Home Improvement

I thought I was more competent than I was when I was using a meter to test the voltage coming through a 3 phase outlet and got an arc between the two leads. Now I’m fully aware of how incompetent I am and research the shit out of how to do handy work lol.

Dandai said:

I thought I was more competent than I was when I was using a meter to test the voltage coming through a 3 phase outlet and got an arc between the two leads. Now I’m fully aware of how incompetent I am and research the shit out of how to do handy work lol.

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Wait...where did you find a 3 phase outlet? Or are you talking about something like a 3-prong 240v outlet?

I hate asking these questions because I know they sound super-pedantic, but it's going to bug the shit out of me if I don't ask

Picasso3 said:

Also, fwiw i've never turned off the main to change a breaker. I have no idea how competent you are so maybe I'm telling you things I shouldn't, and I've also never changed one in a 1970 death panel.

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death panel: accurate

For Residential, yeah, you rarely need to kill power just to change a branch circuit breaker

Jalynfane said:

Since there is no main breaker on the panel to shut service off to the panel

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Jalynfane , could you take a picture of your entire panel, standing back a bit? I ask, because in a lot of old panels the actual main breaker ("Service Disconnect") is stacked in line with all of the other breakers, and people don't always realize that they actually have one. This video shows a main breaker stacked with the rest of the breakers:

Jalynfane said:

The utility told us that we have to get a licensed electrician to call in to notify of shutoff, then the electrician does some things at the meter. If we don't have an electrician call in first and the meter gets shut off, it shows as an outage and they will dispatch a work truck to resolve that 'alarm'.

It sounds like bs, and some collusion between the electrical unions and the utility. Going to see how to pop open a meter to shut it off. All just to swap a breaker out. I want to upgrade the panel from 100 to 200 (we only have a 900 ish sqft house) to try and future proof things.

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Honestly, it's not collusion. It's as much a PITA for electricians as it is for homeowners. They're probably talking about an electrician pulling the meter (in residential, current passes through the meter, so pulling the meter out of the socket kills power. Not so for commercial/industrial meters using current transformers). A lot of AHJs also are cracking down on not letting homeowners pull their own permits anymore, and are now insisting that a licensed electrician do it.

Tamper-proof meters are a thing now, BTW. I have no idea if your meter is or is not tamper-proof, but they do exist and the utility saying that they can monitor for power loss and send a crew out may be legit.

It used to be that we'd pull meters ourselves w/o even asking the utilities (for small stuff, at least), because the utilities couldn't tell if we did and frankly they didn't want to be bothered with it. Just cut the seal, pull the meter, and do the work. Maybe a meter reader would replace the seal later...or not.

200A for 900sqft? That's a LOT of capability for that footage, normally I'd say you'd never go above 150A but /shrug. Depends on what all you're running.

Picasso3 said:

Depending on your city etc you may be able to do it yourself. The materials may be $300 . Inspectors here were helpful. It was a top notch learning experience for me.

I replaced mine to the weatherhead by moving the box, which helped a lot. I had the everything in place and they switched over to the new box, then I moved all the breakers. If your drop etc is in good shape you may be able to pull the meter and swap it without coordinating with poco, but pulling meters seems sketchy.

Code may require you to put in some pricey arc fault and ground fault breakers if the city/poco get involved.

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This is also true. Most places, if you're going to do major rework they will insist on you bringing your wiring up to code, as much as is reasonable. Not reasonable as in $$$ (they don't care), but reasonable in whether you can do it w/o tearing open walls and such. And AFCI/GFCIs just go in the panel or in outlet boxes, so....

Erronius said:

Wait...where did you find a 3 phase outlet? Or are you talking about something like a 3-prong 240v outlet?

I hate asking these questions because I know they sound super-pedantic, but it's going to bug the shit out of me if I don't ask



death panel: accurate

For Residential, yeah, you rarely need to kill power just to change a branch circuit breaker



Jalynfane , could you take a picture of your entire panel, standing back a bit? I ask, because in a lot of old panels the actual main breaker ("Service Disconnect") is stacked in line with all of the other breakers, and people don't always realize that they actually have one. This video shows a main breaker stacked with the rest of the breakers:





Honestly, it's not collusion. It's as much a PITA for electricians as it is for homeowners. They're probably talking about an electrician pulling the meter (in residential, current passes through the meter, so pulling the meter out of the socket kills power. Not so for commercial/industrial meters using current transformers). A lot of AHJs also are cracking down on not letting homeowners pull their own permits anymore, and are now insisting that a licensed electrician do it.

Tamper-proof meters are a thing now, BTW. I have no idea if your meter is or is not tamper-proof, but they do exist and the utility saying that they can monitor for power loss and send a crew out may be legit.

It used to be that we'd pull meters ourselves w/o even asking the utilities (for small stuff, at least), because the utilities couldn't tell if we did and frankly they didn't want to be bothered with it. Just cut the seal, pull the meter, and do the work. Maybe a meter reader would replace the seal later...or not.

200A for 900sqft? That's a LOT of capability for that footage, normally I'd say you'd never go above 150A but /shrug. Depends on what all you're running.

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Lol yes, 2 hots, 1 neutral, 1 ground 240v outlet. The pump I was connecting it to had an inverter that changed it to 3 phase. Clearly I’m not much more competent than I was

Dandai said:

Lol yes, 2 hots, 1 neutral, 1 ground 240v outlet. The pump I was connecting it to had an inverter that changed it to 3 phase. Clearly I’m not much more competent than I was

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OK, that make sense.

Did you just get the probes too close to each other?

This is you the next time you use a meter, LOLOLOL

'Safety First' I always say!

Erronius said:

OK, that make sense.

Did you just get the probes too close to each other?

This is you the next time you use a meter, LOLOLOL

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Yeah, probably. I was checking to see if the outlet was actually giving 240 because it was behaving weird/not working at certain speeds. I figured it must’ve not been getting enough power. After the arc I decided it was fine to just pump at 5 gpm until someone who knew what the hell they were doing could come by. Iirc it was only giving 208.

Dandai said:

Yeah, probably. I was checking to see if the outlet was actually giving 240 because it was behaving weird/not working at certain speeds. I figured it must’ve not been getting enough power. After the arc I decided it was fine to just pump at 5 gpm until someone who knew what the hell they were doing could come by. Iirc it was only giving 208.

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If it's being run by an inverter/VFD and it only works at certain speeds and not others, then it's probably the inverter. Could be another issue, but really unlikely.

Picasso is right about 208 being 3 phase. I'd expect to see it on the load voltage (output from the invert to the motor) but not on the line voltage (input from the supply, branch circuit to the inverter). I'd bet almost anything that you were measuring the inverter output when you got 208 and not the input. I mean, I guess it's possible to have 104/208 on a center-tapped single phase service, but then either your service is waaaay too long or conductors are undersized and it's being eaten by voltage drop, but even if that was the issue then it would likely cause a fault at all inverter speeds, and not just some.

Is $2k with everything? AFCI breakers as well? I'm assuming the service/meter channel/service conductors are staying, so I dunno.