Gary Fowler
Super Star Member
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2008
- Messages
- 11,998
- Location
- Bismarck Arkansas
- Tractor
- 2009 Kubota RTV 900, 2009 Kubota B26 TLB & 2010 model LS P7010
I was away from my home in Crosby Texas for about 8 months and while I was gone a house was built next door. When we got unpacked and started turning on some lights that night, we found that half the house had electricity and the other half the lights would just barely glow. I got out a meter and checked the power coming into the house and found that one leg had 120 volts but the other only had about 30v coming in. The power company came out the following day and found that "someone" had snagged my cable damaging the insulation coming out of a junction box and going UG to my house. The power company unhooked it, gave me a section of the cable that showed the damage and ran me a temporary cable just laying on top of the ground. It was 75 feet from J box to my meter and a local contractor wanted $5,000 to run 4 new #4 aluminum wires. That is when I found out the contractor's name that built the neighboring house and had him come by for a look. I showed him the cables and he agreed to run the new wire to my house.
Houston L&P would not allow any splices in any of the cables and since they cut all the wires,(only one was bad) I had to have all 4 new wires ran. It took about 29 days of the 30 allowed with the temp cable to get everything done and schedule when the contractor would be available with HL&P to make the tie ins but it finally got done.
I almost fainted when they told me $5K to run 300 total feet of UG rated aluminum wire and only 70 feet of ditching as the last 5 feet went into conduit up the wall to the meter.
The problem was just as the OP said, insulation just nicked thru to the bare wire and corrosion finally ate up the aluminum wire
Houston L&P would not allow any splices in any of the cables and since they cut all the wires,(only one was bad) I had to have all 4 new wires ran. It took about 29 days of the 30 allowed with the temp cable to get everything done and schedule when the contractor would be available with HL&P to make the tie ins but it finally got done.
I almost fainted when they told me $5K to run 300 total feet of UG rated aluminum wire and only 70 feet of ditching as the last 5 feet went into conduit up the wall to the meter.
The problem was just as the OP said, insulation just nicked thru to the bare wire and corrosion finally ate up the aluminum wire