This Old Faraday AC Only Fire system came with a dangerous Suprise

This  AC Only Type Faraday 400 series panel was installed in 1960's in a building in Beaver County.

The only supervision is the Bell circuit which uses bells wired in series you can see in picture above the Transformer at bottom of panel which is used to set the tap required depending how many bells where used in the circuit. Normally 2 single breakers or fuses feed power to the system . Often times the power is feed directly ahead of the main . But not in this case the wiring is protected by the main  breaker . This makes it safer to work on but not in this case . while examining the panel to remove and update it I found an extra power circuit running thru the cabinet  to power the phone systems near by. This circuit should not even be anywhere near this fire panel and was obviously fooled with by a non electrician who was too lazy to run it back separate and instead used the conduits for the fire alarms power supply.  Being an electrician familiar with these systems I intermediately caught the problem how ever your average installer tech never would have and could have received a severe shock  .

Needless to say this will have to be corrected and noted to prevent future installers from getting hurt.

Passing of a Fine Police Officer and Friend

Sam Caltagirone for 25 years  was a Police officer with the Pittsburgh Police dept in the last part of his career he was the  Community Relations Officer  at the old #7 Police station on Mary st. in Pittsburgh's South Side  the district is now known as Zone 3# .
Part of his responsibility as Community relations Officer SAM was in charge of BSA Law Enforcement Explorer Post 777#

Which I belonged to which encouraged law enforcement careers. I never went into Law Enforcement but did work as a security Officer  for a while till going full time into the trades since I could not pass the physical.  to be a Police Officer ,EMT or Firefighter.

We Often took trips to many areas to see Law Enforcement officers in action including a trip to Florida during Daytona  Bike Week  when we got to go up into center field at the Daytona 500 racetrack  to see a temporary detainment  set up for handling bikers who where not behaving properly . and a trip to Montreal where we got to learn about the Canadian Mounties and actually got to see them work out with there horses in drills and one officer even dressed up in his dress red uniform  like you see in the movies so we could take pictures.  That was all 35 years ago and I have not seen Sam or any of the other members since then Last time I saw Sam was at his house when I fixed his Air conditioner before he moved to Florida. Sam was a WWII Navy Vet  as where many officer who served the city back then part of the greatest generation like my uncles who served there country and why we are free today. Sam was 85


 I do not know if any of our members ever went into Law Enforcement  at least not in Pittsburgh none of there names has ever popped up.
Unfortunately one of our members Herbie was murdered and hacked to death with a machete in Down town Pittsburgh at a  store on Liberty Ave. We was working as night clerk  at when he was robbed and abducted.
Yes there where some great memory's from back then  . but all the posts at all 8 police stations are no more. and to my knowledge there is no active Law enforcement Explorer post in my area any more.

Sad Day in Pittsburgh Business Community Death of Ron Morris

His name is Ron Morris and he Passed away after a 10+ year battle with stage IV Pancreatic cancer
a modern day Entrepreneur who started and sold 12 successful High Tech business  in Pittsburgh and who started   " The American Entrepreneur " radio show back in the 1990's  

http://www.taeradio.com/

He started on What was WPTT now WMNY  1360 AM a 5000 watt station  in Pittsburgh  Pa. with a 3 hr Saturday show on business and expanded it to a 7 day operation  3 hours every day including 3 hours on Sunday on WPGB 104.7 FM

Ron was the type of guy who has been there and done it in business Much Like  Bruce Williams a business radio legend who still hosts shows on Ron's talk shoe internet based radio network.
 

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/main.jsp?pushNav=1&cmd=home

 which allows you to host your own internet  radio shows.

I often called Ron on the air to discuss business issues and keep him up on the latest tech offerings and got to meet him at a live radio show several years back while going thru cancer my self at Enterprise Bank one of his advertisers .

He even made me one of his M.O.E.'s  " Master of Entrepreneurship " I still have hat and shirt he sent me.   with slogan on them " Out of Chaos Opportunity " I wore it the whole time the G20 summit was in Pittsburgh and every one got a kick out if it

So much knowledge now gone . He will be sadly missed and I am sure he is sitting right now with St. Peter pitching him his latest ideal. RIP Ron. It was your time to go and others are ready now to fill those big shoes.

A Dangerous Legacy of old Bell Telephone Transformers

At left is 2 pictures of a Plug in transformer that was used in many commercial buildings to supply power  for telephone functions a smaller version was used in homes to light up the dial on rotary  princess phones which you often found in a homes bedroom which allowed you to answer the phone and dial in the dark.
The phone had a 4 wire instead of traditional 2 wire connection  the red and green pair provided dial tone while the yellow black was used to run the ac power to the phone to light the dial. Later phone versions used the phone line power but where not as bright.

The problem with these little transformers all over the place is they are now going on over 50 years old still plugged in drawing a small amount of power and in some cases  the transformers are deteriorating and causing problems which include shock and fire. In one case in a residence which had metal mesh under its plaster a transformer went bad and sent electrical current all over the house and was giving people shocks any time they touched metal.had I not caught the problem and corrected it eventually there would have been a fire. Now you would think ma bell would start hunting all these transformers power supply s etc down and start removing them due to all the potential problems and liabilities but that will never happen . with all the mergers, bankruptcy's etc. there is no company to hold responsible . So that leaves it up to you the property owner  and me the electrician to find and eliminate them before they become a problem.  Do not ever expect any agency to ever come out with a warning either this problem has been known for at least 25 years and no body has done any thing about it. not even the insurance company's who are very aware these transformers are causing problems. So you the consumer get screwed again. By greed.

