My wife came in to the office and said the power went off. I looked at her perplexed as I had power to all of the office equipment and suggested she check the breakers in the main panel. I did, she said and they are OK.
The brave inspector here went to check and sure enough we had lost power to half the house.
I promptly called our local power supplier, Trans-Alta Utilities.
The Operator was very efficient and said, yep it sounds like you have lost one phase. How can that happen I asked. Do not know she said but in your area of the City the underground service is aluminum and about 20 years old and we have had a lot of problems with these service entries this year. But not to worry we will have full power back in a jiffy.
A service person arrived and made a connection from the meter next door and bingo we were back in business within 20 minutes. Excellent service.
The next day a technician arrived and tested the cable and he located the problem.
The following day they excavated and found the fault to be at the splice where the cable on our side was joined to the cable on the City side.
It was repaired in less than 2 hours and all is now fine.
I was able to examine the defect. In fact there were two. Then neutral wire in this installation consist of numerous bare aluminum strands wrapped around the two service legs. The neutral wires were badly oxidized and only about 3 strands were left as demonstrated on the picture below.
One of the main feeders had oxidized to a point where there was no metal left, only white powder as demonstrated on the picture below.
I asked the repair person if I could expect more problems like that in the future. Don't know, he said, never can tell, just pray it is not on your side of the property line next time, cause if it is the cost will be yours.
I estimated the repair cost to be about $ 3,000.00 when all was said and done and the driveway was repaired.
SO IF YOU HAVE A 20 YEAR OLD HOUSE WITH UNDERGROUND ALUMINUM SERVICE CONDUCTORS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR FAILURE AND UNEXPECTED COST. .
E Mail Moe Madsen
This page was last modified April 27, 1998