Electricity

I was sitting in Busch III last night waiting for the game to start when Beth called. The power was out at home. More accurately, it was out in SOME of the house. Not good news. I got home around midnight after the game and started playing with breakers, seeing exactly what worked and what didn’t. Mapped out the breakers, and couldn’t find a pattern for the life of me.

I called in to work around 10am to say I wasn’t coming in (alarm clock one of the things that didn’t work). I called an electrician after that, and sat around till 1:30pm waiting for him to show up. After playing around with a multimeter and my breaker box for a few minutes, he tells me theirs a problem with one of the rails coming into the house. The first rail is at 122.8V, but the second was down to 108V. We headed out back to check the meter.

He popped open the cover and pulled the meter off the house like he’s done this before. He looked at it for a second and said there’s my problem. The electricity comes in from Cuivre River Electric into the box, through a bracket into the meter, and out another bracket into my house and the breaker box inside. One of the brackets holding the meter in place has worn loose and there is evidence of arcing, and some melted plastic. The bracket must be replaced.

He called Cuivre River, and they will be out between 9-10am tomorrow morning to shut off the power to my house at their green box so that he can replace the bracket. It should only take 5 minutes to do, but it’s too dangerous to try it in the cramped quarters of my meter box, in the rain. I think I’m going to work tomorrow, but Beth can handle supervising the installation and paying the man for fixing our power. The good news is that we don’t have to worry about shitty power ruining anyones expensive electronics at the Halloween party this weekend.