ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area worst job i've ever been in charge of!! ever

I'll give a brief synopsis of the nightmare I've been stuck in for 2 going onto 3 days.

The job consists of upgrading a 600 amp service to a 1200. Existing pad mount transformer to be swapped out for new 300 kva. existing 4" pvc conduits to electric closet 3x. Remove old main disconect, replace with 1200 amp rated m.l.o panelboard with 2 breakers one 600 amp, one 800 amp. The 600 amp will be the ocp for an existing meterstack with 8 meters adjacent to the main disconnect. The 800 amp breaker will feed through a c.t. cabinet to an 800 amp M.L.O cabinet with a few 200 amp breakers and a few 100 amps, and a few spares. The 800 amp panel is for te building owner to run a machine shop, the meter stacks in turn feed 5 other bays with various other tennants.

The 600 amp service only used 2 of the 3 existing pvc u.g. conduits.Upon national grid removing trans, and letting us have acces to the conduits, we determine 3rd conduit frozen. call roto rooter guy, to clean out conduit.

After finally wrestling the new MONSTER 1200 amp tub into place and pulling in 2 of the 3 sets of feeders. its about 5 pm, no roto rooter guy yet.....was suposed to have wiring inspection about 1/2 hr ago so i could power the building up cause its cold. Finally the roto rooter man cleans out the ice and rocks ahhh yes rocks, we passed a rope and mandrel through about 6 times to clear the pipe ourselves also. we finally get our final set of feeders in for the day. its about 7:30 cold and dark out by now.

We set up an extension cord to a unit heater within the bay of the sprinkler riser and our new ct cabiet to keep it warm overnight.....

Morning 6:40 first guy arrives gen is not running and will not fire back up, apparently it ran too low on oil.dohhhh. So day # 2 off to great start no power for lights, tools or temp heat. shop is sending new generator out about an hr away. Crew is working feverishly to land the final pull of 600 mcm's into 1200 panel from transformer, finally they get them done ring them out before tying into trans former, all is good. trans former gets made up all is on track...feed to new 600 amp tap can on end of meter stack is not pulled in yet ( about 10 ') the ct. is wired completely, its about 10:45 am we're in good shape... the last wires to be trminated is the new tap can on the end of the meter stack from the 600 amp breaker. finally done, all grounding is done call for inspection at 11:15 am... inspector shows up at 12:45 all looks good, utility is on site already ready to put fuses in at pole and let us confirm phase rotation. we had to have the utility guys swap a phase then all checked out. fire up the 800, and the three sets of panels and busduct's off that panel...so far so good. fire up the meter stack....all powers up ok check voltage on the bussing in tap can...all seems to be good. one of the tenants runs out says lights and computers smoking!!! another tenant says his unit heater in warehouse just smoked....checked all phases in tenant panels missing a phase, and 120 volts on neutral.....wtf...

Shut off 600 amp breaker start pulling apart meter stack, find that the neutral buss bar isthe center buss bar, and not the top as it was labeled by the factory. So here we are day 2 a bunch offried electrical equiptment heater transformers mostly and ballasts in lighting..and a few fax , telephones,computers at least 5 pc's, maybe one that operates a metal fab machine. coffee makers, etc... not such a great day to be me. The lesson i learned so far is meter everything before turning on a sigle breaker #1, don't always believe the markings the factory puts on its equiptment... i guess. have roto rooter on speed dial.

Another thing that got screwed up on day one that i forgot about was the wire for the 3 u.g. pulls. i had 2 helpers walking it out inside and labeling it. for some reason im not sure why, but they ran every cut about 2' longer than the last, which threw off the wire cuts. i had 3 reels, for 3 conduits, each reel had 4 lengths (supposed to)

They get to reel # 3 and have enough wire for 1, and a half which is no good, so I had to get another 96 ' of # 600 mcm...boss not too happy. especially when he sees all the wire cuts on the ground cause the wire wasn't cut to the same proper length. so the lesson here should be not to have helpers work on anything so critical. i've learned alot in 2 days, and i'm sure im gonna hear about it alot from my boss. sorry about the long post hopefully i can laugh about it later... hopefully you guys can take something out of my mistakes, or at least have a small chuckle and be thankfull it wasn't you