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Joined: Dec 2001
Posts: 2,498
T
Member
Not a high leg, and I didn't commit it myself, but here in Austria I saw an entire house blow up because of a loose neutral on the 230/400V wye supply. The result is approximately the same as with a loose neutral on a 120/240V 1ph service or MWBC - the incandescent bulbs were awfully bright!!!

The feed (flimsy 20A 3ph, 4sq. mm I think) had been spliced under a lot of tension during the renovation of a basement room it passed through (I assume it was originally exposed conduit relocated inside the wall when the former boiler room was finished and turned into living space) and over the years the connections got a bit loose.

Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 244
W
wewire2 Offline OP
Member
Years ago my employees were working in a city owned building doing a hot bus tap in a bussed gutter. He somehow let go of the neutral conductor which was already grounded at the newly installed 200A,120/208V.meter panel. The conductor was already stripped at the end when the unthinkable happened. Somehow it slipped out of his hand. Murphy's law came into play and the stripped end hit one of the hot line busses followed soon thereafter with a huge EXPLOSION!! I walked in shortly after to find a room full of Black smoke and a couple wide eyed electricians. Luckily the conductor only skipped across the bus and the fault quickly cleared. Yikes! Embarrassing!

Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 356
Member
oh that is why i saw the smoke, i thought all of the fixtures were factory defect. grin


Be kind to your neighbor, he knows where you live

Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 2,233
H
Member
I saw that happen too, but the kicker was that the POCO was the ones who hooked up the stinger leg on the wrong wire. They wound up paying my boss to go in and replace all of the burnt out ballasts.

Joined: Dec 2001
Posts: 2,498
T
Member
Reminds me of the German PoCo that managed to mix up hot and neutral on some 230/400V Y distribution...

Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 939
F
Member
Originally Posted by Texas_Ranger
Reminds me of the German PoCo that managed to mix up hot and neutral on some 230/400V Y distribution...


Ya are not alone I have same issue in France as well and just couple days ago one of the commercal customer did actually lost the netural connection to the whole place and anything still on 240 went to 415 volts plus the place filled up with burnt electrical items smell myself and two others EC have to come in and fix this mess BTW it is a well knowen French Bank office shocked

Now for the North Americian side yeah I have dealt with it and once you learn that and it will stay in your mind and never let it go.

Merci,
Marc


Pas de problme,il marche n'est-ce pas?"(No problem, it works doesn't it?)

Joined: May 2007
Posts: 169
C
Member
I sent my apprentice in to snap a breaker on the circuit feeding the "craft room" we had wired adjacent to the "ag room" running the pumps. I forgot to mention the high leg.
The X10 switch we had installed for remote control of the exterior lights from the main house let the smoke out.

Hey, it WAS taped orange and the guy DOES own a meter, right?...........

Last edited by ChicoC10; 12/13/10 11:42 PM.
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 345
T
Member
Not a true stinger leg story but in a corner office one floor down from the top floor at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC I was called in on a service call by the FBI. When we got there they were ticked that the GSA had sent a contractor so I said fine sign the ticket and we're gone. After a long delay the GSA convinced them they had no electricians to send and they were stuck with us. Problem was the remains of a table radio burned into a crater in the top of a cherry wood desk. The FBI were looking at it as an assassination attempt. I had to take the receptacle apart one layer at a time. The whole building was on emergency power because Ground Fault Protection of equipment on main service had tripped. In the back of the newish looking old work box was a tag that read "$1.05 Hechinger." Hechinger was the predecessor to today's big box store. As soon as I saw the tag I laddered the drop ceiling and found that the excessively neat installation was connected to a lighting J box. The connections were color to color in a sense. The black from the drop was on the brown and the white was on the yellow. We convinced the FBI that it was a simple human error and they left. Meanwhile the journeyman, who's trainee I was, was getting upset. As soon as the FBI left he snuck up on the offices occupant and dropped his tool bag onto the table he was using as a temporary desk and asked in a very demanding voice "Do you see any legal papers in there." When the occupant sheepishly allowed that he did not my journeyman said "Then lets not have any more tools in there!" while pointing emphatically at the mans leather brief case. Having tired of waiting for the GSA to install a receptacle by his desk the assistant AG for counter terrorism had come in on the weekend, cut off the light switches, and installed it himself. I just wish I could have seen his face when he turned on that table radio and applied four hundred eighty volts across the primary of the power supply transformer. As we all know once the magic smoke that was put in at the factory escapes the item stops working. It was the EGC of the desk light that tripped the building's Service Ground Fault Protection. I hope that guy was grateful until the day he died that Will didn't narc him out to the FBI.

Last edited by tdhorne; 01/15/11 03:41 AM.

Tom Horne

"This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous for general use" Thomas Alva Edison
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 101
M
Member
I was working in an office building in Providence and was asked by a customer to install a recepteacle for another computer. I looked above the suspended ceiling snd saw a 4 square no markings so I snaked a new circuit cut in a box & put in the receptacle. Lastly I tied in the new black & white to the existing black & white. But when I plugged in the new computer poof! Then I checked with my meter 277!

Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 794
Likes: 3
W
Member
Originally Posted by mikethebull
...I snaked a new circuit cut in a box & put in the receptacle. Lastly I tied in the new black & white to the existing black & white. But when I plugged in the new computer poof! Then I checked with my meter 277!


Just replace the outlet with a 7-15R like this one: 277VAC outlet smile Only problem is that someone with a 2 prong equipped appliance from Australia may come by.

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