What are those weird looking donut looking things you see on service wires

You see them on all kinds of commercial buildings where the service entrance wires come in from the electric power company they look like a donut with a hole thru it what purpose do they serve .
There called Current Transformers or CT 's as we call them in the trade.
There used to meter the power being used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_transformer

In picture at left is a set of indoor current transformers you will find in commercial buildings electrical rooms  usually behind a locked cabinet with high voltage warning tags.

When measuring current being used the typical meter can not handle the 

amount of power coming thru it as in this case is 800 amps . So what is done instead is the main service wires are run thru the these donuts looking units which convert it down to a safe measurable current.

Ct's are used not only on electrical services but any where large amounts of current need measured. some are even used with small LED bulbs which turn on to show you power is running thru the line at that time and active or to turn on other items. They come in all types and sizes as well. depending on what the application calls for. One bad thing about CT's even after power is turned off they can some times still hold a powerful charge which needs discharged. This is why only properly qualified electricians should be handling and servicing them.

Voltage is not right Buck or Boost it ?

 One of the big problems when it comes to preventing problems with machinery which has electric motors  in buildings with 3 phase power is making sure the machine is wired for the correct voltage. There are 2 basic 3 phase systems in use in many commercial buildings today . 3-phase 3 wire systems which provide 230 volts phase to phase  Delta configuration which does not have a neutral wire  and more standard a 3 phase 4 wire system Y configuration  which is 208 volts  phase to phase  and 120 vac phase to neutral. So. You go out and order a new machine have it installed on the 3 phase and 5 weeks later the machine has died. OK what has happened well it turns out the service is providing 208 volts but the motor is wired specifically for 230 volts which meant the motor did not have enough power and burned it self up . Now what you can not get a 208 motor you need to fit. This is where a Buck or Boost transformer comes into play. In the above scenario a boost transformer will take the 208 volts and make it 230 volts . Which you can see in pictures at left is being done in an office buildings mechanical room for a dentists suction pump system.  But if you have a 208 motor and need it to run on 230 volts so it will not burn up then you need a Buck transformer which will take voltage from 230 to 208 vac . Motors burning up particularly in summer time is always a problem when wrong motors are specified. now with some foresight you can order a motor which can be run on 208 or 230 volts

 and the a buck or boost transformer is not needed but all too often a motor burns up before some one realizes the wrong motor has been ordered. This happened to one of my institutional customers who kept blowing up swimming pool motors and people who installed them where installing the wrong voltage motors. The idiot company kept insisting I was wrong and after it happened a 3rd time the local power company engineer came on site and told them I was correct there 230 volt motors would not run on the 208 services.Needless to say the swimming pool service company had to eat the cost of 3 bad motors due to there own ignorance of electrical systems. Plus all the labor cost.
But had they actually been trained individuals instead of some wannabe electricians then they would not have suffered this embarrassment .same old story people are too dam lazy to get properly trained and some one pays and some times people get hurt or die. but that's just the way it is  in life. particularly in Pa. since we have no state electrical license.

End of an Era in Mon valley

In the middle of the Rust Belt of old and long gone Steel mills one of the last remnants of that era has closed. Harco Electric on Braddock ave. in Braddock Pa. was one of the last of the Industrial Electrical supplies  in the Mon Valley He closed and has decided to retire after 60 + years in business. I often stopped in there for industrial electrical supplies you could find no where else. This now leaves Stanton Industrial Electric Supply as the last Mohican in the area.  Its a shame to see all the different industrial supply houses close and wither as did the steel industry . Some like Harco held on because of the unique items they carried while others went quickly.
Braddock itself while having one of the last operating mills in the valley has fallen on hard times as well as most of the little shops along main street are gone and torn down but Holly Wood has taken a liking to the towns gritty work and has filmed several movies there including one being done currently. But it is very doubtful Braddock will ever come back to what it was like so many river mill and coal towns in the area.
 But there is a glimmer of hope as some manufacturing jobs are starting to trickle back to this area but with automation many previous jobs are no longer available as a robot or other technology now does the job.  Hope you enjoy your well deserved retirement Mr. Harco   But it is a sad day to see you go.

Only took them 70 years to figure out they need extra support screws on RS covers

At left is a Single Duplex  RS Cover or raised cover typically found in Commercial Structures and residential basements. They have been around since at least the 1930's  a safe and convenient way to surface  mount switches and outlets on walls . But with one big problem up until a decade ago the Receptacles  where only held in place by a tiny number 8# screw in the center and nothing else and if this screw came loose the outlet fell into the box allowing the plugged in device to short out and or cause an electric shock. With the use of many plug in transformers that use the center screw  like those used for alarm systems you had to carefully remove the screw then hopefully plug in the transformer and tighten the new screw with out shocking your self or you had to track down the breaker and shut off the power to the outlet to safely secure it.
Well some genius designer finally figured out hay we need to add 2 screws with nuts and washers to help hold the outlet in place to prevent these problems. Since late 90's it has been code but there are millions of the old outlets out there waiting to hurt people when the screw falls out and nothing in the code addresses repairing them. But that's the way it has always been with codes address a problem but never correct the original problem just go ahead and grandfather it till it fails and needs replaced with a new code compliant part.
The usual Screw OFFS at UL and NFPA strike again  . Fix an issue but do not really fix it.