Overhead & Underground Electrical Utility Service

Well, this is the house that blew up exactly what we're talking about here very early in my career. I have a contract. Hello, I'm Joel Walzman, CEO and Master Electrician at Jefferson Electric. This is video three of a four-part series. Where we're discussing

electrical

service

s primarily in the context of your home, I'm going to briefly assemble some of the major components here and talk about where the

utility

company's responsibility begins and ends and some of the requirements you must meet. Mindful of this, this is my 200 amp cabinet. This is a two-inch threaded bucket that is rain resistant.

I'm not going to apply locks or anti-rust compounds to every threaded ferrous exterior connection and in this case, the screws that secure my hub to the top. of the meter connector, I am going to waterproof those screws and prevent rust, in case of maintenance, those screws should only be tightened by hand. I would use all four screws in a real installation. I will also not apply locks, which is heavy, sticky, does not come off your hands or your clothes, type of compounds on the threads of my PVC male adapter which is not for the purpose of inhibiting rust, it is in my bucket of ferrous steel, but it's also for In order to prevent water displacement, I'm going to hand tighten it and then probably another full revolution without scarring the connector and looking unprofessional.

Oh, that's nice and tight, and then this PVC conduit becomes my

service

riser, of course I would. stick it in a real world application fully seated inside the fitting, sometimes the conduit and fitting really want to fight and crash into a full seat, in that case I would take a flat head screwdriver, a sharp pencil, something and put a mark on the place where the duct has settled and would remove it. the chute and make sure I have a full seat, which I do. This is a two inch PVC climate head. This is the point at the top of the service riser where the customer's responsibility stops the cable coming out of this climate header and at that point it becomes

utility

overhead

wiring and becomes the utility's responsibility at the end of This video, I'm going to tell you a true story that happened to me about the house that blew up the first house I ever wired, so you'll notice a couple things about it. wiring transitions at the weather head, often the utility

overhead

wiring has a much smaller wire gauge than the building wire and that is due to several different reasons, one major reason is that service drop The utility's aerial is subject to different rules, the utility is not bound by the national

electrical

code, since the building's wiring is what would govern the rules that the electrical contractor would use to size the cable, for example so there are two different sets of standards.

The second significant difference is that the overhead utility drop is exposed to open air, meaning that the wiring has the ability to dissipate heat and is required to be a different size. A smaller size is acceptable, unlike the wiring contained within this conduit, which is hidden and protected, which is a plus, but it also can't dissipate heat, so you'll notice. Sometimes the wiring coming out of the weather head is as big as your thumb, while the utility wiring may be smaller than your pinky. A substantial difference and that is the reasoning behind those differences. The utility drop must be in a clear line of sight from the utility pole to the weather head there can be no obstructions quick story there was a pine tree the customer's pine tree was sitting directly between the utility pole and the weather head and the point of attachment to the house and that service drop rubbed the pine for who knows how long probably years and years because that pine was 30 feet tall and it finally rubbed the insulation of the conductors, that service drop stayed there and smoked and it burst inside the pine tree for a couple of hours before it finally combusted and burned the side of the pine tree. big, old pine, hole burned in the pine and then it fell over and was hanging alive in the middle of the client's backyard, so you really want to ensure a clear line of sight if that line of sight is not clear due to foliage of that foliage.

It is the customer's responsibility if it is not in the right of way, it is generally only the utility's responsibility if the foliage is in the right of way or utility easement, so make sure you have a clear line of sight, Typically, if there is a detached accessory structure, such as a garage, then a minimum of three feet of clearance is required between the roof of the garage and the service downspout because that service downspout will sag over time or with snow and ice load. There are two methods for connecting a utility drop to a home.

This porcelain knob is insulated. and it is a lag style p knob, it is designed for a wood frame structure that penetrates something like siding and vinyl siding to the inside of the stud of the house. This would need to be secured to a framing member to be adequate and sound in the installation of the p-nob since it is a penetration through the exterior of the house, we would also provide a high quality sealant to prevent water infiltration. Another associated style of p-knob, like this one, is actually a machine-threaded p-knob and is designed for masonry. It is anchored to a house of masonry such as brick or stone.

The second style of p knob is this style of clamp and also porcelain and insulation, but in this case it is designed to be attached to a mast, a service lift that has been designed and is suitable according to the utility. standards to become the attachment point, those service risers will typically penetrate through the soffit of a home through the roof, be secured by hardware and the structure of the home, and will often require additional tie-down from the mast to the roof to ensure rigidity and support and this would then be fastened around the service riser like this, as I said PVC is not a suitable mast or service riser when that is the connection point, it would need to be imc conduit or rigid, okay, so this is the house that blew up exactly what we're talking about here very early in my career.

I am contracted by a 501c3 that specializes in low income housing, so they will take these old dilapidated properties and use primarily volunteer labor to put them up. the houses together and then place low-income people in the home similar to the habitat for humanity, so the volunteers have wired this entire house. They brought me in at the ninth hour to sort things out on a Friday, so I'm all over the place. house and outlets and switches and panels and I'm just taking care of correcting all kinds of problems with the handyman volunteer code. I'm toning the cables.

