On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 16:51:07 -0500, "Steve Barker"
wrote:
Find the panel your meter is hooked to and switch the main breaker off.
Then see if the meter is still turning or advancing in the case of a
digital. Also, if someone else is on your panel, then pulling the main
should make them holler.
All this on the fairly good but tentative conclusion someone is
stealing your electricity:
Hmmm. I was going to agree with you 100% but now only 90. The other
guy might be smart enough to keep his mouth shut. So the OP or his
friends should go office to office (right?) after the power is off, to
see which office is dark. Although it might well not be the whole
office which is on the OP's ciruit. Maybe some high-current room or
some high current device.
And it could even be that the other party sneaked in between the meter
and the OP's breaker/fuse box, although usually they are very close
together.
OP, you might want to test your disconnecting for a second or two
before you bring in your spies. To know you can do it and how. If
there are any clocks on the ohter guy's circuit, having to reset them
a second time might bring more whining when the spies are there.
If you have cartridge fuses in your main cutoff, you might be able to
pull that out, remove the fuses, and put the black thing back in.
That will slow down their finding the problem, and the bad guy won't
suspect you. Even when they find the problem, you can play dumb.
Tell people that your power is off too (and it will be) to give the
bad guy the feeling that .
BTW, the other guy might possibly be your landlord.
Finding the extra wires might not be so easy.
When I was in college, I lived in a fraternity that had been a big
house built around 1900. I had a tiny room and when I moved the small
set of drawers, I found a phone had gone to my room. Maybe from after
WWII, when we had a lot of grown men living in the frat going to
school on the GI Bill. I went to the basement and found the other
end of the wires, disconnected from everything. I don't remember the
thought process, but I decided to connect my wirres to the pay phone's
wires (we had two pay phones, one in a closet on the first floor and
one in the hall on the second floor. I chose the second floor one
which got used a lot less, usually only when one of the 18 guys living
there was on the closet phone.)
I used three wires from my line, cutting the pay phone line right
where it passed over a 1 or 2 inch pipe, so the splice couldn't be
seen while standing on the floor. (Probably 8 foot ceilings.)
I used 3 of my wires. I cut one of the two pay phone wires and just
spliced into the other one. I bought a bag of some switches at Olsen
Electronics, and a little scrap wood, and put in a switch to open the
line to the pay phone and connect me. Voila!
Later, even though one of two wires was cut, someone could hear my
voice on the pay phone, they even came and got me. I should have said
I heard the voice too, but like a fool I said i didn't hear it.
So I took two 110 to 35 volt transformers ,put them in series to get
about 12 volts, and used the same DPDT swtich to run 12 volts through
the pay phone whenever I cut its line to the phone co. with the same
switch. Then whenever I was on the phone they'd hear a 60-cycle hum
in the pay phone around the corner from me about 30 feet away. (I was
at the end of the hall. When they complained about this, I always
volunteered to call the phone company and report it. This shows how
sneaky thieves can be.
Everything went fine for several months, maybe 5 phone calls a week,
until one time I was yelling at a friend of mine (who could be very
annoying.
) And my friend Rich who lived next to me came and
knocked on the door and said "Do you have a phone in there?". I
thought of saying I was just yelling at myself, but Rich was a good
guy, and I couldn't lie to him singly. I guess everything worked
until I moved to an apartment in July.
I think I soldered the two wires together and taped everything, behind
the dresser. But I dont think I soldered the wires in the basement
because I was trying to finish quickly, and they were only an inch or
two below the ceiling and above a pipe.
A few years later I heard that the there had been trouble with the 2nd
floor pay phone, and the phone man couldn't find it, so he had run a
new line from the ingress to the phone (through the laundry chute I'm
sure where the first wire went.) I felt bad about that but not bad
enough to confess.