ECN Forum
Posted By: Admin Burnt Meter Base - 04/08/04 05:50 PM
Quote
Hello All,

Called today to a home which had a close call due to a fire in the PoCo Meter Base.. It appears that the conductors entering the line side were tweaked a little too hard against the entrance hub of the base shorting them out... Better pics to come

-Randy (aka lostazhell)
[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

[This message has been edited by Webmaster (edited 04-08-2004).]
Posted By: ShOcKeR Re: Burnt Meter Base - 04/08/04 09:46 PM
Ya know this is the prime reason why i look at the condition of the wires entering the weatherhead before touching it. One slight movement and WALLA crispy conductors. [Linked Image]
Posted By: Lostazhell Re: Burnt Meter Base - 04/10/04 10:00 PM
Tim, I do the same thing... Especially after doing a looooong 566' pull of 500MCM for a car dealership rebuild I did with a "past" company I worked for... about ¾ of the way, we found something had penetrated one of the wires straight through! [Linked Image] [Linked Image]
On this thing, the black above the meter socket is where the wire burned through the conduit... The Edison triplex also melted in places (wierdly, only where someone had put black tape on it)... Even stranger, My hotstick lit up on the grounded phase of the triplex, I've never had this happen before & makes me wonder how well the PoCo Xfmr is grounded... (The Xfmr is pretty close to original for the neighborhood) ...

Job Security

-Randy
Posted By: DougW Re: Burnt Meter Base - 04/11/04 01:05 AM
Lostazhell...

be something if the POCOC was inadvertantly using your homeowner's grounding electode as their xformer's (and the neighborhood services w/o proper grounding), now wouldn't it!?
Posted By: Lostazhell Re: Burnt Meter Base - 04/11/04 04:17 AM
LoL Doug... In this case it wouldn't have been great in the first place.. Black RMC running from the panel to a galv. water pipe under the bathroom, with some sort of wierd clamp... didn't look very good, lots of rust!.. Wish I'd taken a pic of it, but it was in a really awkward place... Another oddity while I'm thinking about it, We ran an extension cord to a neighbor's garage for power (12awgX50') & I noticed my sawzall sounded like it was really laboring, & my cordless charger kept showing "Line Problems" I was only getting 109V! I already advised SoCalEdison of these things, but as far as I've seen, nothings changed on their end.

-Randy
© ECN Electrical Forums