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Posted by SQLit on August 15, 2005, 8:32 am
> There is an old barn on my farm that needs serious repair and one of
> those projects that I am always planning to get to, but never do.
>
> Anyhow, I went out to the pasture today and was rather shocked when I
> found the overhead triplex to that barn was nearly touching the
> ground. On closer inspection, I found that of the 3 wires, only one
> of the hot wires was still attached to the barn, and was hanging by
> the service entrance head that was pulled off the building. The
> neutral cable, and other hot wire was just dangling in a tree.
>
> I shut off the main disconnect and had to do some tree trimming to
> finally get to the wire. What I found was a spot where both the
> neutral wire and the hot wire were melted at that spot, which is about
> 10 feet from the old barn. The 3rd wire, (still attached one), had a
> little burn on the insulation, although not down to the bare wire.
>
> Because there is no way to shut off the power to this one wire, I just
> temporarily capped the end of the hot wire and propped a 12 foot 2x6
> under the center of it, to keep some of the weight off and keep if off
> the ground. Tomorrow I will (somehow) reattach it, or just remove it,
> since it's not really needed.
You shut off the main disconnect and there is still power on the wire?
Call a pro immediately. Something is not correct.
> Anyhow, I am puzzled how, or why it burned at that spot?????
> It's been there for years. Although it's not used, it's been live,
> and did not have a tree or anything else fall on it, nor did we have
> any wind storms lately. Why would it burn thru, and not blow the main
> breaker? This has me puzzled. Even if there was a little nick in the
> insulation on the hot wire, why would it contact the neutral for no
> apparent reason? I should note that the break occurred in the
> branches of that tree. I do not see any burn spots of the tree, even
> after I did some serious trimming on it. Is it possible that the tree
> got wet (we just had a lot of rain), and the tree served as a short?
> That's all I can figure. I should note also, that the wire is not
> rubbed bare, like a tree branch was rubbing, it just burned cleanly in
> half, both the neutral and that one hot wire. I just find this real
> odd.
>
> Mark
A original defect in the wire could have slowly worn through.
There is a hundred things that I can think of that MIGHT cause this problem
over time.
You never noticed a tripped or blown circuit breaker?
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