Misaplication of 3 Phase Power equiptment could have lead to a deadly Arc Blast

I was helping with a project at a local factory  where there installing new equipment when I caught the fact the lead electrical contractor had installed the wrong type of 3 phase breaker panels . The factory is feed with 480 volts 3 phase 3 wire delta  service and he was installing panels designed for a 3 phase  4 wire 480/277 - Y style  service which is used for offices and malls etc. not industrial power systems.

The problem is the  the individual breakers on a 480/277 -Y systems are only designed to handle 300 volts per leg and this type of service a 480/277-Y  can only deliver  277 volts per leg to ground this is why these breakers and panels are only designed to handle 300 volts per leg.

(top picture)

Standard bolt down breaker for 480/277 Y

Frame breaker for 480 Delta

 But a 480 volt Delta service  can deliver 480 volts per leg to ground. Breakers for a 480 delta system are rated to handle 600 volts per leg  and are  frame breakers and physically twice the size of a standard bolt down type 480/277-Y breaker. There also 3-4 times the cost which is why people are tempted to try and use the wrong breakers and panels. instead of spending the large amount of money required to install Delta breakers.( Bottom Picture)

Now yes the 277 /480 breakers can work and deliver power on a delta system  but they will eventually break down and wear out in a couple of years much faster than there designed for  Manufacturers  will not sell them and recommend against  this  practice . However the biggest danger would be if there is a major overload like a motor having its rotor locked the amount of power developed in a short circuit on a 480 delta system would instantly  overwhelm and destroy a 480/277 -Y breaker creating a huge Arc Blast sending a blast wave with molten metal everywhere which can kill instantly and cause major body trauma. in the case of this plant many individuals lives where put at risk should they have continued to hook up and use this equipment. There have been many people killed  and or seriously 3rd degree burned in electrical arc blasts even several feet away due to the extreme conditions created by arc blasts.

This same problem is also true with 230 volt 3 wire delta and 208 volt 4 wire Y  systems as well.

This is why you must properly design and purchase equipment or risk a catastrophic incident
 Now there will be finger pointing back and forth and money lost on restock charges etc.  and even more money spent. But more importantly everyone will go home to night and not in a coffin.
When you are an experienced professional like my self you have a duty to all those you work for to make sure there safe. regardless what any one thinks.  Failure by myself to intervene and have these actions stopped could result in criminal and civil charges  against me for not doing it had people gotten hurt.  Lots of people bitch and complain because I interceded and stop foolish actions like this from happening but in the end I can put my head on the pillow and say yes I did the right thing and saved lives. I was not a foolish ass hole and yellow bellied individual and went with the flow and said nothing and let some one get hurt . We have too many people in the trades who go with the flow and say nothing and they are cowards.

Insulbrik The siding which looked like brick but was made with Asphalt

Asphalt Siding more commonly known as Insulbrik and similar spelled names   where I live was a fantastic way to cover up your wood frame home and not always have to paint it.  Produced by company's like Armstrong industries it was used up till 1960's  when it fell out of favor for aluminum siding .
Asphalt Siding has been around for more than 100 years  but some building inspectors and insurance company's do not like it for the fact it burns extremely fast and hot when ignited with proper amount of heat. In some extreme cases people have not been able to get homeowners insurance until it was removed . There have also been concerns of asbestos being used in the material as well which all but doomed this material from being further sold.
In some cases yes there are very valid safety concerns when the material has deteriorated and started flaking and had many holes drilled thru it . But as you can see on this old home in Parnassus section of Westmoreland county it has been carefully preserved and in excellent shape. 
In some cases instead of removing it home owners put new siding right over it in an attempt to make it less burnable from an external flame source but may have actually made things worse.
Do to the fact these homes are wood framed and balloon constructed they all burn fast  since air can penetrate the construction and increase the fires intensity.
As a home owner should you be worried. Yes I would as with any old wood frame balloon constructed home you have old wiring ,balloon construction , lead paint etc. so yes I would make sure I have proper smoke alarms and CO detector in the home as well as extinguishers and use caution when using anything electrical and have it checked as well and have a workable escape program in place. Living in an old home does not mean your in eminent danger if you use good common sense and practice  Millions of people live in old homes  all there lives and never had a problem.

