoever spliced it together anticipated that it might corrode but instead of using Noalox they used a silicone sealer.:slaphead: The small tab on the end is what's left of the wire nut. The second photo is what's left of the JB cover. The third photo is a close-up of the burnt wiring and JB. The last photo is what's left of the SER cable. The white conductor is barely recognizable coming through the aluminum siding.
The cable run is about 50' between the disconnects and the breaker panel. Do tap rules apply here :?
BTW, the AC units turned out to be 3-ton units with # 8 THHN in the whips. I ended up removing all existing disconnects and JB's and installing a w/p breaker panel with two 2-p 30 CH breakers at the same location
And YES, I did this in the rain.
I had originally gone there on a service call because an outddoor receptacle circuit was not working. I should have known, up front, that there was going to be a big problem. The breaker panel was behind a small door in the beautifully finished basement. My first problem was getting the cover off the breaker panel. The finished door in front was just big enough to allow the cover of the breaker panel to open. I had to use a stubby screw driver to get the panel cover off and then I had to warp the cover to get it out from behind the partition.
I got a call last week that their AC stopped working. I tried to walk the HO through a problem solving routine before going out to investigate myself. After 10 minutes or so he calls me back and tells me that he has one 2-pole, 50 amp breaker feeding two 2-ton units. So I tell him that there must be a breaker panel outside. He says "no, there's a junction box and 2 disconnects". So I go out there and this is what I found :
A 4 x 4 x 4 PVC junction box between 2 non-fused disconnects. The green wire with the insulation on it actually is the ground wire. The other green wires with no coating on it is what is left of the two of the copper AC phase conductors that were attached to one of the aluminum SER wires. They were spliced together with a big blue wire nut. Whoever spliced it together anticipated that it might corrode but instead of using Noalox they used a silicone sealer.:slaphead: The small tab on the end is what's left of the wire nut. The second photo is what's left of the JB cover. The third photo is a close-up of the burnt wiring and JB. The last photo is what's left of the SER cable. The white conductor is barely recognizable coming through the aluminum siding.
The cable run is about 50' between the disconnects and the breaker panel. Do tap rules apply here :?
BTW, the AC units turned out to be 3-ton units with # 8 THHN in the whips. I ended up removing all existing disconnects and JB's and installing a w/p breaker panel with two 2-p 30 CH breakers at the same location
And YES, I did this in the rain.
