ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Photos for General Discussion Apartment Water Leak

Ah, how I love getting a service call with a description "We had a water pipe leak and heard some noises and lost power to our exercise room". Sounds like a long night's work coming...

In a 14 story apartment building in Alexandria, VA we found this GE panel (which had seen better days by the time we showed up)on the first floor which had suffered a water leak directly above. The pics are pretty self descriptive, but here is the back story.

Maintenance guys from the building showed up when a tenant discovered water on the floor and noise coming from a nearby electrical panel and made a call. Luckily (for the maintenance guy) the fault had blown the fuses in the distribution bucket in the basement so when they opened the panel nothing was hot. If the fuses had not gone this could have been pretty bad for the first one to take a look at the problem. The panel has been replaced and the water line relocated, and for me it is a good reminder of why we need to follow code (and common sense) when doing installations.