On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 19:04:40 -0500, "TomR"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 10:54:21 -0500, "TomR"
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 23:35:44 -0500, "TomR"
wrote:

That's what the "drip loop" is there for. Around here if the
inspector doesn't find that "drip loop" he is very likely to give you
a deficiency report.

On the property where I had the water-inside-panel problem, there is a
drip
loop up at the top of what I think maybe is called the mast head (or
something like that), where the power line from the pole meets the
service
drop that goes down into the top of the meter box.

Where it comes out of the bottom of the meter box, there is no drip
loop.
It just runs down into the building and into the top of the electric
panel.
I don't know that I have ever seen a drip loop on that part of the
service
line coming into a building (below the meter), but I never really looked
carefully to see if there is a drip loop there. Since the water was
coming
from inside the meter box (getting in through the top of the meter box),
and
was running INSIDE the wire going from there to the panel, I don't know
if
a
drip loop in that line would have prevented the problem of water getting
into the panel inside the house.

If the wire from the meter droops below the conduit exiting the meter
box to the inside of the building, water cannot follow the wire into
the building and into the panel.

I may be wrong about this, but I think the purpose of a drip loop is to
have
water that is on the outside of the wire drip off at the low point of the
loop rather than running down on the outside of the wire into a structure
etc.

The water is not IN the conduit. It gets into the meter box, and with
no drip loop the water runs down the cable into the conduit (which
goes out the back of the meter box), With the loop, it runs down the
wire to the bottom of the loop and drips off - then runs out drainage
hole at the bottom of the meter box.

Maybe we are not both talking about the same thing. I am not exactly sure
what the term "conduit" means, but in my case I was using the term "conduit"
to mean the heavy gauge, gray-wrapped, "service feed" that runs from the
bottom of the meter box down into the building and into the top of the
electrical panel inside the basement. It is the same kind and gauge of
cable as the service drop that comes down along the outside of the building
and goes into the top of the meter box.

Using my definition of "conduit" to mean that cable that runs from the
bottom of meter box down into the building and into the top of the panel, my
"conduit" DID have water running INSIDE that conduit and into the panel.
The water was not running down the outside of the "conduit", it was INSIDE
the gray-wrapped cable and came out of the inside of that gray-wrapped cable
and dripped into the panel.

Not what I was talking about at all --

But, I think that any water that is INSIDE a conduit will continue to flow
inside that conduit down into the drip loop then back up and then down
again
to the lowest point in the conduit down below. If it were water inside a
hose, as new water flowed into the hose at the top of the hose the water
inside the hose would continue flowing down to the lowest point further
down
at the end of the hose. This would be similar to a sink drain and trap --
where the trap is in effect a "drip loop". Similarly, water on the
outside
of the sink drain would drip off at the bottom of the trap. But water
inside the drain line would continue to flow down to the end of the drain
line and would continue past the "drip loop"/trap.

The secret is to keep water OUT of the conduit.

Yes, of course

In the scenario that I had where water was getting inside the conduit and
going into the panel, if the conduit had a drip loop in it, I could have
cut
a small slit in the conduit wrap at the bottom of the drip loop to let the
water inside the conduit drip out there rather than continue down into the
panel inside the house in the basement. Of course, that would only have
been a temporary fix until I corrected the problem of water getting inside
the conduct from the meter box. In my case, there was no such drip loop
in
that part of the conduit (from the bottom of the meter to the panel below
inside the house in the basement).

There is NEVER a "drip loop" in conduit.

I thought that you wrote earlier that there must be a drip loop in the
conduit that I was describing as part of the code requirements when you
wrote,

That's what the "drip loop" is there for. Around here if the
inspector doesn't find that "drip loop" he is very likely to give you
a deficiency report.

But, maybe we were talking about two different things.