my wifes boss is having some additions to his coffe shop which involved upgrading his service from 100 amp to 200 amp.
sounds simple enough but the story behind it gets interesting.
he has a 3 phase delta service with a high leg...gotta admit i know little to nothing about, other then remember reading in nec how it must be orange in color and beleive it must be in the middle of the phases(correct me if im wrong) anyway what i don't understand is the voltage he is talking about, his equipment is 240V and if its a delta high leg with orange marking then i assume(yea yea i know ass-u-me) that the voltage would be 480/277 brown-orange-yellow wouldn't 240/120 be black-red-blue?
he said when the electrician change the meter and installed the new service..he fired up the panel and had breakers tripping and when the electrician took readings at the recepticles he was getting 240V which he told my wifes boss was impossible....so he went though a couple of meters thinking they were surely broken. but after a call to one of his buddies he soon learned that he did indeed have that voltage present at a 120V recepticle and i think we all know what happens to 120V appliances and computers when such things happen. so what does this guy do when a solinoid(110V)fries he tells my wifes boss that his friend who originally wired it with a 2 pole 20A breaker one for the solinoid and the other for a different piece of equipment...that he wired it wrong and it isn't his fault that the solinoid fried. even though it worked fine for four years prior to him getting there.
and the computer he toasted as well from a seperate single pole breaker stabbed into the high leg phase wasn't his fault either.
now this new panel has blanks every third space.
just when you think this electrician couldn't get worse...
he tells them that he would have to charge more to finish the job since the existing meter was 100A (duh) he would have to buy and install a 200A which wasn't included on the original bid since he didn't know he would have to change the meter... and ohh yea the service wire too. so add on another $1500 to
please explain the high leg delta and any comments about this electrician would be appreciated.
thanks,
h20