I'm trying to let you know that changing jobs doesn't work, there are just all kinds of problems I'm systematically working on the project to get everything ready, the owners move in that night and the next morning and the next day, this is Saturday, I'm in a family gathering with my extended family, I'll look at my phone, I got a voicemail from their construction manager, very, very sheepishly, on Saturday, you know, listen to this voicemail and the construction manager is giving the bad news, It's like Joel, I don't know what's going on here, I have no idea. but I need a call back, like I needed to call back yesterday, Joel, the house is literally exploding right now like light bulbs exploding in the living room, the TV just arced and this cloud of smoke is coming out of the TV, I'm getting melting.

I'm in the living room I'm dying I've done it again What's going on here? I don't even know how to explain these symptoms, like the whole house, the whole bar in the house, no one is going crazy. They're plugging in appliances, things are flashing, arcing, and smoking. I'm petrified. I call my supervising electrician and explain the situation and he says you know what exactly is going on. There is a loose neutral. The neutral is loose somewhere in the electrical service. Now circuits that should see 120 volts are seeing double voltage, they are being fed phase to phase and essentially the entire house voltage has doubled, so appliances that are only safely rated 120 volts, such as light bulbs in refrigerators and televisions.

Instead, they're seeing 240 volts, so I go out right away, I'm investigating and within three minutes, boy, not three minutes of being on the job site, I found the problem, it was actually the utility connection, it wasn't my fault, so relieved was the Utility Connection The wires coming out of the weather head were connected to the utility. The drought that the neutral had come loose and separated, unfortunately in the case of the house that exploded, the utility company, although at fault, was not responsible for any damage inside the house, so the natural. The question is how can this situation be prevented?

Well, it is difficult to prevent because everything is tested upon completion and that is a vital performance of an electrician is to test all of his work with the proper testing equipment. In this case, everything tested well and that's one part that came. comes loose the next day, potentially interrupted by wind, we don't know, but if that happens to you and you see that the electricity is not working properly, turn off that circuit or turn off your entire house, call a licensed electrician and do not continue using energy, those indicators. Flickering lights, power malfunctions and arcing are extremely dangerous and you should stop using power so that fully functioning electricity is fine and does not cause any problems imminently.

Electricity not fully working is generally not a sign of significant imminent danger. but the thing is that in the middle spectrum, when the electricity becomes really unsafe, an insurance adjuster once told me that every time there is an electrical fire in a house, he always asks how long the lights have been flashing and the answer is usually good . a couple of weeks or a couple of months, is an excellent precursor identifier of an electrical hazard, if there is something in the middle spectrum of partial functionality that could be a connection that is loosening on hot or neutral conductors and when a hot conductor starts to fail. separate then that causes or corrosion begins to build up that causes resistance and resistance means heat and heat means the potential for fire and then that partial functionality that is the most dangerous area for electricity turn it off discontinue use do not take it a possibility of additional requirements Underground directional drilling is sometimes required because there are alleys, sidewalks or other obstructions in place, that directional drilling will use HDPE conduit, that conduit is color coded and must be black with a red stripe per utility requirements, each Color indicates something to an excavation or industry professional and that color mark is important.

Additional trench requirements are: Typically, 36 inches of cover is required over the conduit or cable. What is the cover? The cover is ground on top of the electrical system. That's physically 36 inches of land. Do me a favor. when you fill that soil back in, fill in about 10 to 12 inches, tamp it down to minimize the amount of settling that will occur later, fill in another 12 inches of soil, pound it down, fill in another 12 inches, tamp it down and you'll do it. I end up with excess dirt because the physical is never going to be as compact as it originally was and the electrical installation has physically taken up some space, so I have a plan to remove the debris from the sites and keep that trench a little bit up because you know that The real story is also going to be resolved, the family is swimming in their pool in the

underground

pool on their property on a Saturday afternoon when the family members start coming out of the pool one at a time, they are shocked as if literally They had one foot in the pool. one foot on the pool deck and bam, they get nailed, an electric shock is experienced when the family gets out of the pool, so they're in it like we're in the water, we're fine if we're on the pool deck.

We're fine, but how do we get out of the pool? As soon as we touch the pool ladder, bam, shock runs through our body and it is painful and dangerous, of course, the water and electricity did not mix so effectively that the family is freed from. In this dangerous pool they call us and we start testing the area we are looking for excessive voltage drop that is an indication of a leak, maybe somewhere between the house and the mini barn or the house in the detached garage or thepool system. lighting and equipment anything that is energized in the vicinity and we can't find anything using test equipment to measure the differential and finally we cut power to the entire property and those conditions in the pool are still present that's why I am very particular about proper

underground

distribution systems.

In this case, the problem was detected in the underground distribution system behind the house coming from the utility company. There was about 500 feet of underground cable and somewhere on that cable it had been potentially damaged due to a sharp item that got into the fill, whether it was a rock that broke through the cable jacket, whatever. case, the cable was damaged and the voltage leaked into the conductive soils, the pool water was energized, the pool cover was grounded and there was a proper voltage difference between the two, so the family When he got out of the pool he was surprised and created an extremely dangerous situation.

Join us for our next video, part 4, on grid power.