Testing the legs in the panel, one leg is out. A call to Oncor yielded this:
Here’s hoping!
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While you’re looking at everything and waiting on Oncor, please tell us 2 things… 1) if it’s aluminum wiring… and 2) if you have had squirrels in the attic. Those jerks like to chew on wires.
Happily that panel is GE and not Federal Pacific - which is well known for failing breakers and house fires.
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Don’t forget Zinsco…
A truck from Oncor arrived about 2 hours ago. Shortly after that, another truck arrived. They had to cut down at least part of a tree… in my neighbor’s yard. They must love me now.
Either way, power’s back
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They are real problems… and when he mentioned loose wiring connections, aluminum wiring comes to mind as the connections loosen over time because of the difference in thermal expansion. Aluminum wiring caused enough house and trailer fires through the 70s and 80s… And squirrels in the attic are well known for chewing wiring and causing outages and fires.
You’re smart enough to know these things, Chris.
Thankfully, I haven’t come across any aluminum yet. Pretty surprising actually.
Now squirrels? Those little freeloaders may already have a nest in my attic… Time for a little eviction notice.
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Poor attempt at humor. I thought the guys from Oncor were the squirrels you referred to. Sorry.
So true! My dad and I remodeled our 1970’s Fox & Jaccobs home in Lewisville. All aluminum wiring but they no longer sold it due to these issues. We had to use a special compound/grease in the wire nuts for all tie ins. At the time we did not have the budget to replace all the wiring. A year later our neighbors house caught fire due to the aluminum wiring, We them immediately replaced the wiring to all copper.
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DOH! So hard to convey humor in text some times…
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I remember one time I was remodeling a home down in Cleburne, and we tore away the interior stucco walls (yes, stucco on the interior, the house was built in the 1920s) only to find the house had the original wiring. Bare copper, with ceramic spacers every 12 inches. So just bear in mind that there are worse options than aluminum wiring.
I’m not really aware of many fires started by knob and tube. It doesn’t really degrade with time. But the differential expansion between aluminum wiring and the typically brass fixture hardware always eventually leads to lose connections that allow oxidation and far too often fire. Aluminum, is still in use for some feeder applications with special precautions. But I still rate old aluminum wiring installs as worse than knob and tube.
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Commercial aluminum wiring is still pretty widely used. Of course they have a better understanding of it. Like using CU/AL or CU/ALR lugs vs the CU only lugs. The proper installation is key. If the installing contractor install it right or the engineer (that never happens right) did not spec it right, thats when you run into issues.
The expansion used aluminum wire to feed the sub panel on the wall by ceramics/jewelry.
I know of a rather large Datacenter that uses aluminum wire to date. We dont allow it on our equipment & I’ve had to have them change it via pigtail or Mac-adaptors. All their 575 volt & Medium voltage(either 4160 or 13k2) is aluminum.
Of course, you look at the main overhead power lines. They are mostly aluminum conductors.
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