Solving a Wiring Mess?

FueledByRamen asks: "While trying to run a new power line for a large Sun mass-storage cabinet (located nowhere near a 220 outlet of course), I had the misfortune of needing to pop the lid on my main power distribution panel (previously opened in the late 80s). The whole thing is a rats nest and probably a fire hazard - old-style wiring with broken-down cloth/plastic insulation strewn everywhere, and the utility's incoming power cables have some sort of junction in them that's the size of a 1-liter bottle (on each wire) and is covered in layers of electrical tape. Even (gently) putting the panel back on jiggled something important, and there was a nasty cracking noise and half the breakers blew (all breakers in one of the 2 columns). I've worked with mains voltage in the past (wiring new rooms, installing lighting), but nothing on this scale, both in terms of complexity and potential for death. How do you industrious Slashdot readers go about fixing a mess like this (on a tight budget, no less) without getting a mains-induced glimpse at the great beyond?"

Comments

wording

[holy_smoke]

send an email to your PHB that says things like "fire hazard" "risk to operations" "danger to employees and $$$$ equiment" "violation of code" and/or "insurance risk". That should get you the authorization you need to do whatever needs to be done - which, as others have pointed out, is HIRE A PROFESSIONAL.

Photograph!

[stuckatwork]

How 'bout putting up a picture of that mess for us to enjoy?

Safety practices around high power.

[mikech@rbsgi]

I used to write software at a high-energy physics lab. The technicians would put padlocks that only they had keys for on switches when they powered something down. Removing someone else's lock was grounds for immediate dismissal. If someone accidentally left a lock on something, they had to personally remove it or (you guessed it) face dismissal. They took these rules very seriously.

Re:Safety practices around high power.

[RollingThunder]

In fact, at the Esso terminal my dad worked at, the lockout "scissors" were set up with eight sets of holes in them. You threw the breaker to off, opened the scissors, then closed them so the "teeth" went through the hole to lock it out.

Then, you put your lock on, through one hole. Your buddy put HIS lock on through another hole. Anyone else that came along later? They put their lock on too, through another hole.

That way, the first guy doesn't mistakenly power the system back on, zotting some other guy that came along after him and went "Oh, OK, it's already locked out."

Re:Good grief - In the good old days

[NickDngr]

it's not the volts it's the amps that getcha

God, I knew someone was going to say that. Ohm's law... I=V/R. If the voltage goes up, so does the current. They are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Auditioning for the Darwin award???

[Cyclometh]

I did some theater work, in the totally amateur area, and on one production that I produced, I had to wire the lighting panel into the mains, because the theater was built in 1924 and still had most of its original lighting equipment. We figured that 75-year old rheostat dimmers the size of car tires that made a sound like a chainsaw when you pulled the foot-long lever weren't going to work well for our production.

So we borrowed/rented the equipment we needed, and the lights, wired everything up, and got ready to hook the main control box up. I got the pigtails ready and opened up the panel where the theater tech told me the power should be.

Inside, three very large, uninsulated, copper bars going from top to bottom.

All the others with me just looked at it and said "all yours, man". Great. So I double-checked the power was turned off to this panel- it had a very large switch, and you could *see* the switches disengage, but I still didn't trust that, then triple-checked it with a meter.

I was still nervous as all hell just putting my hand near these things, even knowing they were off. One handed, keeping the other hand behind me (I remembered that advice from my HS electronics teacher) I undid the big allen bolts and hooked the pigtail up.

It actually worked first try. Undoing it at the end of the production was almost as harrowing as the first time. I had the old mantra of labratory physics running through my head- "Hot glass looks exactly like cold glass", only I had modified it to "live copper looks exactly like dead copper". I also knew that if it was live, I probably wouldn't even know it before I was killed or rendered unconscious.

Yeesh. I still can't believe I was stupid or bold enough to do that.

In keeping with the other folks here, I'd say to the original asker, hire a bloody electrician, and don't get near the thing until someone tells you it's safe. Budget be damned, you don't want to risk your life on something like that.

Hooking up a simple pigtail is one thing, futzing around in the panel you described is suicide.

On a side note, I once got nailed by a 220 V dryer when I was about 8 years old. I was reaching for a sock that had fallen behind it, and touched one of the leads that was left exposed (!). It threw me about 15 feet across the laundry room and put a crack in the door where I hit it.