ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Photos for General Discussion Water Damaged Panelboard

I have always wondered what would happen in this case. In our area in 1996, we had a huge flood. Many basements went under. It was a while ago, so I don't remember much of what happpened. If the panel is on, and the water is contaminated enough to conduct, wouldn't this short the mains causing the PoCo OCPD to trip?

In the same flood, in one neighborhood, a poco pole transformer was hit by lightning. This took out power to the whole neighborhood, causing sump pumps to stop and basements to flood. I got home to find that a friend of mine had borrowed every extension cord I owned and was using them to run sump pumps in that neighborhood. It was, umm, lets say, interesting.

Love that lace of white chalk for a nuetral.

Hey wait, is that drain board behind the panel?

Unlikely. Primary fuses rarely go due to arcing on the secondary. Take a look at this thread.

It makes me wonder what would cause the primary fuse to open. Last summer, the underground primary behind my house faulted and blew the fuses in the two adjacent padmounts. I heard a loud pop in the back yard, and I knew it was a primary fuse. I called the utility and told them exactly which transformers were dead, then I waited up until about 12:30 AM to watch the lineman work. He blew two fuses trying to get the fault to clear itself, then finally bolted it and took out the entire street. That's when he said he needed backup. The power came on shortly after I went to bed. They must have cut out the bad cable. I saw the new one laid out near a manhole at the end of the block the next week.

I guess a bolted short on the secondary transformer bushings might blow the fuse, but after looking at these photos... well, I always was careful about how I brace my masts, but nothing like an eye-opener!

Sometimes it may not take much to pop a primary fuse. The old "can" out front of here I can remember its primary fuse blowing many times. No real reason just overload I think as it ALWAYS happened around 4-6 PM, middle of summer on stinkin' hot days. Got to the point where the PoCo troubleman and I knew each other by name!
I finally squaked about it and they came out and replaced the can, putting in one thats electrically identical in size, just bigger physically to hold more cooling oil, and apparently its fused the same (20A I think they said)... No problems since. Maybe they used one of them new "metric 20A fuses" ..


A.D