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Diesel

Tue, 10 May 2016
20:40:39 GMT in alt.home.repair, wrote:

When I was a working electrician, we installed the "Service
Entrance". That was the entrance HEAD, to the meter box (socket),
and then to the breaker box. (And of course all the wiring in the
building iteself). When we completed a job, we left around 3 feet
of wire hanging from the entrance head. After the job was
inspected, the power company came and ran the overhead wires from
the pole to these wires at the entrance head, and crimped them
together. Then they installed the meter in the meter socket and
turned on the power.

That's how we do it here. As a final step I bend the service wires
coming out of the freshly installed weatherhead so that it
discourages water (if they get rained on) from trying to travel along
the wire into the pipe. It's like a U with a tail in the front

Or
a sink trap for water... similar in shape. We've already passed the
last inspection at this point. But, as a precaution, the line man
will double check at the CAN. Just to be sure soon to be hot's aren't
shorting and the neutral isn't shorting to either hot. I don't blame
him either. The last thing I'd want to do is be plugging in a CAN
knowing my pole transformer is up and going and something be... wrong
inside that meter base wiring.

I really enjoy doing residential and commercial wiring. With a little
industrial wiring tossed in for the occasional, odd job. With that
said though, the line man and other people higher up the totem pole
are playing with much higher levels of current than I am.

I've got
nothing but respect for them. I do respect the voltages I muck with
as well; I'm aware of what they can do if disrespected, but, for
sure, the line man has got to be that much more respectful.

I never ran into any underground service feeds, (they were not
common in my area back in the 1970's-80's), so I cant comment on
that, except that I would guess that the electrician installs the
conduit from the meter box into the ground, and the power Co.
installs the underground wire up into the meter box. (I could be
wrong on that, since I never had to do it).

We run the wire from the meter base can into pvc piping that's going
to be underground when we pile the dirt back on it, to a plastic
green box located near the road, not too far from the transformer
pad.

Inside this box is where the power company taps onto the output lines
coming from the transformer to feed your house. Each line has a boot
and a short aluminum? based BUS that'll accept several wires on it.
They just take one boot off, make the connections, put the boot back
on, move onto the next. With the transformer up and going and various
houses already pulling on it.

I haven't seen an underground one yet though that provided power to a
single house. They're usually feeding four to six houses in a close
proximity to each other. You can see the PVC piping going up the pole
that contains the wires to power the transformer. We don't touch
those.

Also, all grounding rods and connections are installed by the
electrician at the house location.

Ayep.

--
MID:
Hmmm. I most certainly don't understand how I can access a copy of a
zip file but then not be able to unzip it so I can watch it. That
seems VERY clever!
http://al.howardknight.net/msgid.cgi?ID=145716711400