Can be done safely.

I would use a ratchet with an allen driver.

We used to work on hot buss's by building an insulated platform out of
wood pop bottle transport boxes and use any pop bottle except the dark
green Coke bottles (they were slightly conductive we found).

Get up on the platform and both hands on the wrench.

Plan out what you are going to do 1 step at a time.

Know what your arms and body are close to.

Tighten one connection at a time

Have a safety man in case.

Done this on 480 pannels and down.

Fortunatly except for one time at my house to tighten a buss bar
connection in a 220 299 amp pannel these jobs were in hospitals where we
had determined that the main pannel had hot connections. Medical help
was close by and they knew what we were doing.

We didn't have them then but the optical tempature probes would be good
for looking for hot connections in power distb. pannels now.

Hugh
Retired Medical X-Ray service engineer

Pete C. wrote:
Ignoramus18851 wrote:

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:37:45 -0800, Glenn wrote:

Don't overlook the incoming power feed.

Yes, I will definitely check that. My incoming power lines are
connected to the electrical panel with Allen style set screws. They
are before the main breaker, so, I will have to be very careful
tightening them, as they cannot be turned off.


They can be turned off, however it requires pulling the meter. You
really really don't want to be holding onto the inadequately insulated
end of an Allen wrench that is at 120v relative to ground and has
essentially no current limiting or fusing.

Pete C.




The electrical lines coming into the house are underground.


Those crimp connections the power company uses ar pretty good but
they do fail over the years. I have had several problems very much
like Iggy's and they were corrected by the power company fixing
their lines. You can usually see signs of a problem on the
connections insulation. One place you could see blue arcing at
night when the electric furnace kicked in! Wind storms would turn
the TV on and off and fried a microwave oven.

And just for the record, I have enjoyed your trials and tribulations with
your various projects. Keep us posted please

Thank you. Same to you.

i