Monitor your alarm system for free thru the cloud

For those who do not want to pay for monthly monitoring and have the skills required an open source software micro controller has been released  from Phantom Link  which allows just that.
Pictured at left is one of the controllers you build from a kit which allows you to receive text messages any time your system activates etc. via your WiFi internet connection   for full details visit there site

http://www.phantomlink.com/

Old Gas Stations and Leaking Tanks a bad situation

A couple times during the summer I would stop at Chucks Gas Station on Pa. 56 in Apollo to get gas for the weed trimmer I use at the radio station . But when I stopped most recently Chuck was closed and out of business.
When I asked a neighbor up at the radio station about it he told me the EPA had shut the station down and ordered the underground storage tanks emptied because they where leaking.
This is a big problem in rural areas with mostly  old independently owned stations where owners do not have the funds needed to upgrade there tanks and pumps which runs into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Unlike major branded stations which have the resources to handle it.
Which includes digging up and removing the tanks and any contaminated soil.

New tanks if allowed underground must meet all kinds of special rules to prevent leaks and contaminating the ground water such as special liners and leak alarms.  This is why you will often see tanks are now above ground  with barriers around them as it is very expensive to bury them for use.
You might notice all modern repair  garages have there  servicing lifts installed above ground now for same reason to prevent hydraulic oil from leaking into the ground. A tank leaking above ground can be spotted much faster and leak cleaned up much easier than when its underground.

The problem since fuel is lighter than water one single tank leak can contaminate soil and water for several hundred acres around it poisoning wells and those who consume the water.
In Chucks case he sits on a hill above the Kiski River. His tanks leaking could well end up in the river if they where not stopped from pumping gas.

A few years back in Pittsburgh's North Side a developer ran into a major problem when he ran into ground which was contaminated in the 1930's when a gas station once sat there. Soil had to be removed and area sealed before work could begin.

Since water well design and construction in Pa. has no regulations  gas station leaks  are a major concern because if wells are not sealed properly they can be easily contaminated.
This is one of the on going fights with gas wells being done with fracing  many people claim the well has contaminated there water when clearly 70% of all wells tested in many areas before drilling even starts where already contaminated by various chemicals and pollutants from past industrial activity's such as  shallow gas and oil wells, coal mines, chemical and industrial plants etc.
Even the well at radio station  I take care of is not consumable because although there was no industrial activity all the chemicals and pesticides  used over all the years when it was a farm have made it into the water table.

An Abandoned sites deadly legacy comes back to haunt in Kiski Valley

I ride past this fenced in abandoned  property a couple times a month  in Kiskimere Pa. along River Rd. which runs along the Kiski River in Armstrong County Pa.  not much goes on there just a big open field with occasional turkeys  watched by a rent a cop in a rental trailer. That was till a few months ago when well armed Dept of Homeland Security Police  started patrolling the field and large  stone blocks where made into a wall around the trailer.
So whats going on  it starts in the 1950's during the cold war when a company known as NUMEC which was a spin off from Westinghouse Corp.  built 2 plants one plant in Apollo and other in Kiskimere to enrich uranium and make pellets for  nuclear reactors the company operated into 80's and was bought and sold several times ending up owned by Babcock & Wilcox when it was finally torn down and cleaned up and site monitored for any pollution .
During its time it seems the plant was poorly run with loose security and 427 Kilo Grams of highly  enriched material disappeared.
Rumors say it ended up in Israel to help them develop there bomb project.While the plant operators clam it was lost in all the processing thru the plant .Either way it is still considered  missing.  Numerous lawsuits about the poor handling conditions  causing hundreds of cases of cancer in workers and there family members and recent study's released  on the area have concluded the poor handling of materials was in fact a normal day to day occurrence . This  has now come to rear its ugly head one more time as efforts by the US Army Corp of Engineers to give the site a final clean up by removing of waste material from  trenches  from a 44 acre dump on the site for supposed low level materials has revealed much higher level contaminated materials than where expected .
This is now why armed DHS  police are watching the site as they try to determine the best way to properly clean and restore the dump site area which at time when it was disposed of was legal to do .
The residents near by are extremely worried and want the government to buy them out as there homes are now worth nearly nothing they contend   with the threat the dump poses to ground water and the environment.
One has to wonder why this place was allowed to operate in such a poorly run manner. Rules and regulations where in place and regularly discarded. But most of those responsible are now gone  having died from old age or cancer  and it has been left to others to clean up and carry on.
Hopefully lessons learned at this site will prevent it from happening to others. But this is not the only site in Pa. which is on the high hazard super fund  list the EPA keeps.
Radiation contamination  was also cleaned up in Cannonsburg Pa. where Madame Currie perfected uranium, as well as several other sites  with low level contamination suspected of causing clusters of cancer break outs. Study's have also come out where steel fabricating plants where contaminated by the shavings of certain steel products which where infused with radioactive beryllium.  One of those  Hepenstall Steel where I worked as a guard for CPP security after it was closed  is on the list.
Western Pa.  was and still is an area where many heavy industrial manufacturing processes where done and the soil and water here is all contaminated in one way or the other .

