A scary thing happened at my shop recently.I had noticed lights flickering, tv goes off, etc. Didnt think too much about it as I'm in the sticks and the power is not the most stable.Found out that the ground wire from the xformer to the shop was almost corroded apart (under ground service).This causes the voltage on one leg of the 220v to go up as the loaded side goes down.Only resulted in a couple of zotted tv's.The scary thing was a power strip (plastic kind) actually caught fire even tho nothing was plugged into it. Charred the wood work bench but luckily went out on its own. So if you see something weird like this ,get it checked out!! Ron
Glad everything is OK. Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago. We had some flickering of the lights and then ZAP! - the power shots down, but it seemed a lot more jolting than a normal power outage. I could smell electrical type smoke, which was pretty scary late at night. We called the fire department and power company. When the fire department showed up, thy could smell the smoke, too, so they used a heat detector gun to check all the walls in the house. Turns out the dryer got fried and was still smoldering a little bit. When the power company came out, they checked the lines and finally found that one of the m***ive main ground lines in the alley had been spliced together (under a service cover in the ground). The work was done poorly and there was in intermittent connection that finally gave way. We lost the dryer and a TV, but were very fortunate that it wasn't worse.
Odd timing... My next door neighbors garage just got burned. Fortunately their son was home from high school. They said he smelled something weird so he went to check it out and burned his hand on the garage door knob. Lost the contents of the garage and now they're probably going to have to move. (Rental) Cause was an electrical failure. 2nd house fire on our short little street.
Did You get the power co. to replace the tv,drier?? Havent asked mine yet, but I think I know the answer already.
A few years ago I lived in an old house, built in the teens. Sometimes I`d come home from work and all the clocks in the house would be flashing , like there was a temporary power outage. I got a job in another city and moved. A few months later that house burned to the ground. Cause -- electrical short.
I tried, but you can guess what the answer was... Somehow, they are able to cl***ify it as a "normal" surge/outage event, even though the power company tech told us it was shoddy workmanship on the ground cable. I tried to explain it over the phone and by writing a letter to the big shots at the company and was pretty much ignored. Not that it matters because the lines are the same, but I switched power companies after this happened because of the way I was treated by the big company.
lost my house that i was only in for 6 months..same reason electrical short..1 year later i was back in a new home..but for one year it was total hell
Once and a while stupid little things lead to BIGGER things. I was in the shop one afternoon, when I heard a gaud awful BANG; and the power went out. The doors were open and the radio was on which was my first clue. The transformer that supplies power to my shop is on a pole out behind my shop and has a pole mounted circuit breaker on it. A squirrel had decided to take a short cut ACROSS the circuit breaker, which blew out and left tiny fragments of "fried" squirrel all over the place. And I could see the breaker hanging down. Called the power company who arrived in less than 30 min. They replaced the breaker which immediately blew again. But this time my radio in the shop let out one hell of a squawk. The power company guys and I ran into the shop to see my radio glowing like a Christmas tree and totally in flames. Grabbed a fire extinguisher - you have one in your shop don't you! - and put out the flaming radio. Other than some smoke marks on the shelf; nothing else got burned. This was DEFIANTLY one time I was glad I was at the shop!! (if someone had reported the breaker out of place; and I HADN'T been there ... you figure it out!) Now the power company guys starts to check a little more closely. It seems when the squirrel shorted out the breaker; it took out the transformer ground, - it was a VERY OLD connection - and put 660 volts to the power feed to my shop!! (normally should only be 220! and split to 110 for the radio) Don't ask me how THAT happened; even the power company guys were mystified. They replaced the transformer, the grounds AND the circuit breaker. A close check of everything else in the shop, showed nothing else was damaged - nothing else was ON! (powered up) - except the radio.
We have really ****y power at our shop.Some times the power goes down but not all three legs of the three phase curcuit.Our equipment does not like to run on single phase.Need less to say lots of motors get burned out when this happens.Power company just gives as a lame excuse and tells us to turn it into our insurance.Last year it happened about six times,so far so good this year.
I now have two extinguishers in my shop. Used to work in Calgary, beautiful place.I even got to like tomato juice and beer. Ron
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