The joys of home ownership #147: Circuit Breaker Waterfall

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
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So this was a fun evening. Had already spent my house work energy for the day by fixing a sink and a couple faucets then I walked into the garage to a mysterious and highly unexpected sound: Splashing water.
  • Had the laundry machine overflowed again? Ages since last time. But no, wrong side of the garage ...
  • Some water leak not previous experienced? No, shouldn't be any pipes that side of the garage, water heater is next to the laundry machine ...
  • Is it raining really bad? New roof leak? Rain wasn't forecast ...
Walked closer to the other side of the garage, and behold the joy of joys, the rare circuit-breaker-turned-waterfall with a side of standing-water-in-electricity-meter:

IMG_20121103_193330Small.jpgIMG_20121103_193348Small.jpgIMG_20121103_193411Small.jpgIMG_20121103_193419_Small.jpg

That gray line on the meter is how high the standing water is. Little harder to see the running water on the inside, but it is there and there's a lot. The desk/shelf thing was using particle wood surfaces, which soaked up the water like a sponge and started drooping and gathering a larger and larger pool of water, soaking all the screws, nails, fasteners, tools, and assorted junk that builds up over years in the garage.

So we were stumped. Neighbors stumped. City stumped (after somebody got back to me at 8 pm local time on a Saturday). Fire department stumped (water + electricity bad, take no chances)

After a while looking around we found a neighbor a couple houses up emptying a pool. Almost right into a large metal grate next to a large transformer box with all kinds of caution signs next to it. I'm not sure if they thought that was a drainage grate or if they hadn't noticed (their hose wasn't long enough to reach the street) and left the hose in just the right spot for it to run down to the grate and into the plastic tubes leading high voltage underground utility cables up and down the street :)

Luckily the cables were insulated so the water wasn't electrified. The tubes are supposed to be sealed but I guess either they weren't or one developed an opening that a pool-sized amount of water could rise high enough under the grate to get into. Then from there it ran down under the street, down the access pipe to our house, into our electricity meter box, through the wall to the circuit breaker, and down the wall on both sides.

City guy who came out also had never seen anything like it. He replaced the whole meter as it unsurprisingly wasn't working very well anymore (new smart meter - not smart enough to resist water, I guess!). So aw, had I not reported it maybe I would've gotten a few days of free electricity before they noticed ;)
 

A'nW

Member
Contributor
Art
Wow. That's pretty crazy. Never heard of something like that either! At least everything got sorted out apparently. Hope it wasn't to much of a mess to clean up in your garage.
 

metouto

Active Member
Contributor
Art
Just found this :cry: ... and realized my life is not so bad (just got through single digit temps) after reading your post Cervator and my thoughts ... real life is fun if you can live through it .... ;)

Did you get to keep the old meter to remember this real life day by :whistle:
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
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Naw, didn't keep the old meter. I've got some signs of water damage to remind me though :D
 
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