On Apr 17, 5:18*pm, Harry Johnson wrote:
On 4/17/2012 4:09 PM, Paul Drahn wrote:

While discussing the problem with the electrician, he told me a secret:

The old mechanical meter only read the power usage from one leg of the
240 volt line. Power usage at 120 volts on the other leg got by free. In
addition, he said electricians would sometimes swap the metered legs so
the excess usage of 120 volt appliances would not be read by the meter.
This is why some people are able to use the 120 volt space heaters in
certain rooms of their house with no increase in electrical usage/bill.

Pssssssst! Hey Paul! I got a bridge I'll sell ya. Interested?

Yeah, that part didn't sound right to me either. Not sure if he's
saying
it was that way for the one particular meter that might be broken?
But by saying electricians would swap the legs, it seems to imply that
all the similar meters were only capable of recording power on one
leg,
which doesn't make sense. There are plenty of folks out there who
would quickly take advantage of that and the utility would be giving
away energy. Seems very odd.