ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Violation Photo Forum Fixing a Mess that Someone Left

Thats truely awful. I hope whoever started this gets strung up for it. Realistically, though, I have seen situations like this before. Some tenant / former tenant / tenants friend offers to "Help out" by making a few electrical upgrades, and, next thing you know, this happens. The landlord may have saved a few bucks at first by not hiring someone qualified, but, in the end, they pay. Or have no power.

Additionally, in the area i'm from, we are not allowed to use flex line like that for runs more than 6 feet. I have to check, but, I also think we cannot use non-metallic cable.

Well, duh!! Look at the left hand panel in the first pic and you'll notice the hack has landed both hot legs on the same (left side) lug!!

Placing a dead short on the poco feeder like that, he was lucky he wasn't blown to bits trying to connect it.

Natural selection gave this clown a huge break!!

Good eye MX. I didn't notice that until you mentioned it.

How this didn't explode is amazing. Perhaps the terminations were so poor that it didn't lower the resistance enough to be a dead short....hence the sizzling mentioned. Wow!

RSlater,
RSmike

MX:
Some (not all) of these OLD services were/are only 120 volt, based on the Edison fuses. I can't see the meter enough to read the tag.

As the barrel locks appear to be in-place, and the nipples under the meter pans look 'aged' the offender probably removed whatever the nips went to.

John

HotLine1:

If those were the older A base meters, yeah, I could see that as a possibility. But, all four meters appear to be modern Form 2S and I don't think barrel locks were used for that many years....and:


...so I think this is and was a 120/240v three wire service.

Now the service to my apt building, well......let's just call it the "Little Service Of Horrors!" (Pics and a new thread coming soon to a forum near you.)

MX:
The 'old' PSE&G meter pans, as in the pics the 'hole' where the barrel locks are used to be 'sealed' with a porcelain button. The PSE&G meter tech and wiring inspectors have a nifty tool that they would 'break' the porcelain, insert thru hole, it 'sprung' into a "T" inside the hole, and with a twist & pull, opened the latch that held the front cover on.

John

HotLine1:

Wow! That's an unusual setup for a security lock...thanks for the details. From the pic it was hard to tell what was going on there....

Have you seen many of the Form (n)S style meters in 120 volts? So far the only ones I've seen have been 240 (Form 2S) and the various three-phase models.

I have a pair of ABB electronic meters, one is Form 2S (I use it to monitor total power used by my A/V rack ) and the other is a Form 5S.

MX:
Believe it or not, I came upon a multi-meter mess similar to this doing inspections.

I'll pack my camera & take a few shots.
These will be 240 volt, and in a comm building.

BTW, before the old covers were re-installed, a new porcelain button was inserted from the backside. The barrel locks replaced the porcelain 'seals'.

As to the meters, I have ran across quite a few 120 volt meters, although none recently. There are two types of adaptors, one two wire, one three wire, supplied by PSE&G.

Now I think I really 'dated' myself with this one.

John

Ya know what I'd say when I saw this? "Job security!" Ya know what else I'd say? "Gimme the phone book, I'm calling the clown that did this!"

Ian A.