Proper Crimping Matters

[PNPmacnab]

Not exactly solar, but an interesting read.

I had 70 year old stretched bare copper lines feeding my house. They were dangling within a couple inchesof each other. I had repeatedly tried to get the utility to install a new feed line. As long as they were stillworking, they wouldn't. Last October that was solved when a tree trimmer dropped a tiny branch on it. I gota new line. Quite a light show and there was nothing left of the old one. The downside was it took out therefrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, DVD player and a clock from the surges.

The utility installer didn't bill the trimmer for the damage because he was retiring in three days and thought tree trimmers has a hard existance. He also went on talking about the new kid replacements that didn't know anything.

Just had a lot of rain and some lights in the house were starting to flicker and finally went out. At the main breaker I had a solid 120V on one leg and 30-60V on the other. I went out and looked at the line coming into the house. The tape on one of the crimp connectors had split from heating. Problem solved, called the utility. Showed that to the lineman and he declares on inspection that the real problem was I had lost the neutral, not the heated connection I had pointed out. Good thing the house had copper water lines to the water main to maintain some semblance of neutral. Then he pulled on the other leg wire and the lead pulled right out.

He then replaced all three crimp connectors and said the wrong size had been used. On mentioning the prior installer was retiring, he said good thing. The battle of the generations never ends. Seven months on a crimp connection is pretty bad.

[Sunking]

Good thing the house had copper water lines to the water main to maintain some semblance of neutral. Then he pulled on the other leg wire and the lead pulled right out.

Wrong conclusion. If you had good copper connections you would have never had noticed the problem until your neighbors house wiring had problems or burned down. In the early days of electrical distribution, you cold water pipe was an Excellent Ground. In fact too good. You had metal pipe all the way to the Water Utility Meter connecting you the whole city water pipe including your neighbors.

Water Utility workers and Plumbers got sick and tired of being shocked and electrocuted. People are funny that way. When a Plumber or Water Utility folks worked on the water supply line, broke the electrical connection discovering the customer Neutral Circuit was opened. Homeowner never knew it because the water pipe bond allowed your neighbors house sharing the same transformer to use his path to return Neutral to the utility transformer.

Water utilities solved the problem and got the Electric Utilities to quit using water pipes as a conductor. They install Insulated Bushings at the water meter to stop current flow. So now when you loose neutral becomes your problem, not someone else's problem. You will see a large Voltage Imbalance between L1 and L2, Over voltage to half you house, and low voltage on the other half. So what you get is Brown--Out and Burnt equipment to deal with.

What you seen and witnessed is dirt being used as a conductor and why electrical codes forbid ground to be used as a circuit. Dirt is a piss poor conductor. Only utilities can use dirt as a conductor.

[inetdog]

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What you seen and witnessed is dirt being used as a conductor and why electrical codes forbid ground to be used as a circuit. Dirt is a piss poor conductor. Only utilities can use dirt as a conductor.

Just for completeness, the utilities don't get to do it just because they set their own rules. They get to do it because they are operating at a much higher voltage, in which case the current flowing across the ground electrode resistance will be far lower and the voltage drop will be an even lower, acceptable, percentage of the utility voltage. But at customer voltages it takes a metallic connection to carry the current without an excessive voltage drop.