Well FU, too, Power Company!
25 hours ago, the family was sitting watching a movie on netflix when there was a loud 'BAM!' like a really big car door being slammed hard followed by a flash or brilliant white then white/blue.
And then the power went out to half the house.
Dad thought it was the fuse box. I thought it was the ground neutral to the house. (It had failed last year and had to be replaced.)
Unfortunately, it was 5:12pm -- well after most electricians have called it a day. So Mom put in a call to an electrical company while Dad, my sister, and I scrambled to find plugs that were still working to get the fridge and standing freezer both plugged in.
The electrician came by 20 minutes later, checking the box and equipment and discovered it was the ground neutral. Again. (The ground neutral is the line that goes from the transmitter to your house and gives you power. It is your power company's equipment.) Ours failed last year on April 22 and had to be replaced.
The ground neutral box that is for our house and our neighbor's houses was broken two years ago. Somehow, over time, the plastic rim warped making it so that the holes for the bolts to close it no longer matched up. We reported it and they "fixed it" by setting little warning flags around the box and then "sealing" it closed with a cable tie. But the top still didn't cover it all that well. Because it's in the ground, because that area of the yard gets lots of water every time it rains, and because it wasn't sealed properly, it failed. Again. After a little over a year since it was installed.
The even scarier part is that the ONLY thing holding that thing closed was the cable tie.
Our electrician got permission to cut the tie and check. He found that the main electrical boot (wire cover) had fallen off and failed too, leaving the wire exposed. That wire has enough juice in it to kill a person several times over. Had we or our neighbor mowed over the cover, there's a good likelihood it would have killed us.
So Dad called the power company and reported it. Again. This time, he reported it as both a power outage and a dangerous situation. The power company guy got here at 7:23pm and started work. He had to replace all kinds of equipment -- some of which required him to disconnect the entire neighborhood from the main power hub -- and then seal the stupid box. He did so by standing on top of the box and driving massive bolts into the thing. He didn't finish until close to 10pm, but it was a priority call because, as along as those stupid things were exposed, the company was liable.
Finally, he was gone. We had power again for the first time in several hours, and we were able to turn the AC on. Or so we thought. That loud bang and flash earlier in the day? Yeah. That was the power surge that caused the neutral to die. It happened so fast that neither our breaker box nor the one on the AC tripped. The electrical stuff in the house was OK, but our AC was TOTALLY fried. But, at 10:30ish pm when we realized it, we were up shit creek.
So we had to dig out all the fans in the house and bear an entire night and almost all of today without an AC. In the middle of the South. In the summer.
The temp inside got as high as 90F. The humidity inside was so high that the floor felt wet and doors were sticking shut.
Dad called in last night to the AC's answering service and then again at 7ish in the morning. Our AC company was out here a little after 8am and didn't finish until after 2:30pm. Damned near everything in the AC needed to be replaced -- from the power cord, to the fuse box on the unit, to the compressor. The only original parts are the outside covering and the fan! It was cheaper for them to replace the bits rather than the whole though because the compressor was still under warranty.
Once the AC guy finished, the AC took 4 hours to get the house down to under 80F. :P
Dad's going to look into getting the power company to pay the damages because it's pretty damned obvious it was their equipment failure that caused it. Especially since it was a known problem! He's also going to have to report it to the home insurance since the bill is going to be high. All of that's going to have to wait until after the 4th though since our AC company's office is closed for the holiday.
TL;DR: Our power company's equipment failed and caused a massive power surge that was too fast for the breakers to activate. Our AC got fried extra crispy. We spent 25 hours with AC in ungodly heat. Dad's looking to get the money back from the power company.
And then the power went out to half the house.
Dad thought it was the fuse box. I thought it was the ground neutral to the house. (It had failed last year and had to be replaced.)
Unfortunately, it was 5:12pm -- well after most electricians have called it a day. So Mom put in a call to an electrical company while Dad, my sister, and I scrambled to find plugs that were still working to get the fridge and standing freezer both plugged in.
The electrician came by 20 minutes later, checking the box and equipment and discovered it was the ground neutral. Again. (The ground neutral is the line that goes from the transmitter to your house and gives you power. It is your power company's equipment.) Ours failed last year on April 22 and had to be replaced.
The ground neutral box that is for our house and our neighbor's houses was broken two years ago. Somehow, over time, the plastic rim warped making it so that the holes for the bolts to close it no longer matched up. We reported it and they "fixed it" by setting little warning flags around the box and then "sealing" it closed with a cable tie. But the top still didn't cover it all that well. Because it's in the ground, because that area of the yard gets lots of water every time it rains, and because it wasn't sealed properly, it failed. Again. After a little over a year since it was installed.
The even scarier part is that the ONLY thing holding that thing closed was the cable tie.
Our electrician got permission to cut the tie and check. He found that the main electrical boot (wire cover) had fallen off and failed too, leaving the wire exposed. That wire has enough juice in it to kill a person several times over. Had we or our neighbor mowed over the cover, there's a good likelihood it would have killed us.
So Dad called the power company and reported it. Again. This time, he reported it as both a power outage and a dangerous situation. The power company guy got here at 7:23pm and started work. He had to replace all kinds of equipment -- some of which required him to disconnect the entire neighborhood from the main power hub -- and then seal the stupid box. He did so by standing on top of the box and driving massive bolts into the thing. He didn't finish until close to 10pm, but it was a priority call because, as along as those stupid things were exposed, the company was liable.
Finally, he was gone. We had power again for the first time in several hours, and we were able to turn the AC on. Or so we thought. That loud bang and flash earlier in the day? Yeah. That was the power surge that caused the neutral to die. It happened so fast that neither our breaker box nor the one on the AC tripped. The electrical stuff in the house was OK, but our AC was TOTALLY fried. But, at 10:30ish pm when we realized it, we were up shit creek.
So we had to dig out all the fans in the house and bear an entire night and almost all of today without an AC. In the middle of the South. In the summer.
The temp inside got as high as 90F. The humidity inside was so high that the floor felt wet and doors were sticking shut.
Dad called in last night to the AC's answering service and then again at 7ish in the morning. Our AC company was out here a little after 8am and didn't finish until after 2:30pm. Damned near everything in the AC needed to be replaced -- from the power cord, to the fuse box on the unit, to the compressor. The only original parts are the outside covering and the fan! It was cheaper for them to replace the bits rather than the whole though because the compressor was still under warranty.
Once the AC guy finished, the AC took 4 hours to get the house down to under 80F. :P
Dad's going to look into getting the power company to pay the damages because it's pretty damned obvious it was their equipment failure that caused it. Especially since it was a known problem! He's also going to have to report it to the home insurance since the bill is going to be high. All of that's going to have to wait until after the 4th though since our AC company's office is closed for the holiday.
TL;DR: Our power company's equipment failed and caused a massive power surge that was too fast for the breakers to activate. Our AC got fried extra crispy. We spent 25 hours with AC in ungodly heat. Dad's looking to get the money back from the power company.