Long ago before I even started my apprenticeship, my former employer was at his home and was making repairs to an ancient clothes dryer of his. upon completing the repair he turned the breaker back on, only to have it trip immediatly ( this dryer was hard-wired).
Anyway right after the breaker trips open he notices all his lights and appliances are acting weird , some lights are bright, some are dim, fridge wont start, vacuum sounds like its gonna grenade... Anyway I go over there with a tester knowing it was an open neutral SOMEWHERE on the mains.. Couldn't find anything.. Even did an amp check to see if a current is trying to flow through the ground conductor, into the water line, trying to find another path to the transformer... Zero current there.. Everything outside looks good too...
Finally I told my old boss to call the PoCo, as there is a problem in the meter socket OR on the street... He called but then got all worried they were going to blame him and left!!
I stayed for the PoCo and when they showed up they did some tests and found out that several houses had the "open neutral syndrome"... They traced it to the bolted connection between the transformer's neutral lug and the overhead distrubution busswork... Turns out that it was a poor connection to start with and when the boss' dryer shorted out, it wiped out the connection at the transformer, and left all the houses fed from it with a floating neutral!
No damage done as far as we knew in other houses... Some emery cloth and new hardware, the PoCo was on their way in 20 minutes!
A.D