GE Low Voltage Lighting control system was ahead of its time

 In early 1960's General Electric released an advanced  low voltage lighting control system which used a series of   24 VAC  3 wire relays( middle picture )which was years ahead in its design . It allowed the controlling of all lights in the house from one master location or multiple locations which was a great security and energy saving  feature . The parts are still available as far as relays but some of the fancy low voltage switches are no longer available like the master control at top left .
Many electricians throw there hands up in the air when they run across these systems but they are actually very easy to trouble shoot

 if you understand them. While attending OVT Electrical training at South Vocational  we had several boards set up with these controls  which you could wire up several different scenarios.
The systems where expensive to install so you normally only ran across them in high end homes I have run across a dozen in 35 years in the field, but they where used in some commercial buildings as well. One of the largest installs ever done with this system was the now demolished Civic arena in Pittsburgh Pa.
This whole system had  no fancy switching electronics like today's systems  just simple relays. You will also find the name Bryant  on some switches as well which Licensed them thru GE.

At bottom left is a typical rocker low voltage switch you would find next to a standard wall switch you pushed one way light went on pushed other way light went off .

The only parts available are the simple rocker switches and relays very expensive to replace and repair. and only a hand full of us left that work on them.

Phantom Voltage its there but its not?

I had one of those trouble shoots the other day which can drive you nuts if you do not have the proper equipment to check it out.
One of the many buildings I take care of a building maintenance man was having problems getting the remote emergency light heads to work off the main battery packs,
in the hall ways out of frustration he called me and asked if I could check it out for him .

He had a small standard digital meter he was using and he hooked into what he thought was the correct wires as he was reading 12 volts DC  but the lights would not work. Well I hooked in my meter also and had 12 volts but it was not really there. after hooking in my own small independent tester which has a neon bulb in it and it did not light I knew I had something fishy going on. So I them put my tone tracer on the wire followed it back and found he had missed a splice point in the ceiling. I connected the wires and it worked.  Wait a minute how does a wire that is not hooked up still show voltage on it. This is a electrical phenomena known as Phantom voltage. While digital and some analog  meters will pick up and register it as a working voltage it is not really there. Because digital meters are so sensitive what is happening is the wire is receiving transient voltages thru the air from other higher power wires running thru and next to these wires and the wire which is not hooked up acts like an antenna and absorbs it  and looks like it has power. That's why I used the light bulb tester as it draws an actual small current and will tell you if the voltage is real or not. I even see this with 120 and higher voltages I have a solenoid tester meter known as a Wiggy Meter made by Square-D that does the same thing as a light bulb tester  that is very useful in these situations.
when testing motor leads and such. Phantom voltage is only getting worse particularly in office type buildings as the use of  Electronic Ballasts instead of magnetic ballasts are being used and can throw off unwanted transients as Building switch from T-12 to T 5 and T 8 bulbs .
Which is what I suspect was causing the Phantom power in this building.

Remember if you hook up something it does not work you test  and get voltage  and  you test the device and it works elsewhere suspect you may be getting Phantom Voltage. get a proper tester which actually requires  small power draw and check it out. Some time stranded wire can break and only one strand is making thru and can act like phantom power as well .

 

In the days before modern phone systems affluent Home Owners had these fancy intercom phones in there homes

 Since the late 1930's  before we had all the fancy music intercoms and business phone systems and other means of convenience to contact people  in the more affluent homes  they had there own in house private phone systems  to talk to the front door or patio from a bedroom or kitchen etc. Primitive as they where the sound was very good quality and some even interconnected to the individual land line  phone which back then  you had to be affluent to have your own individual phone number and line as most people where on party lines.

This particular unit appears to have been made by Northern Telephone in the 1950's  which is still in business  some systems are still working to this day This particular phone was in the garage of a very large home designed by Frank Loyd Wright in Pittsburgh Pa.